Fed up waiting? Join the queue!

Clicked on the link about Greek holidays. Which is well respected – even by me a born skeptic – but that article was a load of tosh.

It highlights a very low risk of abnormal disruption, based upon a few demonstrations in Athens and some short term banking issues in Cyprus? Sure the countries have problems, which one doesn’t? Strikes there are at times just like there have been virtually every year by French Air Traffic Controllers, farmers etc.

Although the words tend to play it down, the headline sets the image. I guess “Which for international visitors to the UK” (if there was one) would not recommend a visit to the UK given all the riots and demonstrations over the years in specific locations, floods, droughts, high winds,Lions Mane jelly fish of the west coast, racial hatred and europhobic nature of a few, risk of catching mad cow disease, failing NHS……………however not been near or seen one of those with any abnormal adverse effect for years and that will apply to the vast majority. Some still however will suffer and undoubtedly there are problems and that must make a visitor to the UK wary, like some Americans were a few years ago. It’s just the same in Greece where news gets coloured by a few incidents and scaremongering headlines. Nearly all the demos and rioting are around Syntagma square in Athens, and there are problems elsewhere but generally only those in tourist areas of made by the tourists !!

Different standards abound and culture is different, heat waves do occur etc.; but that part of life.

Even the financial advice in the article was wrong, IMHO, a small amount of cash is the wrong method. Whilst ATMs are widespread they are not as reliable as in the UK and IF there is a serious banking crisis (never in the UK eh? we don’t ever see queues at banks – sorry short memory) then they would no doubt close for time as happened in Cyprus. Cash then would be king for a time so at least a reserve of cash would be very useful, just as it would if you lost your cards!!

We are long-term customers of easyJet, so, having embraced online check-in long ago, as recommended by the airline, we were keen for the latest easyJet Luton airport Bag Drop system to work as promised. However, on two flights this year, we have found ourselves in the longest queues we have ever experienced! Are we the stupid ones for tolerating this, especially as there were openable desks not in use at the time? We already arrive at the airport earlier than the recommended time, so this is simply an abuse of customer relations.
If easyJet cannot resolve this major issue, we, and probably many others, will surely have to look at alternative operators when making our holiday and family visiting plans.

Carrefour in Mallorca has an enormous store near the airport. There they use a common queue with electronic directions to an appropriate till. The system works extremely well and efficiently.

I recently flew out of Dublin(Aer Lingus) where there was a huge snake queue that ended close to one end of about a dozen check-ins. Meaning that there was a 10 second walk to the furthest check-in and the supervisor was always behind the curve in only bringing forward passengers when the check-in was free. Thus, anywhere between 5-15 seconds was wasted for each check-in. Multiply that by 1000 and its huge.

We’ve all spent hours at airports being delayed unnecessarily. It’s not rocket science. I suggest the best solution is a snake queue initially which ends up maintaining a POOL OF 2 LOTS of passengers at each and every check-in.

Nick

Good to see a discussion on queue theory!

It is well known, unlike your article example that when the queue wait is significantly longer than the action time (such as we experience at airports rather than at supermarket tills where they can be similar) then first in first served gives the overall shortest waits.

Anyone who jumps the queue or is given priority makes other just wait longer. Some passengers really do deserve priority such as the sick etc. s some small extra wait is inevitable. So the trend of having paid for priority desks have a significant affect, not only for that reason, but also when that priority desk is not fully employed. So those desks really do not help, unless you count moneymaking exercises worthwhile!

The point on small queue delays mentioned previously is also significant as they are cumulative (provided the desk is not actually doing something useful for those few seconds) but I suspect it is a security measure.

The biggest things that would make a difference is to smooth out the demand ( where there are lots of peaks in the hour or two before a flight) and just having more desks open!

Re ‘The formula for queue busting’ Surely you would get the best of both systems by having in front of each desk, behind the traveller checking-in, a single waiting position fed by a ‘snake’ queue.

Hi Try and beat this one . My wife and I flew on Aug 16th to Istanbul via the early B A Flight. Arrived at the visa Counter in Istanbul to find very long queue. After nearly 1 hour we could now see there there where only 2 Visa staff on duty with half the world waiting for visas. All of sudden 1 of the staff got up from there desk got food and water out and sat in another chair to watch the T V in their office area. In the mean time those in the know where getting certain airport staff to jump the queue for them to get their visas from the only person left on duty and this must happend at least 25 to 30 times. With visas now obtained we then joined the passport checking queue for another 30+ minutes. (not yet finished). !5 minutes to find luggage which had been put in pile so they could use the belt for another flight arrival. Thats what I queueing

One frustration I have with snaking queues is when retailers etc only open up the tills/counters etc furthest away from the front of the queue – so between customers there’s an unnecessary delay as people have to walk past empty counters just to be served. Businesses should also be aware that it makes more sense to have the end of the snaking queue in the middle of the row of tills/counters, not at one end!