It shouldn’t make a difference, but it does

Perhaps it’s an experiment I need to repeat at a busier time, perhaps it was just a statistical anomaly that every so many people they do it, or perhaps it does show an in built prejudice in the system.

As I had been in work in the morning I went to Gatwick in a shirt and tie. Having checked in I made my way over towards the security screening area.

The area wasn’t busy at all; in fact where there would normally be queues of people waiting to have their boarding cards checked there were instead staff sitting around trying to attract people to come over to their desks.

To get to the main entrance to the security area you have to walk past the entrance to “Fast Track” this is the speedy line for those people travelling business or first, which, when the security checks are besieged by thousands of people off on holidays, probably does make sense.

Two large families had already walked past and been pointed in the direction of the main entrance to the security area, which is where I was heading, when I was invited to go through fast track “as it was very quiet”.

Now, was that because I was travelling by myself, or was it because I was smartly dressed?

And if anyone is wandering, there is no difference between the fast track lanes and the normal lanes, other than green coloured flooring!

The hell that isn’t Gatwick

It’s the first week of the school holidays, the gloomy predictions that not very many people would be travelling this summer have been disproven by a combination of aggressively cheap flights and the promise of a barbecue summer, which instantly condemned it to rain for most of July (which it has proceeded to do!)

Consequently, the thought of going through Gatwick has been filling me with dread, and to begin with today I had every reason to believe my worst fears, of a heaving terminal full of stresses parents and restless children, would be fulfilled. The train was heaving, there was luggage stacked in every corner, and when I saw the queue for the lift off of the platform into the terminal building (at least 10 lift loads deep) I thought it was going to be bad.

It looked even worse when I got to the easyJet checkin area where the queue was massive, but then my preconceptions and fears were proved wrong.

Despite a queue which could have been measured in fractions of a kilometre, it moved at a speed which could have been measured in kilometres. In less than 5 minutes I was through the queue, at a desk and checked in onto my flight.

Even more to my surprise was the virtually non-existent queues for security, which was operating with a level of efficiency I would normally expect from Munich airport, not Gatwick.

So, having left myself nearly three hours to get checked in and through security I find myself in the busy, but by no means packed, departures lounge, with ages to wait for my flight to board.

Lucky I didn’t book that place in the Business lounge that I was thinking about but never got round to. I’d be plastered by the time I boarded if I had!