The Curious Incident of the DUB flight at Stansted in the evening

I arrived back at Stansted yesterday evening (Tuesday) for an FR flight to DUB. As usual the gate for the flight went up on screen 45 minutes in advance and I set off for Gate 45. When I got to the Pier, however, the flight was nowhere to be seen on any of the screens that were depicting the upcoming action at gates 40-59. Had I misread the screen in the waiting area? Surely not, but, then, familiarity and all that.

Anyway, I went up to Gate 45 where a large number of people were gathered. There was an aircraft parked outside but the screen at that gate was blank. Now, I'm usually in the last 20 to board so no hurry but, out of curiosity, I asked people there what flight they were queueing for and they said Glasgow. Hmm. I then went back down to the main info desk and, still with my flight missing from the screens, asked the girls where was it? They told me they were just about to make an announcement that the flight was delayed due to the inbound going to be late. They seemed surprised when I pointed out that the flight was no longer on their screens. I wandered off up to a quieter area to sit and watch proceedings.

The Glasgow flight sat there - and sat there - and sat there and then finally pushed back after the time when our (late) inbound was supposed to be due.

It, eventually, got going and, eventually, our inbound arrived at the gate. The front door was opened and the steps came down. I expected to see the back steps rushed into position to assist in the speedy disembarkation to avoid further delay. Nah. Swissport must have been either on a go-slow or the staff were on tea-break but the back door remained firmly in the closed position with no sign of life. The snail-like front disembarkation continued.

Round about this time I noticed that the queue for Gate 45 had got longer - much longer. The chances of all these people getting on board the same plane wasn't looking good. About 15 minutes after the arrival of our inbound a lone Swissporter arrived at the back of the aircraft with a set of steps. This operation was performed so slowly you could almost read his mind saying, "No the xxxx way are any of these passengers getting on my steps".

By now the queue for Gate 45 was looking like they were waiting on a 380. I got up from my now much noiser area and, out of curiosity, asked them what flight they were queueing for. The answer was Billund. Hmm. On walking back down to the Gate 45 desk it was packed. Besides the long queue a lot of people were just hanging around. Only one girl was there trying to deal with the boarding passengers, checking boarding passes and passports and putting yellow labels on cases. I looked up at the screen above her and noted that my flight to DUB was now back on it but was showing CLOSED and a flight to Billund was now BOARDING.

Had I not been a frequent flyer I would most certainly have been panicking. Here we were at Gate 45. The flight to DUB was "closed" (despite the inbound aircraft still being disembarked) and they were boarding for Billund. The family of people next to be dealt with by the girl produced something like 6 sets of documents - all for Billund. The poor girl kept her head very well as she explained, to their bemusement, that she was only boarding passengers for Dublin. At that moment an announcement came over the tannoy for "any available free staff to proceed to the desk at Gate 48" further up the building.

It transpired that the long "380 queue" was comprised of various batches of DUB and Billund passengers scattered here and there along the way. Another ten minutes went by and another staff member came along the queue asking Billunders to get off the queue and sit down and await developments. This certainly decimated the queue. Another ten minutes went by before another announcement was made that Billund was changing to Gate 43 at which point those for that flight who had been waiting behind the DUBS to be first on that queue got the charge going.

Meanwhile the DUB passengers, some of whom had been standing queuing at the gate for more than an hour, slowly began to get moving, all the while managed by just the one brave girl. The flight finally departed an hour and a quarter late.

During all of this chaos inside, the absence of any announcements was notable.

That was my first transit through STN for a good while and I don't know if there are ongoing desk staff shortages there but the performance there last evening was poor in the extreme (except for the valiant efforts of the girl). The screen garbage didn't help either. After all these years of aviation it seems the impossible thing to achieve for the benefit of passengers is correct and up-to-date information at airports.

The seating in the waiting lounge is still hopelessly inadequate. If it was that bad on a Tuesday evening I can only imagine how much worse it must be at Summer weekends and holiday periods.

Anyone expecting a 25 minute turnaround these days will be sorely disappointed. I can say with some certainty that, at least over the past 6 months and probably longer, any FR flight I have been on ex-any UK airports to DUB has been late departing.

PS, DUB Passport queue was about 3 minutes at about 22.30 a big improvement on previous although it must be said I usually arrive busy periods either Fri/Sun. All passports were being scanned from what I could see.