Seem to remember GO used to offer you the option of selecting your seat - never seemed to slow the flights up I travelled on and gave you a much better service all round.

The "check in early and get the best seat" option is somewhat flawed. My particular favourite was flying an early morning flight from Newcastle - checked in early got boarding group A and was promptly put on a bus to travel 200 metres to the aircraft. Unfortunately as were the first ones on we were herded down the back of the bus and were the last ones off!! Pure genius!:ugh: Who said customer service is not an issue any more???

It does seem that allocating seats can be much quicker

Having commuted using EZY in the past I'd say the lack of seat allocation and 2 doors to board is faster. Using 1 door to board and there's no difference.

I've always preferred to board in the 60-90 grouping as I get a decent chance to pick who I sit with as opposed to having somebody at checkin do it.

Wiggy - I agree with you! I am not defending 'free seating'. I have often seen them all clag up the front rows and the only time I like that - is when they are also boarding at the back and I can skip round and pick anywhere in the rear two thirds of the a/c!!

The folks who want the front rows may well be hand luggage only but many have checked bags and sitting at the front ain't gonna make no never mind!!

One of the biggest problems with the Southwest boarding method (Groups A/B/C) or the EZY method (groups of 30) is when the gate staff ignore the people who queue jump because they cannot take the (unjustified) comments and bad behaviour of our fellow pax. I can sympathise but am highly irritated to see folks not being turned back or, last year at LGW, no further announcements made after first call and so people just went forward when they felt like it, turning into a scrum.

This problem has been discussed here on several occasions... :sad:

Another problem with priority boarding, is that in order for it to be strictly ahered to, the agent must check every boarding group or sequence number religiously. This is a possible distraction from the more important things that should be checked on a boarding card and in my opinion is another task to slow things down.

If you allocate seats and ask for passengers in rows 12-30, ok maybe only 70% or so will get it right, but it's not something that needs to be checked. If passengers seated at the front slip through, it's not the end of the world. However, if you let someone down in the wrong boarding group, you're likely to start a riot! :rolleyes:

Bit of a thread creep here, but has anyone ever boarded a flight with a gate reader set to comfort boarding. How accurate is this at checking seat numbers?

It is a strict personal policy of mine to avoid loco airlines that don't offer seat allocation. Fortunately for me, the area I fly from boasts several EXCELLENT loco carriers which not only provide seat allocation but also offer the option of this at the booking phase.

Sticky-label seat numbers
 

I last had sticky numbers put onto a boarding pass from a big chart about two weeks ago - and it was on BA !

St Petersburg, in Russia. BA use a handling agent who are unable to print BP's from the system, so it's back to the old methods.

Now while we are speaking about Russia we could take a page from their book of pax handling from the old Soviet days, where for many operations involving a group of pax, such as showing visas at immigration, or checking in at Intourist hotels, you all had to line up in the same alphabetical order that your tour leader had on their paperwork. Possibly this would be the ultimate answer to boarding scrums.

As an aside . . . Ryanair seem to have gotten over their computerised check-in phobia. Dublin now as a sparkly new DCS system and a certain new base has made it clear to FR that the only way they would check-in the flights was via a computerised system. Still seems odd that STN are pen and paper though.

Apparently not for much longer. Trials in Dublin using OpenSkies have been successful and following talks with ARINC it is hoped that the same system will be up and running at the end of October (start of the winter schedule).

I guess it will have to be implemented in stages while staff are trained?

I can remember the old days of checking in a 757 on my own, manuel check-in, used to be done in an hour and half. Just couldn't do it now with
computer check-in.

Always a worry though when you found '29a' stuck to your elbow on the way home.....

Within the last 18 months have been maually checked in for a VS flight at either Narita or Delhi, can't remember which. This was a practice for system failure and was much slower, though pax were made aware by notices.

Anyone comment whether this is done everywhere - can't imagine it at T3 LHR - cause mayhem

The great FR manual system relates directly to a long running dispute that MOL was having with Aer Rianta in DUB over DCS charges. he would not allow STN to go DCS as this would blow his arguement with DUB. Seems as if this has now been resolved so expect to see STN change quickly. Common check-in would reduce the desk requirement by approx 30%. A no brainer.

The nostalga for the old manual systems were, of course, before all the requirements of security today. The level of 'monitoring' of PNL's and DCS systems by the authorities is one of the real benefit of DCS.

I'm with Dryce, on non-allocated being faster with EZY, particularly with two-door boarding - and especially when you have a sufficiency of pax who know whether the destination will be two-door offloading. Clued-up gate handlers often help by adding this extremely useful five-second snippet of info to an announcement.

Then again, my usual departure airport is AMS, where they pre-board into the A, B, C, D queues first, so no scrum and no 90 people all queued up claiming to be in group A ;) Doesn't always work with the new security farce but generally goes well.

Groundhand - Could not agree more about the benefits of a move to DCS for FR at STN. Nothing more frustrating for pax in a lonq queue at one dedicated desk, to see an agent 'idle' at another one adjacent, but that agent not able to check them in.

22/04 Testing manual check-in used to be a common requirement in 3rd party ground handling agreements. As DCS systems got more and more reliable it slipped from usage. Very rarely in the SLA these days.

fyrefli - Agree when talking A319 with both doors in use. However, a B737 on an airbridge is substantially slower to board (by whatever control you use) as the aisle is so much narrower it prevents passengers passing the ditherers as they stand to take off their coat/jacket/hat/child etc. before sitting down.
Have worked many systems for EZY in different European airports. Good boarding lounge layout, 2 sets of steps and good communication in the language of the passengers is the key. Having said that, boarding Italians will always be a scrum no matter what you tell them, what system you use and no matter how many gate staff are available. Patience and queuing are alien to their culture!

Agree B737 on an airbridge isn't optimal but is it any faster with allocated seats? As you say, the main delays are caused by the "ditherers"; don't they cause even worse problems with allocated or are you meaning allocated with sequential boarding based on part of aircraft?

I think the probs I have seen with EZY are that people are very much selectively deaf, not stupid, just plain ignorant. The announcement CLEARLY states, Passengers who have purchased Speedy Boarding etc., but you still get a group of numptys shuffling forward just to be sent back. Even worse is the Friday trip back from Belfast to the UK where without fail, there is a group of ten or more DRUNK lads on their way for a weekend away, who get in the way, shout all over the announcments, save seats for their mates, QUEUE for the loo before take off and STILL get served beer on board.

I like the seat allocation service with EZY ... you gets what you pay for.

Oh, BRS is dreadful too, except if you have clued up people running the gate. Unfortunately there's only a couple of those ;) I applauded one of them once for announcing, "I've called group A which consists of 30 people; there's at least 70 of you in the queue; when the 40+ people in the queue who aren't in group A leave the queue, we'll continue to board."

Can't do it all the time but it only takes a couple of times to start getting the message across. At the old D gates at AMS they sometimes used to simply impose a rule that if you came up too early you didn't just have to wait until your group was called, you boarded last; hardly added to the overall boarding time, just inconvenienced the selectively deaf.

Of course boarding priority by security number (or group) all goes a bit out of the window if in fact the aircraft is at a remote stand and a bus is involved!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Couple of days ago I saw a loco give priority boarding passengers their own bus which went out first. Thought that was appropriate.