Holidays and Airport 'Chaos' since COVID

[levelnine]

Spent 2.5 hours to check in and get through security

2.5 hours to get checked in and through security at LHR?! Is that even with priority?

 

[Peanutbladder]

2.5 hours to get checked in and through security at LHR?! Is that even with priority?

No sorry, no priority for me anymore, this was a standard Y class check-in and non fast track security. To be fair security was not too bad we were just held up by a few who had left loads of liquids in their hand luggage and had to be searched which took off staff from other duties creating a back log.

The real issue was check-in which was at least 2 hours with LHR staff not knowing how to handle the massive queues.

 

[MikeG]

We were offered to check in the night before our 08:30 flight from LHR. It was a piece of cake to check bags and check in the previous evening, probably because there were fewer departures after 20:00. However, we did confuse the check-in lady when my father decided to use his UK passport to depart the UK, which rang alarm bells for immigration in Australia due to no re-entry visa (he also has an Aussie Passport). The total time to check in was around 20 mins. No queue for Gold FF on Lufthansa.

Security was a piece of cake the following morning, although we did have the rail strike to contend with, with the airport trains stopped, we were put onto buses at 06:30. We were sitting in the lounge at 07:00...

The moral of the story?? go with early morning flights to avoid delays.

 

[AIRwin]

The moral of the story?? go with early morning flights to avoid delays.

Thanks! Both my upcoming flights from LHR are around 9 am and I was initially thinking that I won't get much lounge time...

 

[Saab34]

One of my colleagues has fallen victim in Cairns just now. Jetstar have apparently cancelled the 787 flights on domestic as they need to use the cabin crews to fly A320 flights, ie the thinking obviously is you can crew two Airbus flights vs 1 787! The next CNS-MEL fight offered was Sunday at 9pm.

Limited hotel options, no cars available. At this stage he and his wife/kid are in the backpackers tonight.

 

[Peter78]

Any reports on SYD International check in and security queues at the moment, given school holidays and high flight loads?

Interested to know how the express track for J and F pax is fairing.

We departed SYD International last Saturday, July 2, first day of (public and, for us, Catholic) school holidays, though with a staff development day on Jul 1 and the teacher strike the day before, Wednesday was the last day of school. I digress.

JQ37 to Denpasar/ Bali, we arrived at T1 around three and a half hours before departure. Quite a line up at check in due to Jetstar scheduling two B787 departures within ten minutes, ours and one to Honolulu (STD 4.30pm). Line moved quite quickly but still took us about 45 minutes to be checked in. Security is what I was scared of but passport control was done in all of three minutes and there was no (!) wait for security. All up less than one hour between arrival at the airport and heading to the Qantas lounge. Nearly every flight was delayed though, including ours but that didn't bother us too much on the way to our holidays.

Here with friends and they reported their neighbours returned to Sydney from Fiji yesterday, in the early morning, they said it was nearly three hours until they left the airport, from the time the plane reached the gate.

 

[Lynda2475]

The moral of the story?? go with early morning flights to avoid delays.

My flight out of LHR is also at 8:30am, wonder if BA allow check in the night before?

 

[MikeG]

According to the BA site for LHR,

"Overnight Bag Drop is available if you are travelling on a flight departing before 13:00, you can check in your bags between 18:00 – 21:00 the day before. For security reasons, you cannot check in someone else in their absence, everyone in your booking needs to be present."

 

[Berlin]

Just went through Sydney security and can only recommend to listen to the news reports and bring plenty of time, it was a real nightmare. Worst I’ve ever seen, actually.

Very badly trained staff usher everyone into one queue from hell and only a bit later I realised that there’s an odd “priority queue” of sorts (when you face immigration, it’s to the very left of the terminal, close to the Qantas check in). Unfortunately, this queue is as weird as it sounds, “First and Business class only” it says so I would think no chance as a status member?



In any case, it’s pretty useless as anyone who is disorganised/dumb/annoying and despite the numerous media reports still manages to get to the airport late trumps even First class passengers and gets sent straight to the front while I personally think a more appropriate treatment would be… [Enter nasty punishment of choice here].

And guess who’s the ones holding up the entire queue fiddling with the e-gate readers, looking with a stunned face wearing a huge sun hat into the facial recognition cameras and wondering why “all this high tech isn’t working” and finally NOT taking out their aerosol cans at security (they seem to ALWAYS have random aerosol cans in their luggage-why oh why)? Yes. It’s them- the late coming Economy morons that get a fancy green sticker on their clothes because they are now “priority”. Not. Happy.

I got through everything in about 90 minutes which included several breakdowns of the e-gate system which I only later realised might have been on purpose to hold up the masses in order to relieve the endless security queue coming afterwards. The non-priority queue looked even way worse so please everyone, be warned.

Now I’m in the SQ lounge which is the blissful haven in the midst of the mess that it was prior to the pandemic and solidly enjoy being back to travelling. Another year or so, I would hope, and we’re back to normal again.

 

[RooFlyer]

Very badly trained staff usher everyone into one queue from hell and only a bit later I realised that there’s an odd “priority queue” of sorts (when you face immigration, it’s to the very left of the terminal, close to the Qantas check in). Unfortunately, this queue is as weird as it sounds, “First and Business class only” it says so I would think no chance as a status member?

My sentiments exactly re the 'not match fit' twits going through security etc.

Re the 'priority' emigration, isn't there someone at the entrance (to both) who looks at your BP? They could direct whY status pax to the priority queue if allowed. That said, I imagine that the airlines have to pay to have that priority queue, so maybe don't want to pay for non biz or First pax to go there.

 

[mitti]

My sentiments exactly re the 'not match fit' twits going through security etc.

Re the 'priority' emigration, isn't there someone at the entrance (to both) who looks at your BP? They could direct whY status pax to the priority queue if allowed. That said, I imagine that the airlines have to pay to have that priority queue, so maybe don't want to pay for non biz or First pax to go there.

Apparently it is strictly limited to first and biz pax at the moment. Express path ‘lite’?

 

[RooFlyer]

Apparently it is strictly limited to first and biz pax at the moment. Express path ‘lite’?

Well as a Biz pax, I can't say I might complain about that

I wonder if they still do what I have seen in the past - when you go into the priority emigration area, and see hardly anyone in front of you, you then see them sending pax across from the riff-raff queue who ensconce themselves in front on this total DYKWIA. <Before the , yes, I know this is a better use of resources >

 

[muppet]

Just went through Sydney security and can only recommend to listen to the news reports and bring plenty of time, it was a real nightmare. Worst I’ve ever seen, actually.

Very badly trained staff usher everyone into one queue from hell and only a bit later I realised that there’s an odd “priority queue” of sorts (when you face immigration, it’s to the very left of the terminal, close to the Qantas check in). Unfortunately, this queue is as weird as it sounds, “First and Business class only” it says so I would think no chance as a status member?



In any case, it’s pretty useless as anyone who is disorganised/dumb/annoying and despite the numerous media reports still manages to get to the airport late trumps even First class passengers and gets sent straight to the front while I personally think a more appropriate treatment would be… [Enter nasty punishment of choice here].

And guess who’s the ones holding up the entire queue fiddling with the e-gate readers, looking with a stunned face wearing a huge sun hat into the facial recognition cameras and wondering why “all this high tech isn’t working” and finally NOT taking out their aerosol cans at security (they seem to ALWAYS have random aerosol cans in their luggage-why oh why)? Yes. It’s them- the late coming Economy morons that get a fancy green sticker on their clothes because they are now “priority”. Not. Happy.

I got through everything in about 90 minutes which included several breakdowns of the e-gate system which I only later realised might have been on purpose to hold up the masses in order to relieve the endless security queue coming afterwards. The non-priority queue looked even way worse so please everyone, be warned.

Now I’m in the SQ lounge which is the blissful haven in the midst of the mess that it was prior to the pandemic and solidly enjoy being back to travelling. Another year or so, I would hope, and we’re back to normal again.

I'm not sure you can blame the "economy morons" for this and I can't see how you could possible know how early or late they arrived. Economy pax don't have access priority check-in, it's just a likely they did arrive 4 hours early and were only just finished checking in.

At the end of the day, it's the airport and airline's failure to properly plan and staff adequately that is the problem - not the economy pax who paid the same departure tax as you, same security screening fee as you and paid the same airport passenger fee as you.

But appreciate the warning/update on the chaos ahead.

 

[Mwenenzi]

abc.net.au (VA traveller and others)-->Brisbane Airport flight delays expected through weekend, leaving passengers in the lurch

 

[Berlin]

I'm not sure you can blame the "economy morons" for this and I can't see how you could possible know how early or late they arrived. Economy pax don't have access priority check-in, it's just a likely they did arrive 4 hours early and were only just finished checking in.

At the end of the day, it's the airport and airline's failure to properly plan and staff adequately that is the problem - not the economy pax who paid the same departure tax as you, same security screening fee as you and paid the same airport passenger fee as you.

But appreciate the warning/update on the chaos ahead.

Oh- they all made a big fuzz about how their flight is “almost leaving”, that’s how they got into the “priority queue”. And judging by their overall behaviour, they were definitely clueless at least and most likely worse.

 

[Berlin]

I wonder if they still do what I have seen in the past - when you go into the priority emigration area, and see hardly anyone in front of you, you then see them sending pax across from the riff-raff queue who ensconce themselves in front on this total DYKWIA.

I rather observed the opposite. The staff was so badly trained and disorganised that they sent some business class passengers into the hell on the other side. I noticed in the very last moment what was happening and joined a different queue that got me through in 5 minutes but one of the people who had been in front of me earlier followed “the orders” and later told me in the lounge that it took him about half an hour to make it through from that point that we got divided up.

 

[Cossie]

I went through there Friday morning probably at a similar time to Berlin.
QF from CBR to BKK. I asked about WP status flying in Y when I got off the bus and was given a green sticker on my boarding pass to use the priority queue, no real problems after that. Line a bit longer than normal, but nothing like the one for general boarding.
Can’t find fault with my experience yesterday at all but of course ymmv.

 

[Cossie]

Apparently it is strictly limited to first and biz pax at the moment. Express path ‘lite’?

Not in my case as per above.

 

[jakeseven7]

My BIL got stuck in a security queue for 3.5 hours in Spain yesterday…. Makes the 1 hour queues in Sydney T2 look positively amazing!

 

[CaptJCool]

Parents and separately friends flew out of Adelaide yesterday. the big complaint was why were we there SO EARLY. Queues flowed even if baggage was only open 2 hours before flight time..... no block at security point as they were fully staffed.
cancellation rate ex Adelaide is around 5% of 200 daily flights peaking at 8.5% with VA cancels causing more drama since there’s no alternate LCC for them.

the only serious issue is getting cancelled on the morning of leaving your home port flying to a holiday or event Like a birthday, wedding or funeral..

Coming home, so what if you’re late home? Call the boss and say plane got cancelled and take another day off work?