Waiting to board

We went through the security around 9:15pm since the boarding was scheduled to start at 9:20pm. It was a usual security check, took off my shoes, took out the computer and we were cleared quickly. We walked to Air India gate and there were about 300 people waiting about and there with a couple of Air India employees behind the desk; the display showed take off time of 10pm. There was an additional security check at the gate; they opened our carry-on luggage and took a peak and gave us the magic wand treatment. I don’t know what value this adds since we just went through the same thing a few minutes ago. Our boarding passes were stamped indicating that we went through this security and we were done with 2nd round of security in about 60 seconds. The security personnel seemed to be non air India employees and were quiet friendly. There was some sort of announcement which was hard to understand, I think they stated that they will be boarding shortly.

I noticed that 95% or more of the passengers were Indians including a lot of elderly people and kids. My son found a little playground for kids near the gate and he kept busy until the boarding started. I struck up a conversation with a homeland security agent who was there to assist foreign passengers leaving the country with the kiosks that were setup around the airport to finger print and print a record of foreigners leaving the country; he was an older Indian guy and said he had worked there for several years. He started asking me about computers and international telephony. I was surprised to learn that he knew very little about computers or telephony in general especially because he helped people with the computerized kiosks. He didn’t know how to write a URL which I gave him, I had to write it down for him. While I was talking with him, a young air-india employee with ill fitted suite came by and interrupted our conversation. The Air India employee said to the DOHS employee that he will be leaving as soon as this plane leaves and “we’ve already made one general announcement, no need to make any more announcements.” It was 10:15pm at this time and the plane was still at the gate and boarding had not yet begun. The display behind the gate still read 10:00pm. The customers were starting to line up outside the gate in anticipation of an announcement.

It was around 10:30pm they announced “boarding rows 70 to 84”, no pre-boarding for first class, business class, or for people with children. Since we were in row 36, we were stood behind everyone expecting to board at the end. I made a comment that they should let the kids board first. One of the fellow passenger over heard me and suggested we should just bypass the line and go to the front and try to board. I didn’t feel comfortable doing this so I let my wife and son go, they were allowed to board ahead of most of the people. There were other passengers with kids and disabled passengers boarding this way after they saw my wife and son board.

I was amazed that there were no announcement stating the flight would be delayed even more and if there was a pre-boarding for passengers with kids and/or disabled passengers. I felt sorry for those first and business class passengers who stood in line with the rest of us to board.