Heathrow Airport’s passport control already offers a notorious welcome to Britain, but Gatwick is now offering hot competition. Gatwick Express, the rail artery connecting the airport to London, installed new ticket gates at the airport a few months ago ending the old system where you could buy a ticket on the train. But they failed to install enough ticket machines to cope with the summer demand, leading to absolute bedlam which I’ve just witnessed. The staff are mortified, and can only apologise to the Greeks and Spanish visitors who arrive here appalled at the kind of scenes that would disgrace any country – far less the fourth richest in the world.
Screaming children, exhausted passengers, baffled visitors (‘I don’t understand, you have the Olympics…’ said one Italian to a guard). The Brits are just as angry, I saw one writing a letter of complaint (below) – not that it will do much good.
And the worst of it is that this disgraceful shambles is the result of Gatwick Express spending more money, not skimping. It’s the result of extending these shiny new ticket gates, replacing people with machines, while failing to work out that the hall doesn’t have enough space for the machines. All in time for those arriving for the Olympics.
P.S. As CoffeeHousers point out, the chaos at Gatwick doesn’t save money because there lots of guards — I counted six of them — need to be on duty to control the newly-created mayhem. At one point, the queues for the so-called ‘fast ticket’ machines (they take ages, even to sell a £16 single to Clapham Junction) were ten deep, blocking the exit gates. A guard had to tell baffled, freshly-arrived visitor not to even queue for tickets for ‘health and safety’ reasons. What a welcome to Britain. The chaos, the disrespect, the message it sends about Britain to visitors — all (presumably) to save money on a guard selling tickets on a train.
Today we’ll ask someone from Gatwick to respond, to let us know if there is hidden logic behind this new system — and explain why they feel unable to revert to the old system that seems to have served customers pretty well for the last two decades.
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