A Good Thing Brits Don't Mind Queuing
Now that many of us are back flying again, how is the experience? Travel restrictions are easing and, like many British nationals, I was able to get away for a week of skiing in France last week with no need for any special measures other than showing my covid vaccination status on arriving in France. But that’s not to say the experience was entirely easy.
An on-time arrival was followed by a 2 hour queue, mostly on the tarmac, to get through French passport control. Remarkably the queue was mostly good humoured and I learned that this is par for the course at this airport, Grenoble Alpes-Isère Aéroport (GNB).
The return journey had its own problems with an over-crowded arrivals hall full of people with bags waiting for check-in areas to open.
With two difficult years behind them it is understandable that airports are keen to welcome back as many travellers as possible, even if the available capacity struggles to cope. But that in itself doesn’t explain the reason why this airport was so full.
With much of the French ski tourism accommodation working around a Saturday changeover, flights in and out are concentrated on a Saturday. This is exacerbated by tour operators concentrating flights into short time windows so that arriving passengers can meet onward transportation in to the mountains headed for all the main ski resorts. The result is congested airports, congested roads, frequent delays and traveller stress about missing onward connections.
The net result is a flight schedule that looks like this. 100 of the 133 flights scheduled to arrive in Grenoble in March arrive on a Saturday.
On the day I travelled there were 25 scheduled flights into GNB of which 18 were from the UK, from London Heathrow (LHR), London Gatwick (LGW), London Luton (LTN), London Stansted (STN), Birmingham (BHX), Bristol (BRS), Manchester (MAN), Newcastle( NCL) and Edinburgh (EDI). That’s probably a good thing given the Brits reputation for liking a good queue, but it doesn’t make for a good traveller experience. What disappoints me most is that given the industry has had a period to reflect on how it could come back better, it seems nothing has changed here. In air service development we talk a lot about working with stakeholders to make the most of the opportunities and ensuring that airports, airlines and local tourism partners work together to understand what the traveller needs and make it happen in a coordinated way. Maybe for the skiing community we’ll have to wait a bit longer for that.
-Becca Rowland