Airports have started charging up to £5 for the right to save up to half an hour in queueing time. Luton has become the first large airport to introduce the fee following Leeds, Liverpool and Bristol. BAA, which owns Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Edinburgh and Glasgow, is considering the scheme.
Unlike existing fast-track systems for business and first-class passengers, there is no separate security scanner for Luton’s “priority lane”. Passengers simply enter a channel taking them to the front of the queue.
Simon Evans, of the Air Transport Users Council, expressed concern that airports would have little incentive to reduce queueing times once they started profiting from delays: “There is a danger this could result in a worse service for passengers in the ordinary queue, who will be pushed back by each person who pays the fee. That would be unacceptable.”
Roderick Burns, 58, an IT consultant who was at Luton last week, said: “I was confronted by a queue of 300 to 400 people that spilt out towards the stairs. Only three of the five scanner stations were in operation. It took 29 minutes before I reached the scanner and I watched others become alarmed and try to reach the checkpoint because their flights were about to close. Some asked staff to let them take priority in the queue but were told they could pay £3 to enter the special lane.”
He said that he was unwilling to pay because he felt that doing so would encourage airports to lengthen waiting times in the normal queues.
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