What does "Boarding" mean?

OK, now I'm in my grumpy old man mode, I get really frustrated about PA and on screen announcements stating "Proceed to gate", "Boarding", "Last call" and "Closed" and what they really mean.

Sometimes "Boarding" means nothing of the sort - it just means you're going to queu up only be held tightly packed in a room with no means of exit for twenty minutes. Sometimes even "Last call" means this too.

Then there are the times when you really do need to get to the gate early, for example when you're going to be bussed to a remote stand.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I have yet to find any consistency about what the terms mean.

Cheers y'all, Howard

Unfortunately it's "term inflation" and it happens everywhere these days.

Why does the April issue of a magazine always seem to be published in February?

The 2007 models of many cars here in the US came out in March 2006...

Boarding used to mean, doors were opened and people were able to get on the plane. Now they tend to flash up the boarding sign to get you out of the shops and to the gate. I presume this has more to do with certain passengers sitting at the bar too long and delaying flights though.

AF

I completely agree with what AtlanticFlyer said.

Here in the US, there have been some (failed) experiments with a system referred to as "autoboard". Comair tried this briefly at Cincinnati.

Say you're working gate 52 for flight 5311 to St. Louis. The computer knows the flight schedule, and knows standard ops procedure (which at Comair is to board your flight 23 minutes before departure). Basically, at 23 minutes before departure, the computer would automatically change the gate information display (GIDS) to say "Boarding", and update all of the information monitors in the airport.

This was really done to "help" the agents in getting their flights out on time, especially when agents are working multiple flights at once. The problem is that say your flight is only half full and you're working 2 flights at once. You could opt to hold boarding on the lighter load, knowing that you'd still get it out on time, but the system would still tell everyone you were boarding. The result is a queue of people at the podium for a flight that is, but isn't boarding yet.

I don't know if any other airports use anything like this. The Comair trial only lasted a few months, and we're now back to "manual board".

[Bazz]

Originally posted by AtlanticFlyer
...I presume this has more to do with certain passengers sitting at the bar too long and delaying flights though.

Ooops you noticed [:I]

Seriously though AF I am sure this plays an important part. With flights cosing earlier these days and the window to get an aircraft away from it's gate so tightly controlled, the ground staff just want to make sure they get everyone corralled early to make their lives easier.

Yes it's put on boarding or whenever in when reality it's not because sometimes pax don't realise how far some gates are especially at LHR and tend to saunter up like they've got all the time in the world when in reality their bags are just about to be offloaded.