The business of travel: it's time to talk about departure deadlines

Instead of penalising premium passengers for running late, airlines could offer them a fast-track option

Late news: the airlines are missing a trick. By failing to target tardy business travellers, they are ignoring an opportunity to make money, and deliver better service.

You may have seen the story broken by The Independent about easyJet persuading Gatwick airport to block the progress of passengers running late for their flights. Britain’s biggest budget airline is cracking down on travellers who arrive at the barriers leading to the security area less than half-an-hour before their flight.

Until now late-running passengers travelling only with cabin baggage have had a second chance. A pre-printed boarding pass, or one saved to your mobile phone, is your get-out-of-jail free card. You can switch instantly from suave, sophisticated business traveller into a HAG (airline slang for a “Have A Go” passenger).

Have a go heroes (or dunces) are often to be seen at airports up and down the land, sprinting for the gate. If you know an airport well, you probably know you can safely disregard the absurd signs warning that it’s a 20-minute hike to the most distant gate, and cover the distance in five minutes.

Often, in my experience, HAGs often arrive in an unbecoming lather of panting and perspiration a few minutes ahead of a dreamy couple who dawdled in duty-free.

No more, according to easyJet. If you get held up on the M25 on the way round to Gatwick, or find your “just-in-time” train cancelled as a result of the long and bitter industrial dispute prevailing on Southern Railway, you will be invited to return to the easyJet desk to discuss your travel arrangements.

The move is intended, according to easyJet, to benefit passengers – no longer will they have to experience the frustration of missing a flight and then having to be extricated from the Departures area.

Instead, you get to experience the frustration of being deprived of the chance of running for the Edinburgh, Amsterdam or Munich flight – even though you know from experience that you can pass through security and reach any gate in nine minutes flat.

You may also regard easyJet’s assertion that boarding ends half-an-hour before departure as pure tosh, and reckon that a 10-minute cut-off is more like it. Tough: the airline can impose whatever rules it likes.

Suppose, though, that when you scan your boarding pass at the barrier and discover you are passenger non grata, a fairy godmother (or godfather) appears at your side, inviting you to Have A Go with them, in an aeronautical sense.

How much would you pay to be accelerated through fast-track security and ushered past the loitering leisure passengers, while your accomplice says important-sounding things into a walkie talkie? I am willing to bet that, depending on circumstances, it could be more than the £80 “rescue fee” that easyJet charges to re-book late passengers on the next available flight. Many business travellers, faced with the possible embarrassment of missing an important meeting, or the frustration of being late home, would happily pay £100 to make the flight.

Better still, airlines could offer premium passengers the privilege of arriving later at the airport than leisure travellers. On the rails, Eurostar already does so, with business passengers able to breeze along up to 15 minutes before departure, rather than the half-hour cut-off for travellers in the cheap seats.

When easyJet and Ryanair first started flying, their deadline for check-in was just 20 minutes ahead of departure. The airlines would do well to reward business travellers on higher fares with an extra 10 minutes of leeway.