http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/trave ... ueues.html


I have never used this excuse.

WTF. I just sit in my relatively comfy airport lounge chair until the queue has gone through. It's not as if the plane will leave without you.

There is always the option of preselecting your seat so you can get on whenever you like.

Yes, yes it is.

Well, obviously it could if you wilfully refuse to get on, but they'd stop the plane taking off until they got your luggage off it. Assuming you've already checked in and been issued with a boarding pass and had your luggage checked in and loaded onto the plane, do you think any airline is going to let a plane take to the air without at least checking if you're around and giving you a call on the PA system? No plane in the world is going to take off with 'unattended' insecure baggage in the hold, it's just too much of a risk.

Anyway, it's not even a case of that, it's simply a basic knowledge of how the embarking systems flow. I've seen it, many times. Most of the passengers stand in a queue for ages going nowhere. The rest sit instead and wait until the queue has passed through and then walk through embarkation with no trouble and no standing around.

patience in this case is a virtue.

Actually nowadays if you do not turn up they pull off your luggage. It goes no where.

That's what he was saying. "No plane in the world is going to take off with 'unattended' insecure baggage in the hold"

If they're sat in a wheel chair then they can comfortably queue with everyone else IMO.

That part is fine, but ignores the scrum that is inevitable on the entry and exit. The only real benefits of using this service are on budget airlines, where it is a scramble to get the best seats. On full fare airlines you can preselect a seat so the scrum is unnecessary.

They don't put the wheel chair users on first because they're being nice. They do it to get them out of the way so everyone else can board faster.

Did I misunderstand? I thought we were talking about the security queues etc. I fully understand that disabled need to be first on/last off the plane.

Well in security queues if the person is in a wheelchair then they can queue like anyone else. It all depends on the person being able to wait in the queue.