Boarding to stand in the jet bridge - FlyerTalk Forums (2024)

Nitehawk

Join Date: Dec 2007

Location: YYJ

Programs: AC SE*MM, Bonvoy LT Plat, HH Gold, National EE, Sixt Plat, Hz 5*

Posts: 2,455

seanp7

Join Date: Aug 2005

Location: NYC, FLL

Programs: UA PP 1MM, Marriott Bonvoy LTTE, BA Gold

Posts: 6,402

Have experienced this very frequently in MAD too. Seems to be a thing in Spain, then. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I love Spain, and this is another reason I hate departing Spain.

SP0

Join Date: Dec 2006

Posts: 232

One of the previous threads on this was mine; and I am still finding this approach to boarding annoying.

I can see that it gives the illusion of progress towards on-time departure. But I still don’t think the maths stack up, ie filling the airbridge does very little to get the flight away earlier. And it does plenty for passenger discomfort.

peter h

Join Date: Mar 2018

Location: London

Programs: BAEC | qantas | IHG | Hilton Honors | Priority Pass | Nandos

Posts: 874

I'd think that this happens on lots of airlines in order to manage the boarding process - especially regional narrow body flights using only one jet bridge

But, regarding your post - who actually starts the boarding process at the gate? I've seen on some recent BA flights to and from the EU that the gate staff appear to be notified when to start boarding, so they didn't seem do it proactively in my experience. So is it the flight crew who trigger the start of boarding?

Anyway, I suspect that 'pre loading' the jet bridge with passengers sitting near the front who then faff around with their carry-ons and potentially block those behind them is more efficient. I'd imagine that the gate staff can clear passengers through at a faster rate than the cabin crew can check them onto the aircraft, so there'll be a bottleneck somewhere even if the passengers were released when the cabin was actually ready.

So, OP, how about staying seated at the gate and be last on?

SP0

Join Date: Dec 2006

Posts: 232

Ah, if only that worked.
On a European flight where 1a-1F can’t put baggage under seats, and often the closest overheads have been taken by cabin crew, it is often necessary to be in the first few people on board — otherwise your bag goes down to row 8 or something and you end up having a real mess on disembarking. Or on a US flight where the local custom is to bring half a house split over two vast bags, the economy passengers will have filled the Club storage in seconds.

On a long haul with proper cabin baggage storage I am very happy to come down last from the lounge …. But sadly this doesn’t work in many circ*mstances, which is why I end up standing on the airbridge!

Crampedin13A

Join Date: Aug 2002

Location: YYZ

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CharlotteC

Join Date: Feb 2009

Posts: 784

Last year we were left for an hour in the room just before the air bridge/air bridge/jetty at Catania in the heat with no recourse to water or aircon. It was awful amazed nobody fainted and we weren’t allowed to go back into the terminal….the BA agents took unhelpfulness to a new degree

GoNorth

Join Date: Jan 2024

Programs: BA Gold

Posts: 154

I've seen an increase in this over the last 12 months more often but not totally at outstations. The craziest one was recently when boarding was announced as starting with 200+ people starting to move towards the gate only for the crew to rock up a few minutes later. How the gate team thought they would board passengers in advance of having a crew seemed a new one🤔

Normally, there's an apology implying it was a mistake, however, a trend is making me wonder whether there's a desire to show that boarding has started on time to hit a performance metric?