Missed fllights

oscarina

Hello
I wonder if anyone has had the same experience as us.
We were waiting for an EasyJet flight at Gatwick to be called while standing in a queue to get to departure desk.
There were a number of women going up and down the rows calling out flights. Some of them had foreign accents and we found it very difficult to understand what they were saying. So we listened with even greater attention.
As it got very close to boarding time we managed to speak to someone to ask if our flight had been called. We were taken to a desk to be told that our flight had in fact been called and was now closed. Although there was still some time to go we were told that the captain had decided to close the flight.
When we went to another desk to ask about further flights we were told by the person at the desk that this sort of thing happens all the time.
We finally persuaded EasyJet to fly us to mainland Spain instead rather than return home. We had to pay further for our flight onwards to Menorca someting in the regiion of £220. We tried to claim this money back from EasyJet but they would not consider it
It was not through any fault of ours that we missed the flight.

jpsartre

oscarina wrote: »

It was not through any fault of ours that we missed the flight.

Yes it was, you were not at the airport early enough.

Caz3121

oscarina wrote: »

Although there was still some time to go we were told that the captain had decided to close the flight.

The flight will have closed 40 minutes before departure time, this enables all the fuel etc to be calculated and the load sheet produced. Any changes once the flight has been closed results in everything having to be redone plus you would still have had to get yourselves through security

how early did you get to the airport?

Check-in desks open two hours before the scheduled departure time of your flight and close promptly 40 minutes prior to the scheduled departure for those with hold baggage.

mcfisco

Check-in desks open two hours before the scheduled departure time of your flight and close promptly 40 minutes prior to the scheduled departure for those with hold baggage.

So that means you need to present yourself at the desk [not the end of the queue] at least 40 mins before departure.
Always wise to leave another 40 mins or so for the queue IMO

oscarina

We stood in the queue for at least 50 minutes.
Trouble is EasyJet only have one area with about 33 check-in desks with flights going to all sorts of areas.
They have no tannoy or screen facilities and rely on their staff calling out destinations from time to time. As I stated we had difficulty in recognising some of the place names that we actually heard being announced. So in all probability we might just have missed our destination being called out early on. Quite a lot of noise and chatter from the amount of people who were also in the queue.
It would be simpler to just deal with one destination than to jam them all together and then everyone would get to check-in desk much quicker.

Caz3121

oscarina wrote: »

Trouble is EasyJet only have one area with about 33 check-in desks with flights going to all sorts of areas.

It would be simpler to just deal with one destination than to jam them all together and then everyone would get to check-in desk much quicker.

Many airlines use the single queue system as otherwise you could end up with 13 desks with huge queues and 20 desks sitting doing nothing as their is no-one for their destination