Quote from
GobonaStick [April01/13:13, currently #867]:
How on earth does it take 90min to find a set of steps at an international airport? What was the crew on the aircraft/ground doing all that time?
[Unquote]
Catching up on this thread, the above comment - a perfectly understandable and reasonable one - gives cause for a wry smile. No one who has not worked on the Ramp can appreciate the problem for crews (and ground staff, like Dispatcher/Redcaps) when an aeroplane arrives on stand, but there are no jetty or steps available.
Short of deploying the emergency escape slides, it is usually physically impossible for the crew to get off the aircraft. On smaller types, it used to be easy because they had airstairs or equivalent. Think of the One-Eleven, with its rear stairs.
The situation has not been helped by the airlines themselves. BA's first A320s had airstairs. They were a bit long, and the hand-rail LOOKED a bit fragile, so were not popular with everyone. Crews and ground staff often found them invaluable. The installation weighed about as much as 1 or 2 passengers. When BA ordered more A320-family (A319s) for mainline, they decided against airstairs (weight, cost, and maintenance). So, with a drop of about 8 feet to the concrete, the crews are completely stranded.
In a desperate (but non-emergency) situation, there used to be a way out through the avionics bay. From there, you could open an external hatch and use a built-in ladder to get to the ground. For reasons not entirely clear at the time, internal access to the avionics bay was sealed off over 10 years ago.
Few things are more frustrating and embarrassing for a crew than arriving on stand and being unable to disembark. Getting off the aeroplane often enables you to find suitable steps, if required, and someone to help you deploy them; Health and Safety permitting.
It's not specifically a T5 issue, but bring back airstairs on narrow-bodies!