LONDON CITY - 2

[WHBM]

Quite different topic, but just back from a few days in Barcelona (by BA from LCY), and being over the extended hols, and by the seaside (that should be “seaside”), Mrs WHBM came along for the trip.

Always good to get comments from less-regular City Airport users, but Mrs W said that LCY is steadily losing its feel of an easy to use terminal, and I see the point. But when she says “and becoming downmarket”, it makes you think. Her first time through the new round-the houses security arrangements, and we both commented that we remember when LCY used to try and have professional-calibre personnel here. Not sure if the security staff have now been outsourced to the lowest bidder, but the queue marshalling announcer was unable to speak English clearly, which we thought might have been a requisite for the job, while the door checker was like someone rejected from the Little Britain cast for being just too stereotypically jobsworth, dour-faced, and desperate to give as many passengers as possible a bollocking. How did our so-called premium business airport come down to this ?

The old security entrance is now disappearing, and currently presents a mass of half-finished blockwork, scattered mortar, and suchlike, right alongside the security queue. Shops doing alterations on their trading floor know all about screening works from customers to continue to present a good image; presumably the small extra cost of doing this was rejected.

Some zealous salesman has however managed to sell the airport a set of self-operated Boarding Card bar-code reader entry gates to the security area, which don’t seem to achieve anything that the previous manual check didn’t, given that a checker is still required, and which the bulk of the passengers going through found counter intuitive and couldn’t immediately understand how to use them, so they caused a backup in their own right. Because of the press of passengers waiting to use them it is not until you get there that you find each person needs to process themselves individually, so groups with one person holding all the BCs took time to distribute these among themselves. Now in my day job I am meant to know a thing or two about bar code readers, and these seemed far too sensitive to precise handling, an issue which other manufacturers in the industry cracked long ago. But maybe they don’t have such zealous salesmen.

I’m not quite certain how it is that LCY continues to add security channels and queuing areas, the actual security check itself is no different, the passenger numbers have not exactly skyrocketed in recent years, and yet it still takes progressively longer and longer to get through. Is there any rationale behind this ?

The new security area exits in a strange way into the lounge at the back, and if you didn’t remember the old layout many might turn the wrong way. The nice extension to this area done a couple of years ago seems to have been lost, and I get the feeling that because the old days of the 10 minute check-in (remember those fondly) have gone, people now spend longer in the LCY lounge area. Despite which the refreshments offered somehow seem to miss the mark.

Does anyone ever eat at those restaurant tables, strangely set up in the corridor to gates 21-24 ? I’ve never seen anyone at them.

Departure from what I still call "new" Gate 22. Despite these being new facilities, the old London City issue of passengers having to queue at gates down the steep stairs, with the gate check directly at their foot, is still present, and we all have to stand unsteadily and hope that nobody behind us misses their footing as we shuffle downwards. How this continues to get past a meaningful Health & Safety review I cannot imagine.

By the way, notwithstanding APD, travelling at Easter, booking less than a week before, BA standard cabin service with hot meals and drinks, and everything else, it cost me less to fly London to Barcelona return than to take the train I am currently sat in from London Paddington to Newport, South Wales, sat in cattle class like something from Ryanair ! Yes, really. So well done aviation, on the commercial side.