Ac1925

[collybat]

Hi all
I took my sister to Gatwick today for her flight back to Canada
I admit I had got her there late for check in although there were two guys who had also arrived late but the captain allowed check in to open and those guys checked in, as soon as that happened the captain closed the flight I said to the check in staff how come that can happen my sister could have checked in at the same time and her case would have followed the other cases down the conveyor to the aircraft if only I knew who the captain was on that flight I would ask him personally how he would have felt if one of his family members had been treated like that, as it was I had to pay for another ticket for her on Air Transat Ts225
Regards Colin

[extreme P]

Maybe arrive on time or face consequences?
Regards, extreme

[+TSRA]

Hi Colin,

You are best to talk to the airline (AC) directly, rather than asking the readers of PPRuNe. There are literally a dozen reasons why that may have been done, none of which are personal.

It is possible those passengers were airline or codeshare staff (deadheading crew); it is possible those two passengers were known about ahead of time while your sister was not...you assume the Captain knew about your sister...

There are a lot of considerations to take into account and it is possible that it was only the Captain relaying the information from another location and this was not the Captains' decision.

Unfortunately, the tariffs are very clear when it comes to closing off a flight and if you're a minute late, you may as well have arrived after the airplane left. The cold hard truth is they are under no obligation at that point to reopen the flight. When they do so it is normally only for operational reasons and where they are confident doing so would not unduly impact the departure of the aircraft. For example, maybe waiting the extra 10 minutes for your sister would have exceeded the crews duty time at the arrival airport - in that case, they simply can't wait - even though it is one person, they will end up delaying hundreds. Now instead of telling one passenger they are not going, the Captain has to tell hundreds of people and a number of crew members. In another example, those two gentlemen may have been able to get through security within the existing regulatory timeline; your sister may not have been able to do that.

It's just not a black and white decision, which is why you're best to go directly to the airline...except, and I hate to be so very blunt because I do empathize, but they're not at fault.

[clunckdriver]

I doubt the captain had a clue who the late pax was, what he would have known is his slot time and Nat Track entry time which if missed would cause a whole lot of grief for all the other pax, along with the captain getting writers cramp from explaining why he caused such a foul up. A previous poster said it all, be on time!

[bzh]

the captain has nothing to do with check-in and opening or closing the flight for that.
Ground personnel ,rouge employees or whoever the contractor is handling the flight do....

[clunckdriver]

bzh, where do SLFs get the impression that those of us at the pointy end have anything to do with ground passenger handling? Yes we have the odd discussion with the agents, but they are far more qualified than us when it comes to getting bums into the right seats and on time, they also have to have infinite tact and patience handling those who seem to think that 400 pax should wait for them, I wonder what the attitude of this person was?