I read an article of View From The Wing describing how a passenger who arrived 50 minutes before his flight time was denied check in privileges and then had his ticket cancelled. The quick story was this passenger at Orlando Melbourne Airport arrived for an American Airlines Flight 50 minutes before his flight’s scheduled departure. There was no person at the check in counter for him to check his bag (which consisted of golf clubs). The employee came back to the counter 7 minutes later (holding a Dunkin Donuts Bag). I have a quick question on why this employee chose Dunkin Donuts when they had the option for Krispy Kreme. We all know that Krispy Kreme offers superior donuts to Dunkin Donuts.
This employee with inferior donut choices then told the passenger that he missed the baggage check in time by 2 minutes. This passenger gave his clubs to a friend and then proceeded to TSA where he found his ticket was canceled. We don’t know how or why this happened. So the passenger missed his flight even though he was at the airport 50 minutes before the flight!!
A lot of strange things happened in this story. Why was the employee not at the check in counter right before the cut off for a flight. I know regional airports are short staffed but this is a critical time for the flights? Also, why no flexibility in checking this passenger’s bag. I have seen regional airport employees go out of their way to help passengers so why no help here? Also, why would this passenger’s ticket be cancelled.
The most interesting aspect of this are the comments from readers. There was a strong group that placed the entire blame on the passenger since they claim that he should have arrived 2 hours before the flight. I am not a big believer in this 2-hour concept. If an airline sets a time line then you should be able to follow it. If you arrive at an airport 2 hours in advance and check your bags through a kiosk, it may take 5 to 10 minutes. Security lines with TSA may take 10 to 20 minutes on average (longer for peak times at busy airports). Even with delays, you would have over an hour at the airport before your flight is scheduled to depart.
Yes, you flight starts to board 30 minutes before then but that is the start of boarding. You can arrive after that time. The hard time is 15 minutes before departure when they will release your seats. So in my situation, you have between an hour and an hour and half of time wasted at the airport waiting to depart.
I understand why airlines and airports would recommend such early arrivals. For airports, if you spend more time there, you will in all likelihood buy more things from their shops and restaurants. This makes good business sense. For airlines, the earlier you are the less likely there will be problems with boarding and departing planes.
But what these airlines and airports do not consider is the waste of time and loss of productivity incurred by having all these people sitting at airports. For business travelers, the time spent at airports could have been used more productively elsewhere. There are almost 3 million people who travel each day with airlines. If you are waiting at the airport for an extra hour that is a loss of 3 million hours of productivity each day That equates to a loss of over a billion hours of productive work time each year. Just think of that!!