I think
wee-one highlights the rush culture correctly - the rush to turnaround, or the rush to start the day with an early getaway, or the rush to get home. Is it no wonder then that commentators rush to criticise?
"Lead, follow, or get out of the way"
"Act in haste, repent at leisure."
The old one's are the best, but the trick is always to apply the correct weight and balance to each that may apply - push it too far and it may come back and bite
A new trend is to encourage the sheep into the pens by threat of losing the slot. On my last trip down the back we were treated to five minute countdown. We were hustled into our seats with the threat of a 30 minute delay due apparently to the danger of missing our slot "unless we take off in 4 minutes". I found it slightl odd that we were actually airborne before our scheduled departure time. Maybe the latest tactics are to book the slots 30 minutes earlier than previously now on some routes?
To the poster that said twenty-five minute turnarounds were "easy", I would suggest that no contingency time actually equals "rush".
Back to my last experience - to emphasise where we were not to sit, not only were tray tables down and belts draped, but seat cushions were up-ended like the drains might be up
. That worked. Not a single bleat of "can we sit here?" was heard
Having sat back, noted the usual frost over the fuel tanks on the wings, relaxed, and started to enjoy our flight, but then we were told that sorry but there were no sandwiches.
At the other end after a 'standard' flight time for the route, we touched down a good 15 minutes before our scheduled arrival time. Rather disappointingly we were given no trumpeted fanfare about yet another on time arrival, and as we taxied in at 40 knots we had a announcement about the type of sandwiches we could buy instead. Then we hesitated before entering the stand because no ground crew had arrived, causing a good thirty out of control passengers at the back to be up, bins open, bags out of the bins before we were even over the line!
No one said a word about that, and finally the inevitable "disembark from the front stairs only" was uttered. I suspect the cabin crew were done in by the end of their rushed day.
Then at passport control there was a big queue of course because of the number of British passport holders entering Britain. Luckily I chose a queue with a high proportion of foreign passport and plastic card holders which of course the Brit computers
cannot attempt to link to 700 sundry other big brother computers, so foreigners hardly need to break stride. They certainly don't have to stand like a lemon for 10 seconds while 700 computers all check your inside leg like we Brits do. Mental note: Must get one of those foreign plastic thingies.
So anyway, my Kevlar underpants remained unscraped, I didn't die of lack of sandwiches or from a blow of any prematurely released bag hitting me on the head. I didn't have to listen to trumpet fanfares or warnings to remain in my seat until the captain switched off the seatbelt sign, immigration reminded me that Brits don't actually need to rush, and I got home on time.
Good job or what?
