Missed flight due to understaffed Security

daveyjp

Arrived at the airport before 5. Was that 4.55 or 3am?

NoodleDoodleMan

As above, it appears the OP did not leave enough time to negotiate the pre boarding procedures.

la531983

Yup, seen there has been an edit made.

During the back end of Covid restrictions I turned up to Manchester T1 a full three hours before and almost missed the flight. Never seen such carnage in a terminal in my life.

flaneurs_lobster

It's the OP's manager that has asked them to enquire as to any chance for recompense for the missed flight cost.

A comment for the manager.

If the training course was important/practical enough that the OP had to attend in person (rather than Zoom/Teams) then I'd suggest it would have been far more professional, effective and practical for the OP to fly on the previous evening and accommodate close to the training venue (at the company's cost).

sheramber

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82115234#Comment_82115234

The OP was travelling with his manager who, presumably, caught the flight.

flaneurs_lobster

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82115256#Comment_82115256

My comment still stands.

How much less effective is a one-day training course going to be if someone has had to be at an airport at 5:00am (or more correctly 4:00am) rather than not having to travel same day?

jnm21

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82114506#Comment_82114506

OP it is unfortunate that you have had such a negative response when asking for assistance.

Lets take the reply which I have quoted. Firstly one could feel that it is grossly out of context - the poster has gone to some length to quote the answer & location, but strangely made no reference to the question it answered, which referred to how long you should arrive before your flight to check-in - you didn't mention in the OP explicitly that you had no need to check in, but it is fairly clear from the fact you arrived & proceeded to security.

"How long do I need to check in before my flight is due to depart?"

You have been regularly criticised for not arriving early enough, but putting the information that two-hours is meant to be long enough to check in & proceed through security, let's look at how someone might work that answer through to a reasonable answer for the question "how long should I arrive before my flight if I have already checked in & only have minimal hand luggage?"

From extensive experience of check-in or rather bag drop as is more common now (indeed all too painful in one example at Bergamo Airport where 2 hours was not comfortably long enough to check-in luggage in the early days of automated bag drop machines), I would say it can take minutes or hours, but probably averages around 30 minutes - as was referenced, this is the, busiest time of day, though the concentration of business travellers will reduce the effect - let's say 45 minutes, so 75 minutes to proceed from check in to gate.

Next we must factor in the opening times of the check-in/bag-drop desk - I notice that 'Belfast', which is ambiguous when Easyjet flies from two airports with Belfast in the title, has been added to longest bag drop group - it opens 3 hours before & closes 1 hour before (normal is 2 hours & 40 minutes). https://www.easyjet.com/en/help/booking-and-check-in/check-in Not entirely surprising having seen BFS security queues into the car park areas in the past due to 'operational issues'.

So it appears that easyjet feel that 1 hour before should allow enough time to proceed through the airport & arrive at the gate in time (they can't want passengers missing flights, especially where they have to escort you out now & heaven forbid they may have to offload checked in baggage, which can cause significant delays).

So contrary to the numerous responses that suggest 70+ minutes is too short, it appears Easyjet think otherwise.

eskbanker

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82115339#Comment_82115339

It's a fair comment that I omitted the check-in question when quoting the FAQs, although not out of any intention to mislead, and as you recognise, we don't know if OP was checking in at the airport anyway.

However, the fact that EasyJet closes bag drop an hour before departure doesn't in itself signify that they consider that 30 minutes is always going to be adequate to get from landside right through security and onward to gates, so it's unlikely to be viable to claim compensation from the airport if arriving at the airport 45 minutes prior to gate closure, unless they accept that they had a serious staffing issue that day and are prepared to reimburse affected passengers accordingly.

There was a thread a few months ago about a problem at Stansted where the airport's screens failed and they reimbursed a poster who'd missed their flight, so it can happen, but the point being made in the above posts (admittedly more strongly by some than others) was that OP may have left it a bit late and should expect this to be challenged if trying to claim - I did say in my first response that there's no harm trying though…

la531983

I dont see any negative responses whatsoever tbh.

eskbanker

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82115430#Comment_82115430

I think pretty much all of the responses have been negative (mine included), in effectively saying 'unlikely' in response to OP's question about holding the airport (or airline) financially liable for refunding missed flights, but presume that the objection above is more about tone than content…