doors must be closed at -2mins and the plane is to be pushing back at SDT
Tell that to the passengers on Friday who were all at the gate waiting for an aircraft to arrive. Where was it? It had been parked overnight at T1. We were at T4. How difficult is it for the night shift to tug the
thing over ready for the first flight of the day.
When I was in the airline industry (a few years ago now) I worked for an airline that would happily accept a 10-15 minute departure delay from the main base to ensure the aircraft was 100%. this avoided embarrasing delays down route when something else went wrong. i.e It was (not sure about now) acceptable for an a/c to leave with 2 out of 3 INS systems operational. If a second failed down route, we had problems.
When I worked for BA, the priority was to depart on time regardless so we ended up with these issues down route.
On another issue, my flight back from Cologne last night was delayed due to previous delays during the day caused by high winds at LHR. Not disputing this as I have no idea. What I did not like though was then being taken to a domestic stand on arrival and being bussed back to the correct area adding further delays to a jorney that was already delayed.