And this is Ryanair's fault because?
Ryanair's policy towards people who arrive after the gate closes
- Thread starter Brendan Burgess
- Start date
He was late for the gate deadline. Does not matter if the plane has not even started boarding. You said yesterday it annoys you when Aer Lingus calls late passengers, MOL won't tolerate late passengers never mind call them. I have never seen a gate close before the official time. I had an old colleage who was so vexed one time he broke the glass screen and was escorted from the airport. You can be certain he was never late again.
Sometimes they can and do let you thru the gate a bit late.
This I have seen and been party to myself. Not Faro. Our airline then called out for the passengers for the next flight to come forward ahead of everyone else in the queue. We were in plenty of time but some airports are unreal.
We were as a family at an airport relatively close to us, a bunch of youngish girls got in a right panic, so we let them true in front of us at the initial scan of boarding pass, we caught up with them at passport control later, where they were somehow now behind us, discovered that they were going to the same destination as us which made us chuckle. They'd gone ahead of everyone (I will ALWAYS let people go ahead) and yet somehow managed to get delayed and end up behind everyone at the passports.
Joe about stairs, most airports have lifts, they can be hidden, or you might not notice them, or they might be under special control or away from the gate. I know this having had to travel with someone with mobility issues and also having mobility issues myself a couple of years ago after surgery.
Brendan Burgess
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Take an extreme situation.
The gate deadline is 3 pm
They announce the gate at 2.55 pm.
So everyone is late and can do nothing about it?
People have to be given a reasonable amount of time between the gate announcement and the gate closing.
A challenge to this would win in the courts no matter what Michael O'Leary says.
I once slept in for a flight to Liverpool for work, and woke at 0515 for an 0615 flight. Luckily I live 15 mins from the airport (drove it in 7) and parked in the short stay car park, racing to security. I made it through in around 5or 6 minutes, and the security man said if I scanned through security with my boarding pass before the gate closed then they'd "have to wait for me". I sprinted to gate 107 and made it through even though signage said gate closed.
Happened to me a few years ago with Ryanair. Had a tight connection but made gate at 3 mins beyond cutoff. 27 mins to flight time. There were already two others there that had left it till end and walked too slow from their seats to gate. Had the gate shut in their faces at exactly 30 mins to. The curious thing was that we could see through glass into stairwell where all the other passengers were kept waiting. They moved them and boarded plane five mins before flight time. Slept in airport and paid €100 rebooking fee to get on flight following day.
Never a good idea with a low cost airline! I know people who play an overnight stay in such cases!
We can all do hypotheticals. If that hypothetical had happened we would have heard about it. Not one poster has been denied boarding by being at the gate on time.
This summer hundreds of people were left behind due to queues in airports caused by the new egates. One airport we use has unreal problems, due to staffing issues, we know this, we go early in peak periods. Nothing to do with Michael. We know if we are not on time the plane will go without us, so we abide by the rules. Ryanair are VERY strict on the gate closing times. They are also fantastic at getting people to destinations on time with reasonable fares. They do not deviate from their rules, though I did get a deviation myself last month on a 26kg overweight bag, crucially the staff handler was not Ryanair. In Dublin you can’t do that, as it’s self scan, and it’s the same with Aer Lingus (though you can queue if you like for them).
It’s madness to try it unless you’re on the UK route to Ireland. We do the overnight for those types of connections, I actually insist on two nights for my adult children coming here from the UK if we are heading off on holiday elsewhere.
Brendan Burgess
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You don't understand the point.
If the gate number goes up just before the gate closes, some people will not be able to make it. That is not because they are having a pint or dawdling, it's because the gate is so far away.
I don't think that is fair.
I will keep an eye out for it on Ryanair in future to see if I can get an example.
Otherwise, I fully agree with their policy of closing the gate, loading the plane and departing on time. I don't agree with the multiple calls over the Tannoy "Would Mrs Bronte please go to Gate 50 where her flight is departing."
What do planes do if Mrs Bronte has checked in luggage and doesn't board the plane on time?
Saw this with another airline years ago and it turned into a big row as they had just given the last seat to me. Two people arrived just after the gate was announced closed. (My sister was working for said airline at the time and I was on a staff family rate, and they were good to me, standby was always seat of the pants).
This just doesn't happen. The gate number typically goes up an hour before departure time; I don't think I've ever seen less. So you will usually have 30 minutes to get there. You need to keep your eyes open though, first for the gate number being shown, then in case it changes when you are at the gate.
Officially my understanding is they have to take off the bag, because of terrorism risk. (Not referring to Mrs Bronte obviously.) I saw it happen in the US many years ago. I don't know that it always happens in practice though.
Brendan Burgess
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I have been waiting in departures for delayed flights - usually Aer Lingus.
The revised departure time is, say, 8 pm.
They say gate will be announced at 6.50 pm and it's not.
I would be happy with a minimum of 30 minutes from gate announced to gate closed.
Oh it used to happen a lot back in the 90s and early 00s - remember going for a Ryanair flight in the old Pier B (now 300s) and Ryanair had an entire flight to Luton queuing up on one side of the decagon, only to change just before boarding to the opposite side, and the entire queue jumped up and ran to the other side of the building en masse. It was like a stampede.
That came in after the air india crash off cork back in 1985, the terrorists checked in luggage at toronto i think and then never got on the flight, sikh extremists or something getting retaliation against the indian state.
Oh, sweet memories of Luton airport come flooding back. All for the wrong reasons.
BlackandBlue
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This was probably back in the day before allocated seating.
Smarter families used to unleash the feral kids to run ahead to grab seats together.
Never ever have I seen this. I have seen gates change. In every airport in the world.
In the two Dublin terminals you should be in the general vicinity of the gates in any case.
Terminal 1 -old terminal Ryanair
You shouldn't be in the Marquette area (it used to have Wrights of Howth as well), you need to be well down as you've to swing right to walk ages to get down to the boarding gates, before any of that Ryanair are down the end of the hall to drop off your bags, you've to walk the entire terminal to get back up to the security gates where you use your boarding pass, then you have long queues for security, and you turn right before you hit Duty Free, bathrooms on right, Marquette on left, and then the long long walk to the gates.
Terminal 2 - new terminal Aer Lingus
You drop off your bags to Aer Lingus on the ground floor, have to go up on lifts or escalators, you do your boarding passes, then security for bags, then basically straight ahead into duty free, and you've a big large openish area with the main (awful) Fallow place, to be avoided at all costs, there's also a large mezzanine level and lots of different shops, then you have two choices, one is the American gates (am I recalling this correctly and the other are the more domestic gates, there's a very steep exculator down (in this place you're going from down, to to up and then down again, ) but I don't think the walk is as along as Terminal 1 nor do I think there are as many gates - but you should be in this area, not the Fallow restaurant area (there's Butlers in both terminals) .
I think people who are new to the airport don't realise how far the gates are from the general eating/shopping area.
I've just checked in for a flight, which gave me the option of purchasing a more expensive seat than the one I'd booked, here's proof that you will end up in the middle if you don't choose your seat
The extra leg rooms are mostly still available, all the cheap seats are gone and many in the very front and very back available to purchase, those not checking in now will end up in those. After they allocate the middle single seats first.
The extra leg rooms are mostly still available, all the cheap seats are gone and many in the very front and very back available to purchase, those not checking in now will end up in those. After they allocate the middle single seats first.