Heathrow conformance / positive boarding
I need to fly from Heathrow T4 to Paris-CDG on an EU passport in several months time with just hand luggage. In Paris-CDG I plan to catch a connecting flight the same day with a non-Skyteam airline. And no, I can't book it all on a single ticket - GDS are not set up well for this route and are asking a silly amount of money compared to tickets booked separately with each airline.
There are 2 flights in the same evening from Heathrow on Air France. I would much prefer to catch the earlier flight but think I'm going to be right up against the deadline for conformance / positive boarding entry to the security area.
If I check in online for both flights, have printed out boarding cards with me, and the security gates declined me with the bar code for the earlier flight but accept the bar code for the later flight, what would happen if I run and arrived at the gate for the earlier flight before boarding had been closed ?
Is the dispatch system clever enough to decline me, or would I likely still get onto the earlier flight ?
As an additional question, if the earlier flight is delayed, how intelligent are the security gates around conformance times ? Do they go purely for the scheduled departure time, or are they forgiving when a flight is delayed and there's still plenty of time to reach the gate before departure ?
Last edited by davidjohnson6; 18th Jun 2016 at 20:29.