Had to position to BFS the other day from LTN. (yes it was a night stop
)
Anyway, I thought I would use this time to see what the boarding is like from a pax point of view.
Well to be honest everything is normal as you would expect as a airline pax until you get to the gate.
As i was one of the first to the gate I easiely found my particular herding line 'A'. So their I stood looking around as you do, pax starting to fill their particular lines. BUT when the gate starts filling up pax start to loose which lane to go in and basically start piling in anywhere, No organisation what so ever.
So the gate staff start boarding SB line so off they trot out to the a/c but the gate is then left unattended, so it then turns into more of everyman /women/child for them selves and basically just walk out to board. This explains why so many pax board complaining they were boarding A but ended up last. It was a complete mess to be honest, and no controlled.
Then all boarded nice and early, but they were some pax missing. Now what should of happened ACCORDING to NEW regulations for ground staff is....... The gate is supposed to be CLOSED -10mins to dep, allowing time to offload, change loadsheet and offload bags ready for OTP. But yes you guessed it this did not happen. 5 MINS AFTER dep time a family turned up and was allowed to board, and then they wanted to sit together (this is one thing that p*sses me right off). If they turned up at the gate on time like everyone else managed there would be no problem. Oh and guess who ended up moving to allow them to sit together ME.