Do not miss your next flight please!

COMMENT | Samson Tinka |  On 13^th December, a passenger who had booked a ticked on Uganda airlines to Dubai missed a flight because he came late. This would be ok because we miss flights for one reason or another. However, he and colleagues filmed a short video and later shared their frustration on social media. Still this would be ok. However, the allegations were false and of course affecting the reputation of the airline.

I will leave the pros and cons of that particular incident that is common on social media, and concentrate on assisting prospective passengers on how to avoid missing a flight.

Quite often, passengers miss flights for many reasons but most comon is late coming for check-in.

There is nothing frustrating like missing a flight especially if it’s an international one. It is even worse if one has one or more connecting flights. Ticket fares especially at this time are very high, so is geting a seat.

This is a peak season for airliners. A number of people are either travelling back home for the festive season or they are travelling out of the country for family vacations. Airports around the world are busy with increased passenger numbers and flights are damn full .

Cities and  towns adjacent to airports experience increased traffic jams and security at road tolls to airports experience long queues. Basically from take of at your house, to airport, check in counters, immigrations clearance, boarding gates, boarding aircraft, loading of bags and cargo, control tower clearance are  all jammed and in a way this impacts on flight preparation timelines.

Most airlines issue tickets with 4 hours between check-in and departure time. The time allocated for check-in is always three hours, the remaining one hour is reserved to clear the pre-checked in passengers, immigration protocols, pre-boarding checks, boarding and departure. Some airlines close check-in counters 1 & 30 minutes before departure.

For emphasis in this article, I need to outline the following below so that travelers can understand air travel dynamics.

Check-in time

Check-in time is always indicated on one’s ticket including departure time. As I mentioned earlier, check-in counters are closed either 1 hour or 1:30 minutes before departure depending on the airline.

Automated check-in counters

Some airlines have remote automated check-in counters, which are timed. When the closure of checkin counters clock, they time out automatically. I know one airline at Entebbe international airport. Even if you who, should you arrive passed the set time, you cannot check-in. The VIIP syndrome cannot work.

Why One hour before departure?

Passengers ought to understand that after you have checked in, immigration has to clear the passengers , this process is also long and its always long queues at EBB. Remember, when checked in, the airline must take you. The immigration officer must take care of duty to make sure that the cleared passenger has met all immigration requirements. A number of minutes are eaten up at this point.

Security Checks.

Entebbe airport has three mandatory security checks, road toll, departure hall x-ray for both bags and people, then centralized checkpoint after immigration booths. These security points eat up some time because aviation is more of safety and security.

BMA-Baggage make up area/sorting area.

Paasengers drop their checked-in bags at counters, what follows next is to receive their bags at final destination. All airlines use one conveyor belt to BMA, airline officals are always down their waiting for bags to sort them, scan them with BRS-Baggage reconciliation system, load them on different carts, tally them and drive to aircraft for loading in different compartment. Should the physical bags fail to reconcile with the system-generated numbers, that trouble that must be resolved very fast.

Fueling of aircraft

Most aircraft have a short turnaround time of less than two hour. These two hours are for passengers disembarking, cleaning of the aircraft, loading of meals, loading of bags, fueling, offloading of the incoming baggage, boarding, taxing and departure.  Fueling of aircraft is affected by the weight of cargo, passengers and checked in bags. In fact, the load controller must get these loads, fill them in, give figures to captain who in turn feeds them into the aircraft, and automatically get required fuel figures. Loading of airbus 330-neo to Dubai may take 30 minutes. This means, the check in counters must have closed, share figures with Load controller who must compute and share figures with captain to know maximum weight in the aircraft so that the number of fuel required is determined.

Late departures and arrivals fines

In dubai for example, each flight has a schedule and its given 15 minutes plus or minus to arrive or depart. Any minute after, a fie is passed onto the airline. Secondly, if you delay to depart or land, it means that you have entered into time of another aircraft, You flight will be sequenced/ put in a queue of sorts and until sometime is found for your flight, you may delay another an hour because of inability to depart or land on scheduled time. This has an implication on fuel to be burn while zooming in the air or hydrolling on land waiting to be given departing signals by control tower.

Checked-in online

There are passengers who after realizing that they are late and driving at 140kmphrs on our express highway, pullout their phones and check-in thinking that because they have boarding passes, they will be let in by secuirty after closure of check-in counters. This cannot work. The check-in staff will offload you and you will stay.

Peak hours

Anyone travelling through Entebbe international airport should know that the peak time of the airport is between Mid-day to 17:00hrs and 19:00hrs to Mid-night. Emirates, Uganda airlines, Qatar, Ethiopia, KQ land between 11am and 3Pm. This means that we have two sets of passengers in the same premises. Arriving and departing passengers on the same flights. People coming to pick their relatives and those dropping all use one road toll and this creates long queues hence delays. Departing passengers will start slapping car dashboards and seats, abuse security, etc because they are late and they fear missing their flights. It is frustrating but it can be avoided.

Re-booking a ticket.

When one misses a flight and want to travel immediately after, he/shae has to rebook the ticket amd this comes with costs including , now show fees, ticket fare difference sometimes you may fien that there is no seat available for the same class earlier booked. For example, if it was economy, you may get business class seat, of vice versa. In addition, whichever the seat one gets, it has financial and convenience consequences.

24 hour clock

Airlines issue their tickets in 24-hour clock. I have witnessed a number of passengers coming for a flight at 14:00hrs because the ticket has departure time 02:00hrs. on receiving yiur ticket, be mindful of timing. If you not comfortable, ask your travel agent or airline.

What should passengers do?

• Make sure you in airport premises at least two hours before departure. The business I was here/there 30minutes before departure is no excuse.
• Rambling on social media accusing airline officials and labeling him or her this or that is no brainer. Be there on time and see if you will not enjoy your flight.
• Read and understand check in and departure time. In fact some tickets clearly show check-in counter closure time.
• Prepare your travel documents well on time. I have witnessed passengers arriving at airport without passports or travel documents. Not that they do not possess but forgotten at home.
• When running late by a few minutes inform airline officials. Each airline has an operations number.
• When late ask your drivers or any person that dropped you to wait until you have checked-in. or else you risk spending extra shillings by hiring a cab to drop you to Najjera.

Air travel is expensive and hectic. It requires good planning and time keeping. If you cannot plan well at least keep time or else you will hate the airline for no reason. And this applies to both VIPs and ordinary passengers. Your VIP is known in Uganda. While in a third party state, airlines will just follow their schedules and certainly your VIPism will not save you. In many airlines, when you mis a flight, you have missed a whole ticket. Lets enjoy our flights by being early at airport, check-in on time, relax at boarding gates, and catch a flight when relaxed. Bytheway most passengers +hat lose valuables ar airport-80% is attributed to last minute rushing. For those that want to continue airline officials with malicious allegations, its up to you, airport enviropment has enough systems to either prove or discard your allegations.

Happy Christmas and New Year to you all.