Lounge says boarding but gate still closed

[marks]

I've noticed on the last few months, the lounge is calling boarding but when you arrive at the gate, the gate staff aren't ready.
It is usually another 10 mins before they call for passengers who need assistance.
In the meantime, the gate seating is overflowing. Passengers are standing in the walkway areas stopping foot traffic trying to get by 150+ people waiting for the lines to start.
Seen these blockages in Syd & Mel being the worst with the volume of people trying to get past.

Am I just not in sync with the process or VA boarding? Any tips. I'd like to raise it with the lounge but not interested in walking all the way back.

Anyone else noticed this trait?

 

[Ade]

I've noticed on the last few months, the lounge is calling boarding but when you arrive at the gate, the gate staff aren't ready.
It is usually another 10 mins before they call for passengers who need assistance.
In the meantime, the gate seating is overflowing. Passengers are standing in the walkway areas stopping foot traffic trying to get by 150+ people waiting for the lines to start.
Seen these blockages in Syd & Mel being the worst with the volume of people trying to get past.

Am I just not in sync with the process or VA boarding? Any tips. I'd like to raise it with the lounge but not interested in walking all the way back.

Anyone else noticed this trait?

A very common occurrence, IME. Both QF and VA are doing this. The lounge says "boarding now" or something to that effect but when you get to the gate, they are still working on pre-boarding stuff. Saturday last week at CBR, the crew just entered the airbridge when the status was boarding ... it takes atleast another 5-10 mins when pax needing assistance can board, followed by other boarding groups.

Same story with QF as well. The BP scanning system was not even set up with boarding was announced at MEL. Then another agent had to jump in with a handheld BP scanner device as there were a lot of people in the gate waiting to board

 

[TheInsider]

Same story with QF as well. The BP scanning system was not even set up with boarding was announced at MEL. Then another agent had to jump in with a handheld BP scanner device as there were a lot of people in the gate waiting to board

If a hand held scanner was being used in a port like SYD or MEL, then it had nothing to do with the scanning system not being set up. There would've been computer issues and unable to rectify in a short amount of time. They used a BCP instead.

 

[Ade]

If a hand held scanner was being used in a port like SYD or MEL, then it had nothing to do with the scanning system not being set up. There would've been computer issues and unable to rectify in a short amount of time. They used a BCP instead.

Thanks. I could have worded it better.

So what happened was, when I approached to scan my BP on the scanner thingy - the QF agent said "oh, sorry, that's not set up yet, just give me 1 minute" and she signalled to the other agent, who then came with the hand-held thingy and boarding commenced. May be the agent used the words "set up" in a sense that it's not started/enabled/ready-to-scan yet.

Post automatically merged: Dec 13, 2023

BCP

what is a BCP?

 

[Gremlin]

Yeah. As far as I'm concerned this practice belongs in the WCMO thread...

 

[AIRwin]

what is a BCP?

Business Continuity Plan?

 

[Kazb61]

I agree , this has happened to us frequently . Except in Perth where we left lounge on go to gate notification , as it’s always the most far away gate that Melbourne departure uses. only to get to gate and told to hurry as was closing!

 

[justinbrett]

I don't know about VA but I thought QF gate agents often call the lounge to advise boarding, before boarding is displayed at the gate or in the app (the idea being you are a few minutes walk from the gate). Although I have to admit I haven't seen this in a few years, normally the app notification is received just before the lounge announcement, so perhaps this is how they used to do it.

 

[marks]

The displays change to boarding but no boarding is happening. It just increases the madness of people in the terminal as everyone converges on the a gate which isn't ready. Keen not to get the "marks" personalised boarding message for waiting too long.

 

[xr6er]

What will end up happening is that a "boy crying wolf" type of culture will develop with the regular travellers and they will end up getting to the gate late and flights will start getting away late.
Gold Coast are also bad at doing this.

 

[twinaisle]

What will end up happening is that a "boy crying wolf" type of culture will develop with the regular travellers and they will end up getting to the gate late and flights will start getting away late.
Gold Coast are also bad at doing this.

They will get offloaded. It's something VA are doing to get the flight away on time as possible. Too lenient at times waiting for people who fluff around in the lounge or terminal.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I've noticed on the last few months, the lounge is calling boarding but when you arrive at the gate, the gate staff aren't ready.
It is usually another 10 mins before they call for passengers who need assistance.
In the meantime, the gate seating is overflowing. Passengers are standing in the walkway areas stopping foot traffic trying to get by 150+ people waiting for the lines to start.
Seen these blockages in Syd & Mel being the worst with the volume of people trying to get past.

Am I just not in sync with the process or VA boarding? Any tips. I'd like to raise it with the lounge but not interested in walking all the way back.

Anyone else noticed this trait?

Confirm it is common on VA.

the gate staff call the lounge to advise they are boarding, and the lounge makes the corresponding announcement.

When you get it the gate, sometimes they haven’t even make the ‘VAxx_ will commence boarding shortly’ announcement.

The gate staff need to make the call before they start boarding, that’s fair enough. But they’ve also taken to ‘allowing you more time’ to make it to the gate. They decide how long you need, even if they’re not ready.

As others have pointed out, keep calling the flights too early and pax in the lounge pay little attention.

But what gate staff don’t appreciate is that it might ‘only be’ 5 or 10 minutes of your time… but if you multiply that by weekly flights you’re looking at 250-500 minutes of wasted time standing around.

The policy needs to be tightened up. Calls made only when boarding is *actually* about to start. Once they get that right, email all pax and FFers to advise them ‘boarding means boarding’ and if you’re late, off-load.

 

[antycbr]

Confirm it is common on VA.

the gate staff call the lounge to advise they are boarding, and the lounge makes the corresponding announcement.

When you get it the gate, sometimes they haven’t even make the ‘VAxx_ will commence boarding shortly’ announcement.

The gate staff need to make the call before they start boarding, that’s fair enough. But they’ve also taken to ‘allowing you more time’ to make it to the gate. They decide how long you need, even if they’re not ready.

As others have pointed out, keep calling the flights too early and pax in the lounge pay little attention.

But what gate staff don’t appreciate is that it might ‘only be’ 5 or 10 minutes of your time… but if you multiply that by weekly flights you’re looking at 250-500 minutes of wasted time standing around.

The policy needs to be tightened up. Calls made only when boarding is *actually* about to start. Once they get that right, email all pax and FFers to advise them ‘boarding means boarding’ and if you’re late, off-load.

It does need to be port and gate dependent to some extent though. If you’re at gate 43 in Sydney (noting the escalator is out of service and not everyone can do stairs) or if you’re at gate 11 in Melbourne, you’ll need to allow extra time for a slower walker to make the gate.

But I agree with you I have spent quite a lot of time being gate lice recently which suggests they’ve become more focussed on OTP even though the cabin or tech crew aren’t ready/haven’t arrived yet.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

It does need to be port and gate dependent to some extent though. If you’re at gate 43 in Sydney (noting the escalator is out of service and not everyone can do stairs) or if you’re at gate 11 in Melbourne, you’ll need to allow extra time for a slower walker to make the gate.

But I agree with you I have spent quite a lot of time being gate lice recently which suggests they’ve become more focussed on OTP even though the cabin or tech crew aren’t ready/haven’t arrived yet.

There’s that too. Get to the gate early, board early, and STILL leave late.

Early boarding serves little purpose if the gate closes 10 mins before scheduled departure. Had a few flights recently start boarding 40-45 mins before scheduled departure.. only one of those flights left on time, the others were still late