Friday July 26
Well we got here. BA was teasing us by rescheduling it back on time. Then it just kept rolling. To add insult to injury, they wouldn’t post a gate. Eventually they put on screen that it would be boarding from pier C, and a gate would be posted at 1745. By 1810 they had dropped the lie of when they’d choose a gate, and just left it on pier C.
We were starting to get nervous because flights were still being canceled, and ours had all of the hallmarks. By just after 1830 they listed gate 19, so off we went.
They announced that they would be delayed till a 1900 departure. Ya think?
Waiting and waiting. They paged up people with large hand luggage to be checked in FOC. Not a lot of interest. They called us up to stand in our boarding zones, then left us hanging for another ten minutes.
Sarah and I were debating the assorted service failures that we would not tolerate. You can take the boy out of the airport but... No wait. I’m in an airport. As you were.
The boarding process is biometric. Scan your pass and look at the camera, just like smart gate at immigration around the world. I’m trying to remember if they got our photo somewhere in the checkin or security process, so that this one confirms our identity. Otherwise, they’re just storing photos for later use. Don’t you just love big brother?
So eventually we can board. Down an escalator, turn right and then left into an airbridge structure that ran parallel to the face of the building. It had to be 50m long before you entered the drivable end of the airbridge.
How would I improve their process, to get a better OTP and give the punters the sense that they are moving?
So I would start boarding the pax into one side of the airbridge tunnel in either single or double file. This would leave room for the cleaners and staff to move on or off as required. Without exaggeration, you could fit virtually the entire load of the A321 down the length of the tunnel. I would then have a staff member release them onto the aircraft in groups of, say, 15. As they went off one end, they can board the tail-enders into the other. The added bonus to preloading the tunnel is that you know who has gone through, so by default you know who you’re missing. You could be paging the last person out of the bar while there are still dozens to take their seats onboard. Just sayin’.
We’d sort these buggers out.
We are seated opposite each other. 6C and D. On these regional flights, BA create business class by putting a spacer tray over seats B and E in the first 6 rows. All seats had been prebooked so we got what was left when we checked in.
Because all airlines over here charge a ton for each checked-in economy bag, it was almost the same price to buy 2 business class seats with free bags included as it would have cost to buy 2 economy seats and then pay for 2 checked bags. The bonus was access to the lounge. Given the time we needed to wait, it was a good call.
I don’t know how many times today I heard Sarah say ‘forget staff travel’. This is absolutely true. When you’re on subload travel, you are at the whim of all weather and engineering issues that befall the airport and flights you’re trying to use. Added to that, when you’re on the other side of the world dealing with an airline that’s not yours, you are at the bottom of the food chain. The bottom of the onload list.
I was dozing off every 30 seconds, only to be woken by my head jerking up. It didn’t take long for me to be feeling pretty seedy. I waved off the two meal choices on offer. A juice would be fine. Just needed to stay awake.
Getting off in Dublin felt like getting off in Queenstown. There was also the familiarity of Menzies and Swissport gear parked nearby. And then the walking. Up stairs, down corridors, and eventually down an escalator into a newer part of the building. According to the screen as we enter the arrivals hall, our bags are on belt 2, down the far end. Seriously, is priority not a word over this end of the world? We wait and wait again for the bags.
Once we have our bags, we head outdoors to find our bus. We have already done our PhD on Dublin transport, and a company called Aircoach seems to be the business. The ticket office was literally right outside the door, and we want the bus going to Ballsbridge hotel. That’s route 702, there’s the bus and it leaves in 5. €17 for two tickets one way. I use my Air New Zealand OneSmart currency card for the first of many times. Too easy.
37 minutes by bus, most of it in a very long tunnel. I thought for a time that we were under a harbour, but no. Just underground. There’s a bus stop right outside the hotel. The stop is named after the hotel, so their is no confusion about which route to choose.
By the way, we chose to stay here because this is one of the two hotels Trafalgar uses in Dublin. Because we were arriving a day early, we wanted to stay at their hotel, to make the transition easy. When we told Trafalgar about this months ago, they told us that this tour would be starting at Ballsbridge Hotel. So we booked it.
When they sent us all the final details a few weeks ago, we see that the tour starts at Mespil hotel. Seriously?!!
Luckily it’s only a13 minute walk.
Ballsbridge is an older property, but very well kept. Tidy room. No aircon, but the window is open for us. Clearly this is unseasonably warm for this side of the planet. There is a nice big radiator under the window for their year-round winters, but that won’t be getting any use for a while.
Well we got here. BA was teasing us by rescheduling it back on time. Then it just kept rolling. To add insult to injury, they wouldn’t post a gate. Eventually they put on screen that it would be boarding from pier C, and a gate would be posted at 1745. By 1810 they had dropped the lie of when they’d choose a gate, and just left it on pier C.
We were starting to get nervous because flights were still being canceled, and ours had all of the hallmarks. By just after 1830 they listed gate 19, so off we went.
They announced that they would be delayed till a 1900 departure. Ya think?
Waiting and waiting. They paged up people with large hand luggage to be checked in FOC. Not a lot of interest. They called us up to stand in our boarding zones, then left us hanging for another ten minutes.
Sarah and I were debating the assorted service failures that we would not tolerate. You can take the boy out of the airport but... No wait. I’m in an airport. As you were.
The boarding process is biometric. Scan your pass and look at the camera, just like smart gate at immigration around the world. I’m trying to remember if they got our photo somewhere in the checkin or security process, so that this one confirms our identity. Otherwise, they’re just storing photos for later use. Don’t you just love big brother?
So eventually we can board. Down an escalator, turn right and then left into an airbridge structure that ran parallel to the face of the building. It had to be 50m long before you entered the drivable end of the airbridge.
How would I improve their process, to get a better OTP and give the punters the sense that they are moving?
So I would start boarding the pax into one side of the airbridge tunnel in either single or double file. This would leave room for the cleaners and staff to move on or off as required. Without exaggeration, you could fit virtually the entire load of the A321 down the length of the tunnel. I would then have a staff member release them onto the aircraft in groups of, say, 15. As they went off one end, they can board the tail-enders into the other. The added bonus to preloading the tunnel is that you know who has gone through, so by default you know who you’re missing. You could be paging the last person out of the bar while there are still dozens to take their seats onboard. Just sayin’.
We’d sort these buggers out.
We are seated opposite each other. 6C and D. On these regional flights, BA create business class by putting a spacer tray over seats B and E in the first 6 rows. All seats had been prebooked so we got what was left when we checked in.
Because all airlines over here charge a ton for each checked-in economy bag, it was almost the same price to buy 2 business class seats with free bags included as it would have cost to buy 2 economy seats and then pay for 2 checked bags. The bonus was access to the lounge. Given the time we needed to wait, it was a good call.
I don’t know how many times today I heard Sarah say ‘forget staff travel’. This is absolutely true. When you’re on subload travel, you are at the whim of all weather and engineering issues that befall the airport and flights you’re trying to use. Added to that, when you’re on the other side of the world dealing with an airline that’s not yours, you are at the bottom of the food chain. The bottom of the onload list.
I was dozing off every 30 seconds, only to be woken by my head jerking up. It didn’t take long for me to be feeling pretty seedy. I waved off the two meal choices on offer. A juice would be fine. Just needed to stay awake.
Getting off in Dublin felt like getting off in Queenstown. There was also the familiarity of Menzies and Swissport gear parked nearby. And then the walking. Up stairs, down corridors, and eventually down an escalator into a newer part of the building. According to the screen as we enter the arrivals hall, our bags are on belt 2, down the far end. Seriously, is priority not a word over this end of the world? We wait and wait again for the bags.
Once we have our bags, we head outdoors to find our bus. We have already done our PhD on Dublin transport, and a company called Aircoach seems to be the business. The ticket office was literally right outside the door, and we want the bus going to Ballsbridge hotel. That’s route 702, there’s the bus and it leaves in 5. €17 for two tickets one way. I use my Air New Zealand OneSmart currency card for the first of many times. Too easy.
37 minutes by bus, most of it in a very long tunnel. I thought for a time that we were under a harbour, but no. Just underground. There’s a bus stop right outside the hotel. The stop is named after the hotel, so their is no confusion about which route to choose.
By the way, we chose to stay here because this is one of the two hotels Trafalgar uses in Dublin. Because we were arriving a day early, we wanted to stay at their hotel, to make the transition easy. When we told Trafalgar about this months ago, they told us that this tour would be starting at Ballsbridge Hotel. So we booked it.
When they sent us all the final details a few weeks ago, we see that the tour starts at Mespil hotel. Seriously?!!
Luckily it’s only a13 minute walk.
Ballsbridge is an older property, but very well kept. Tidy room. No aircon, but the window is open for us. Clearly this is unseasonably warm for this side of the planet. There is a nice big radiator under the window for their year-round winters, but that won’t be getting any use for a while.
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