queueing – Pertinent Observations

Yet another failed attempt at curbing wedding reception queues

For a long time now I’ve been obsessed about queues at Indian wedding receptions. The process at a reception is simple – you get to the hall, and immediately line up. Once you hit the head of the queue, you get to greet the newly wed couple, give them gifts and get photographed with them. Then you’re shown the way to the dining hall where you have dinner and put exit.

When I started my research into reception queues, my aim had been to save the guests at my own wedding the trouble of lining up for too long. As it happened, I’d failed to spot the bottleneck in time, and hence failed spectacularly. Over a few more weddings that I attended, I cracked the mystery, though – the main bottleneck was in the wedding video.

As I wrote a few months back:

… Then you hear the click of the photographer’s shutter, and start moving, and the videographer instructs you to stay. For he is taking a “panning shot” across the width of the stage. Some 30 seconds later, the videographer instructs you to move, and the bride and groom ask you to have dinner and show you the way off stage.

The embarrassing bit for the guests, in my opinion, is that having struck a photogenic pose for the photo, they are forced to hold this pose for the duration that the videographer pans. Considering that photogenic poses are seldom comfortable, this is an unpleasant process….

So when my sister-in-law got married a couple of days back, I thought it was time to finally put my research to good use, and save her guests the trouble of standing in line for too long. A couple of hours before the reception on Thursday, I went and had a quiet word with the videographer. I told him about how the panning shot held up queues, and so he should make it quick. After a little discussion, he agreed to use a wider angle for the shot, and cut down the time by half.

Around 8 pm, half an hour after the reception started, the queue wasn’t too long. I was secretly happy that my method was working, but there was the possibility that the short queue was down to low arrival rate rather than high process rate. Fifteen minutes later, the queue had built up through the length of the hall, and would remain so for another half hour. My efforts had come down to nought.

It was when I went up on stage to introduce some of my relatives to the bride (I was the cut-vertex in the network between the married couple and these guests, so my presence was required) that I realised what the problem was. The videographer I’d spoken to had been doing his job, panning quickly, but he wasn’t the only one.

There is always a level of mistrust between the families of the couple at any Indian wedding, and this is mainly down to them not knowing each other well. So there is redundancy built in. Usually, each side brings its own priest. The two halves of the couple collect their gifts separately. And most annoyingly for me, each side arranges for its own photographer and videographer.

So the problem was that while our videographer had been panning quickly as instructed, the videographer engaged by my now brother-in-law-in-law was in no such hurry, and was taking his own time to plan. And since I hadn’t engaged him, it wasn’t possible for me to tell him to hurry up.

And so some guests had to endure a long wait in the queue. If you were one of those, my apologies to you – for I didn’t anticipate the double-videographer problem which would hold up the queue. And my apologies once again to those who had to wait in queue at my wedding as well!

Counter staffing and service levels

I’m writing this from the international section of the Bangalore International Airport, as I wait to board my flight to Barcelona. It was a plan I’d made in October 2014 to “hibernate” for a few months in Barcelona during my wife’s last term of classes there, and this is the execution of the same plan.

There was a fairly long line at the passport control counters this morning, and it took me perhaps twenty minutes to cross it. When I joined the line, there were about 10 passport officers to say goodbye to Indian passport, so the line moved fairly quickly.

Presently, officers started getting up one by one, and going to one side to drink tea. I initially thought it was a tea break, but the officers drinking tea soon disappeared, leaving just four counters in operation, implying that the line moved much slowly thereafter. Some people were pissed off, but I soon got out.

It is not an uncommon occurrence to suddenly see a section of “servers” being closed. For example, you might go to the supermarket on a weekday afternoon to expect quick checkouts, but you might notice that only a fraction of the checkout counters are operational, leading to lines as long as on a weekend evening.

From the system of servers’ point of view, this is quite rational. While some customers might expect some kind of a moral obligation from the system of servers to keep all servers operational, the system of servers has no obligation to do so. All they have an obligation towards is in maintaining a certain service level.

So coming back to passport control at the Bangalore airport, maybe they have a service level of “an average of 30 minutes of waiting time for passengers”, and knowing that the number of international flights in late morning is lower than early morning, they know that the new demand can be met with a smaller number of servers.

The problem here is with the way that this gets implemented, which might piss off people – when half the servers summarily disappear, and waiting period suddenly goes up, people are bound to get pissed off. A superior strategy would be to do it in phases – giving a reasonable gap between each server going off. That smoothens the supply and waiting time, and people are far less likely to notice.

As the old Mirinda Lime advertisement went (#youremember), zor ka jhatka dheere se lage.

Queueing up for boarding

I’m writing this from Barcelona airport, waiting for my flight to Doha, as I return to Bangalore today. A pre boarding announcement was made some minutes back but boarding is yet to commence, and this is what the airport looks like now.

As you can see it’s a fairly long line. And boarding hasn’t even begun. I used to believe that this phenomenon of queueing up for boarding is a uniquely Indian phenomenon, but over two trips to Europe over the last months I’ve disabused myself of this notion.

In the last six months I’ve taken seven flights within Europe and for each of them there has been a long boarding queue, mostly before boarding has begun. In a couple of cases I’ve participated, and for good reason. On one occasion I chose not to participate and regretted it. But there have been occasions when I’ve chosen not to participate and haven’t regretted. I have no plans to participate in the queueing today. For an international flight it’s not rational. Let me explain.

Within Europe most low cost carriers charge for any checked in baggage. As a consequence, people carry on large pieces of luggage. As a consequence of this, there is severe shortage of luggage rack space within the flight and so if you don’t board early there’s a good chance that your baggage will have be carried in the hold, resulting in unnecessary delays after landing.

Thus, pricing of low cost carriers where they anally charge for luggage results in suboptimal boarding process, and significant discomfort.

In any case, Europeans are thus used to queueing up for boarding, for that can guarantee them a relatively smooth flight experience. And my theory is that this carries on to international too.

But why is this irrational for international flights? Because most international flights (Qatar for sure) have reasonably generous check in baggage limits, because of which people don’t carry on massive pieces of luggage. The per capita availability of rack space, from my unscientific observations, also seems higher in wide body flights. Hence it matters less whether you board first or last.

Finally the queue didn’t matter today since Qatar decided to use the rather idiotic zone wise boarding system on the flight today. I’ve boarded. And had to place my bag one seat away. Not that I mind.

See you from the dark side

Lizsting it in an airport warehouse

I had a rather bizarre experience at the Lizst Ferenc Airport in Budapest last evening. I boarded the plane from a warehouse. Really.

When it was announced at 7:25 pm that our 8:15 RyanAir to Barcelona would board from gate A18, we walked expectantly to the A side of the terminal, hoping to find our gate. All we found was this gate that said “A12-A18”, before accessing which there was boarding pass control. It seemed bizarre, but we assumed that we would be taking a bus to another terminal to board, got our passes scanned and walked on.

There was going to be no bus. There was another terminal to board from, however, but it was a warehouse. Literally. Here’s what it looked like (pictures from wife’s iPhone):

That’s right. We were indeed in a large warehouse-like temporary structure constructed out of tin or asbestos or some such material. A rather ingenious way to extend the airport.

This warehouse had eight marked entrances (A12 to A19) and eight marked exits (respectively). At the entrance of each entrance there was another level of boarding pass checking (along with passport), after which we were let in to the queue to board. And this was where RyanAir separated out its “regular” customers from those that had paid for priority boarding (who were put in another “bin” (no better word for that) ).

Ours was not the only flight boarding at that time (though you can see that one side of the warehouse – A12 to A17 was completely empty). A Hungarian low-cost carrier called WizzAir was boarding its flight to Milan from A19 at the same time. And it again looked like a bus stand. Long snaking lines of passengers who had gone past the boarding pass check waiting to board.

Low cost airlines sometimes try to save on airport costs by using secondary airports in several cities. For example, in London, they use airports such as Stansted and Luton, and in Paris they use Orly. But some cities don’t have a well functioning secondary airport so even low-cost airlines are forced to use the primary airport. This “extension” of the Budapest airport as used by the likes of RyanAir and WizzAir is simply bizarre, though!

Anyway, presently a stewardess appeared and opened the exit door for A18 (this was after A19 had been opened and the Milan passengers sent on their way). We walked out through carefully marked barricades, and saw a RyanAir plane in front of us. And we walked through the barricades until we were stopped a few metres before the plane (the line had been orderly so far, and would remain so).

We remained there for a few minutes as they presumably cleaned up the aircraft in that time. I think the reason we had been moved from the warehouse to this queue was so that more space could be created in the warehouse so that boarding passes of all passengers could be checked in this time. The use of so many “buffers” (or “chambers” if you were to draw a sewerage analogy) was quite interesting in terms of RyanAir’s queue management (the wife has promised a more technical blog post on this). Anyway, here’s what this queue looked like after we had exited the warehouse:

Soon the final barricades opened and we were allowed to board the aircraft (both doors of the aircraft were open). There was a bit of inefficiency here since people approaching the wrong door ended up slowing the boarding process (there were some people in rows 31 and 32 who boarded from front creating a massive traffic jam), but the boarding was concluded soon enough (all previous bottlenecks having been removed, and the flight took off on time!

It was a rather bizarre experience, and the first time I had boarded in such a large airport without using either an aerobridge or a bus. And I don’t know if this is a temporary arrangement in Budapest as they either expand the airport or reopen Terminal 1, or if this is how things are supposed to be in the long term. And I’m amazed that this kind of jugaad was first implemented in Europe rather than in India.

Simple arbitrages

Yesterday I visited the Sagrada Familia, the still work-in-progress grand basilica in Barcelona. As I got off the metro station, I saw a long line, perhaps longer than Hanuman’s tail at its longest. It was wrapped all round the massive basilica, on two sides. And to consider that it was a weekday morning at a time of year that is not peak tourist season!

Undeterred, I walked on. Walked on beyond the back of the line and round the other side of the basilica. There was a much smaller line here. This was for people who had already booked their tickets – online or elsewhere. I stood at this line for two minutes and then decided to check at the gate. There were multiple gates and this line (the shorter one I stood at briefly) led into only one of them. There was hardly a line at any other gate. I showed my ticket on my mobile at one such gate and was let in!

A few pertinent observations:

It is fairly well known that lines at the Sagrada Familia can be really long and every online forum recommends you to book tickets online. Why, then, do so many people still turn up there to just stand in line for tickets? I thought a lot of people read online fora nowadays!
The whole myth of their being no shortest line at supermarkets? It is a myth only at supermarkets where most shoppers are regular customers and know how many counters there are and what the queue structure of each is. When you go to visit the Sagrada Familia, which unless you are extremely religious or interested in architecture you will do only once in your lifetime, you don’t know how many counters there are for entry. So you just take your place in whatever line you find first. And that leads to queues of unequal length!
I’m surprised at the number of people who had printed out their tickets. I was among the few who showed it on my phone and faced no problems whatsoever – my ticket had a QR code and the reader just read it off my phone! It was a similar experience at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam last week.
As a tourist, printing is not an easy job – you will need to find places where you can get printouts and they usually charge exorbitant rates. Yet, I see so many other tourists actually printing out their tickets!
My ticket was for entry between 9:15 and 9:30 (the Sagrada Familia asks you to intimate when you’re going to land up, so that they can distribute the crowd). I landed at 9:05 and was let in without any eyebrows raised. I’m happy it wasn’t 100% rule based
I took one of the lifts up one of the towers of the basilica, an experience which I think is overrated. I had to deposit my bag in a locker as I went up. It was funny that I had to drop a 20 cent (or 1 Euro) coin into the lock of the locker to complete the circuit and be allowed to lock! I picked up my 20 cent coin later on when I retrieved my bag. I have no clue what the intended use of this money dropping is!

Overall it was a very satisfying visit. I’ve written another essay on it which I hope to publish elsewhere. Will let you know when I do.