I am writing this from the British Airways business class lounge at London Gatwick airport. If you can somehow filter out the screaming children who are running around, it’s OK. Unfortunately, my head did not come equipped with Dolby brat noise reduction. I think there’s something quite healthy in recognising the difference between being at home and being in a public space. In the latter, one has to share with others and hence consequential need to temper one’s behaviour and the behaviour of one’s children. This is an increasingly unfashionable thought. Gatwick used to be a rather good airport, but now that security is so much slower, it’s not. BAA and its owner Ferrovial get a rough time for the unpleasantness of London’s airports, some of which I find a bit harsh. It’s not BAA’s fault that the government has introduced a number of purported security measures that slow everything up, I suspect for very little actual benefit. It’s not their fault that the trade union won’t allow them to bring in temporary labour at peak times to help ease congestion at security. Apparently, the union said they’d strike if they did this, as their members were doing rather well from the overtime that comes from snaking queues of frustrated, harried passengers. There were some very pleasant people at security today, but many enjoy their petty authority too much, if you get what I mean.
The client I’m working for has kindly bought me a business class ticket, as it’s a ten hour flight and it’s the third time I’ve been there in three months. £2,000 for the ticket means that I get a “fast track” sticker on my boarding pass, which ought to allow me to get through security quickly with a dedicated queue that I have indirectly paid a big premium to use. I am therefore subsidising everybody else, which is fair enough. I’ve spent so much time at airports in the last ten years I now see them dreary necessities to be got through as quickly as possible. I’d be willing to pay an extra £10 to knock 20 minutes off a security queue even if I were flying with Easyjet for a personal holiday. This simple solution isn’t offered for people who aren’t flying business class flights but don’t want to queue forever. The result is that families on charter flights all flood the Fast Track queue, rendering it absolutely meaningless. There’s a slight air that this queue jumping is a pleasing bit of toff bashing, which must make me the first toff ever from a mining town outside Wigan. It’s the sort of misguided nonsense that caused the eventual, inevitable, collapse of communism. I don’t think I’m better because my seat is at the front of the plane, but I paid vastly more so I have a right to the service I’ve paid for. Why am I expected to “muck in” at an airport as if it were still the Blitz?
2 comments:
And why is Gatwick so much worse at dealing with its queue for security than Heathrow? I have never seen a queue for security as long as the one in LGW. Luckily, when I last went through LGW I was also lucky enough to have a client (possibly the same as your's) paying business class but sadly, having checked in electronically, I had no such sticker telling me to go through the fast track queue. Fortunately, I worked out for myself that my ticket might allow me to go a bit quicker. I did not suffer others trying their luck in fast track. In Vienna, just having a frequent flyer card allows you access to fast track.
When I went through Stansted last time, the queue there was also horribly long but carefully hidden after the door (unlike in LGW where it snakes through the whole terminal). Hilariously there was an Albanian family late for their 'plane. They tried furiously to jump the queue and to the credit of the other passengers they allowed them to do so owing to their imminent departure. Imagine their surprise when the security staff told them to go to the back of the queue for pushing in. Then compound their surprise when the security staff tell them that they are only allowed one piece of hand luggage (unique to the UK?) so they'd have to go back and check in their excess bags. After much repacking, then imagine their faces as their bags which must have been filled with a variety of liquids were separated for detailed inspection with a single inspector working her way through the pile of suspect bags. I don't know if they caught their flight but it was certianly funny watching them try.
I think that the one bag rule is a uniquely British thing. One bag the size of a small suitcase is OK, but two bags each the size of a packet of sandwiches is not OK. I refer to my comment about the security rules making little sense!
I suspect LGW is worse than LHR because of the higher proportion of occasional holiday makers, who are by nature more tolerant of delays than people who fly all the time. This also explains why the queue at Manchester can be immensely long but people use the time to make new friends. To be fair, Manchester's fast track queue is wonderfully short and nobody tries their luck.
Years ago, I saw some rather spoiled American women really give out to a secuirty person who was insisting that they had to unwrap some Christmas gifts that looked uncannily like guns on the X-ray. The staff were great. Many of them are, but many are petty beyond words. I can see the reason for the liquids ban and I suppose if I had to spend my day dealing with people who are stupid, wantonly obstructive or both, my bedside manner may deteriorate too.
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