A plea to BA ground staff

[Chuchinchow]

Please, please, please do not treat passengers as so many parcels or live cattle. Please, please, please remember that the money we have paid for our fares goes to pay your salaries. Please, please, please remember that we (the passengers) are the sole reason you (the ground handling staff) are in work and earning money.

We do not want to be called from the lounge or elsewhere to the gate with the announcement that boarding has commenced, and upon arrival at the said gate find that it is not even open.

Please do not tell us it is because you need to have all the passengers rounded up and ready to board. After a few times this defeats the object of the exercise. Regular passengers will not dutifully roll up for your all-too early summonses, because they know you will not start the boarding process for at least another 15 minutes, and we do not like standing in a small area, queuing or otherwise.

Passengers are forced to queue enough as it is when travelling. For example, the queue to check in, another queue for security, a queue to buy currency, queues to get on and off the aircraft, a queue for border controls, a queue for baggage (unless on a day trip - which means I have hand baggage), a queue for taxis. I think you get the picture.

Our time is just as valuable as yours is and you are not doing us any favours at all by condescending to "allowing" us to fly with your employers.

Do not bully elderly passengers with threats of denying them boarding because they have the temerity to ask why they are being kept waiting and when they will allowed to actually board the plane they have been waiting for. Their command of the English language and British Airways' arcane boarding procedures may not be as good as yours.

(This message was inspired by the truly appalling behaviour of two totally self-satisfied and utterly complacent women in BA uniforms at gate Axx at T5 on Friday morning last.)