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Just in the gate A4 zoo. How did LHR screw this up so badly? I mean a bus at a new terminal.
All badly managed by BA too with boarding groups be damned.
My arthritic wife is loving it.
Just in the gate A4 zoo. How did LHR screw this up so badly? I mean a bus at a new terminal.
All badly managed by BA too with boarding groups be damned.
My arthritic wife is loving it.
Well, they have bus gates at DOH where neither space nor cost is in issue. LHR is an extremely constrained site and there isn’t enough space for every gate to have an air bridge. Remote stands are the only way to manage the number of aircraft. It will be no different when T2 is extended and the satellites opened.
Nobody has screwed anything up – bear in mind that the regulator and the airlines sign off on all these projects – if the airlines could find a way of not using buses they would (and it’s the airlines that organise and pay for providing the buses) they would have done so but they know there is no other option.
My last couple of T5 SH flights boarded using bus gates and priority boarding was enforced onto the buses.
T5 was built by HAL to BAs specifications on a limited sized site.
Surely it was good planning to have bus gates as what would the alternative be – delay or cancel flights until a jet bridge gate became free?
Doesn’t make it any less shameful for the UK that this is the state of air travel in 2024 though.
And the airport could handle boarding much better than they have. Buses at the old AUH were at least by class/boarding gate which reduced the scrum.
It’s a reminder to myself that Club Europe is a second rate way to travel compared to long haul.
Doesn’t make it any less shameful for the UK that this is the state of air travel in 2024 though.
And the airport could handle boarding much better than they have. Buses at the old AUH were at least by class/boarding gate which reduced the scrum.
It’s a reminder to myself that Club Europe is a second rate way to travel compared to long haul.
@masaccio – do you have a better idea of where a London airport with unlimited space might be located?The boarding of your flight is nothing to do with the airport who you seem determined to criticise for matters over which they have no control. The buses are operated by the airline user group not HAL and BA organises its own boarding at each gate, as does each individual airline, so how are you suggesting “the airport could handle boarding much better”.
I think pretty much every airport has bus gates. Landed at JFK last week on VS and was bussed to terminal. No priority for UC passengers apart from being 1st down the steps and on to a packed buss with all pax.
I could reel off a dozen major non UK airports that also have bus gates but you’d probbaly be fine with that.
An airport / terminal that doesn’t have bus gates is the badly planned one.
@JDB multiple options for expanding/replacing LHR have been proposed but we lack the planning as a nation to execute on them it seems.
I have no faith that a new set of muppets in July will make any of this better.
LOL so they should only allow as many takeoff/landings as they have bridges? That would be ridiculous. Bus gates help them manage demand better and frankly I’d rather get on/off a bus at A than a bridge at C
That was the comment from the Captain last week after we parked up at the back end of nowhere, that a bus to the main terminal wasn’t much different from waiting for and taking the shuttle train.
It’s more of an irritation when departing rather than arriving.
Could’ve been worse. I got into an airbridge last time, and got stuck as the couldn’t open the door at the bridge. After a beautiful 45 minutes, they finally managed to bring someone to the gate.
With BA, always be ready for adventure!
Always laugh at the BA comments. Do some
People fly with other airlines? Yes, BA aren’t perfect, but as many have said time and time before, it’s often quite re-assuring to fly with them, and in a weird kind of way you know what you are getting.As for the actual Air bridges, I flew with Qatar in J from the mighty Singapore to Doha and I got looked at like I was total sh11t by other passengers when I got on one of there busses.
T3 also has bus gates which I had the pleasure to experience recently (gate 24 I think).
A couple of months ago we had the dreaded A10. Travelled CE. Boarding was strictly enforced by Group. After all CE and maybe group 2 and perhaps 3, the bus half full departed before the other groups arrived. That’s not the first time it’s happened.
Always laugh at the BA comments. Do some
People fly with other airlines?Yes, often.
My flight today featured a brat who didn’t want to fly and rather than parenting said brat, the parents pandered to them and eventually the whole group was deplaned and their bags offloaded on the taxiway. The whole thing took 2 hours. After costing the crew work, 150 people 2 hours delay and BA the cost of finding new crew for the flight after mine, I hope they are never allowed to fly BA again.
I mention this as the crew were great. Very empathic despite this affecting them due to 2 unplanned hours on the ground screwing up their allowed flying time. But the BA product is still ropey in many places.
Perhaps it’s unfair comparing BA short haul with heaps of long haul airlines I’ve flown, but I did fly Kenyan short haul last year and it was so much better.
As I understand it, you all wanted BA flights to be more punctual, so BA has started padding out ‘time on stand’ to ensure even a late arrival departs on time. These has cut down the number of stands available and so more bus gates are needed. You can’t have everything ….
I had the dubious honour of a bus gate from MAN-T5 a few years ago. We were 65 mins late departing MAN, arrived at a bus gate and then spend 45 mins waiting for the bus to actually turn up. Then they took 15 mins to get the door open.
So total from Man gate to T5 was 170 mins for a 45 min flight. Needless to say I missed my connection and lost a whole day in Rome by the time I got there. No compo, no apology, no lounge access. That was the beginning of my loathing of LHR.
Perhaps we need a new airport on an artificial island in the Thames Estuary?
Seriously though, the airports should never have been privatised. It makes it impossible for the government to make directions to even out capacity.
Gatwick could once again be a first rate airport if airlines were forced to use it.
Perhaps we need a new airport on an artificial island in the Thames Estuary?
Seriously though, the airports should never have been privatised. It makes it impossible for the government to make directions to even out capacity.
Gatwick could once again be a first rate airport if airlines were forced to use it.
The ownership of the airport has nothing to do with whether or not an airline could be forced to use a particular airport, although the concept you suggest is anyway entirely alien to governments of all colours. The idea of an airport in the Thames Estuary also has no political support from any political party (only Boris was keen) or airline. Gatwick would struggle to be first rate with only 1 to 1½ runways and is far less accessible (ie inconvenient) for too many.
@davefl isn’t that the inherent risk in flights with connections and why they are often cheaper?
Why no compo what was the reason they gave for their home airport not having the necessary equipment?
Did insurance compensate you?
@TGLoyalty BA connections are typically more expensive than flying LLC direct, weather delay was the reason so no compo. Fog on the outbound at LHR, and travel insurance only paid for delays in excess of 12 hours, so I was under that by the time BA got me on the last flight of the day from LHR.
And when I got to Rome it poured down all the time I was there, it was just a sucky trip.
And honestly that’s why I just fly the LCC’s direct.
But yeah weather delays suck the buses wouldn’t have been planned for your actual arrival so imagine that played its part in the logistics all being off. It will actually be BA ground crew that are at fault as they would be operating the steps and probably the buses. Best guess is the endless chasing of lower costs to offer lower fares mean there’s very little standby / buffer built in with spare equipment or probably people to operate the equipment around and even what they have would be deployed to flights that would due compensation rather than those affected by weather or extraordinary circumstances, you’re worth less cost than them.
I mentioned this in my fast track posts yesterday we the general public are responsible for the race to the bottom when it comes to service because we won’t pay and ofcourse you could argue why should we for the low percentage of occasions things go wrong and we just have to take the consequences.
Doesn’t Amex offer delay compensation for missed connections. Think it’s c£300 I really need to brush up on what my cards offer before this summer
They could have utilised mobile lounges I suppose, like they have at Montreal Airport:
https://youtu.be/j3OqAN4ISOw?si=r7T29lZ4GBaQYE4mI am not sure how cost effective it would have been though, and that price would have been passed on to the consumer…
Seriously though, the airports should never have been privatised. It makes it impossible for the government to make directions to even out capacity.
Nationalised industries eh? Everything was perfect. My parents applied for a telephone line when they got married in 1968, we had it installed in January 1985, a month after BT was privatised. Suddenly BT wasn’t restricted in their investments in basic kit.
Just in the gate A4 zoo. How did LHR screw this up so badly? I mean a bus at a new terminal.
All badly managed by BA too with boarding groups be damned.
My arthritic wife is loving it.
Domestic flights regularly use the bus gates. Other than in winter when it’s absolutely bitter standing down there with the doors open, I don’t have a problem with them. I’ve found that the boarding seems to work better too when passengers arrive in batches.
If you were flying from Edinburgh say, quite often passengers are boarding from the front and back of the aircraft, so you’re still going down three flights of stairs from the lounge, outside, walking to the aircraft, then up stairs.
It’s not just having enough gates with air bridges – you have to manage the apron and taxiways too. Planes are arriving/leaving all the time, and the taxiways next to gates are a bottleneck. A gate can go out of service for maintenance/clean-up.
Think yourself lucky you didn’t get a Ryanair “LHR” flight – your bus would be from Bristol 🤣
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