 Poster: A snowHead
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Oh sweet baby Jesus! Geneva airport's baggage reclaim has never been exactly an example to the world of how to do it (that would be Zurich) but someone's decided that the winter is the best time to take the oversized baggage carousel out of action and, well geez...
Bags are coming out on little baggage trolly trains, which a mass of bodies decend upon like fresh meat being thrown in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. They don't even wait for them to stop moving!
And don't bother asking (or being a dick to) any of the staff - they are friendly and as helpful as they can be but have no idea what flights bags are on which trolly or what flights have/haven't come out.
Just taken an hour to get skis (normal bag usual time) on a normal, peak season Saturday. God help us half term week...
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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We came through the cattle shed that is Terminal 2 this morning. From wheels down to bus leaving took three minutes short of two hours & we weren’t even waiting on passengers from other flights!
I’m not looking forward to next week, but at least there’s a week of skiing between now & then to distract me.
Have a great week ⛷ 
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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I came through last Saturday (18th), and all over sized baggage was via trolly in a completely random order. It took 5 mins for normal bags, and 45 mins for skis to arrive.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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My son came through Geneva yesterday and reported that it was all very smooth; not even a queue at immigration
However blablabus was a disaster. Two hours to chambery due entirely to heavy traffic, but he only had a carry on bag
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Looks like I will be experiencing this first hand next Sat.
Any tips on how best to deal with the chaos - or is it just a matter of joining in the ruck as each trolley comes in?
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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| Old Fartbag wrote: |
Any tips on how best to deal with the chaos - or is it just a matter of joining in the ruck as each trolley comes in? |
Just chill out. Let the pack have their wild feeding frenzy, then just walk up, see if yours is one of the bags left and either take it or calmly step back and wait for the next load. May delay you by what, 2 or 3 min, vs. joining the scrum.
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| Mjit wrote: |
| Old Fartbag wrote: |
Any tips on how best to deal with the chaos - or is it just a matter of joining in the ruck as each trolley comes in? |
Just chill out. Let the pack have their wild feeding frenzy, then just walk up, see if yours is one of the bags left and either take it or calmly step back and wait for the next load. May delay you by what, 2 or 3 min, vs. joining the scrum. |
Thanks. That sounds like good advice to me.
Any word on how long things will be like this?
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I flew in last friday night (17th) and would say I waited at most 20-30 minutes for the skis. As mentioned, bit of a scrum but just wait for everyone else to fight it out, and off you go.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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By contrast, without skis it was quite quick for us this morning - from landing to the car hire desk in 45 mins. (Car hire itself was a bit slow though.)
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@Mjit, thanks for the notice. Glad I did not get time specific rail tickets!
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Couldn’t be any worse than Innsbruck. As others have said just be patient and send someone ahead to queue for the rental car (often the longest holdup in the process).
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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We arrived at GVA last Sat (18th). Ski baggage collection was utter chaos. Because of the ongoing building works, they were bringing ski bags out on trolleys in a very crowded and cramped space and leaving the punters to pounce on them like terriers on rats.
We left GVA yesterday (Sat 25). The standard fare EasyJet waiting lines to check in for UK flights were horrendous, but we had EasyJet Plus and that worked very well. I was concerned when I noticed the handlers in the outsize baggage area were just stacking ski bags vertically in cages, seemingly to be loaded later. I had forebodings. Nobody seemed to be actually scanning labels.
I have to say the security area, however, was very efficient and pretty fast. Vastly better than any of the many other times we have used GVA.
On arrival in Newcastle, our hold baggage appeared, but guess what? Our skis were nowhere to been seen. We were told that some hadn't arrived on the earlier Easyjet flight from GVA, either. No word of them yet.
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Any further info anyone? Not due out till March 7th, but updates appreciated by myself, and I expect others
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You know it makes sense.
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No issues Geneva T1 when we arrived Friday night and departed last night. My travel companions with equipment and luggage were ready to go by the time I picked up rental car keys in the terminal.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Last Thursday night the bags beat us to the carousel, and we had only waited about 3 mins at passport control. Skis were out at the same time, on the pushchair/car seat belt (the one just on the right as you enter the baggage hall).
Sunday evening departure there were zero security queues. I can highly recommend going to the new security screening (far right of the screening area) where you don't need to remove liquids or laptops.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Our trip was 25th-1st T2 each time.
Arrival, 5 mins max from arriving indoors, passport control, to collecting bags. Never so quick. Course we then had to walk 5 mins to meet the transfer in T2
Departure, blimey....
We were dropped at T2, having decided that since T1 is a proper poo-hole, we'd eat there and walk over. Good move. Over we go. As we leave T2, every Brit in GVA is waiting for the shuttle bus- we just walked, it's not far. Then it started. We're Flybe for Cardiff, 3 desks open. Jet2 had about 4 desks and loaded 3 flights before they finished ours (about 60 pax on a turboprop). At one point it was 5 mins per bag. Jesus! Next, (I think) passport outbound, cluckin huge queue again, all 4 flights. Then into a pen to wait for the airside bus to take us to T1. Into main concourse. From there, a full 15 min walk to the gate number 82.
Basically, people who were 2:45 ahead of their flight, just made it. We just made it, but by going to T! first, we got to eat before joining the the others who arrived at the same time, who just stood in the cattle shed waiting.
We are driving down in March for the month. If it's smooth, we may ditch flying for skiing full stop.
CG
PS, we arrived on time ish to a deserted Cardiff, only to park in Port Talbot (it seemed) and walk a very long way to passports and bags! A great trip.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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@snowdave, This is good to know for next time. We were directed to the new screening area yesterday but avoided it as we thought it would have been slower due to the longer queues and only a few x-ray stations. We didn't realise at the time they had installed he new screening tech in that section.
I must say that all steps of both journeys this weekend worked perfectly door-to-door which is a first and home not the last.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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I’m a regular flyer through Geneva (without skis) and can’t remember a bad experience. Although assume charter flights and Saturday arrivals are worse than scheduled midweek flights
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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@BobinCH, me too and me neither.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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@Ozboy, there's still a lot of flyer-education going on in the new zone as each person needs to be told not to take stuff out of their bag so it's not as quick as it could be, but once in full flow it will be fantastic. Even now each of the 2 machines is probably 3x the throughput of a normal line.
@BobinCH, @under a new name, me too, generally, but I have found the passport control queues a bit worse in recent weeks. Some kind of e-gates would be a big help.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Arrived last Friday and both skis and bag were out as got through passport control. Way back on Monday equally easy although unsure which passport lane to go in!
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Flew back last Sat. and in general* it was one of the better GVA experiences I've had, and a complete contrast to arrivals.
BA check-in around 12:30/1pm was a bit of a mare - I never understand how some passengers can make it such hard work! Even the business/etc queue was in a snake when I joined but almost empty once I was done, so maybe just a lot of flights at the same time? Anyway, based on my past experiences of GVA security/passport checks I decided to bail on my plan of checking out where the Sixt pick-up desk was, and somewhere quieter for the first batch of my group arriving for half term week could hide in arrivals.
And of course that meant I walked right up to the new, manned security entry gates, got sent to the far end of the security, missing all the old 'only room for 1 tray' security gates and to some shiny new ones that you didn't even need to take your liquids/electrics out your bag for! Even passport control was moving reasonably quickly!
* Would have been perfect if they'd actually put all the ski bags on the plane. About 10 of us waiting ages at Heathrow before having to fill out missing bag forms. Skis delivered the following day so not too bag, and sounded like they had a plan to help the family not waiting for skis but for their child's car seat for the drive home...
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| Quote: |
Would have been perfect if they'd actually put all the ski bags on the plane. About 10 of us waiting ages at Heathrow before having to fill out missing bag forms. Skis delivered the following day so not too bag
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Sounds good to me if you don't need your skis in the next couple of days have someone else deliver them to your home for you. A bit more of a problem going the other way however.
We flew home from Geneva last Sunday and though the airport was fairly busy there were no problems at all. My only complaint was the that the Montreaux Jazz cafe has been taken over by a waiter served resaurant  so very limited space to sit down and have a coffee while waiting for your gate to be announced.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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"Sounds good to me if you don't need your skis in the next couple of days have someone else deliver them to your home for you."
Hmm. Maybe. In my own case, we landed at our home airport on Sat, to find our big ski bag was missing. Wasted our time waiting, then filling in forms etc.
Next day, Sunday, was told they had found it at GVA and would be delivered to me at home on Tuesday morning. That was inconvenient because I was planning to be somewhere else that day (and no, I didn't want to make the 80-mile round trip to the airport just because EasyJet had breached its contract, thanks).
I duly waited in on Tuesday morning. Nowt turned up. I rang EasyJet at midday to ask where my bag was - they said it went out at 10.30, so should be with me any minute. Naturally, it wasn't. I wasted an entire day because of these clowns. I rang them again at 16.45 - nobody answering the phone.
Next day, Wednesday, I still couldn't get through. I just happened to be home in the afternoon when the man with a van turned up with my ski bag. No apologies. Crap service from EasyJet.
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Just through Geneva yesterday. We waited longer for our baggage, than the flight from Liverpool. 2 hours!! A total joke. Beware, or be patient. Our skis were last off but the bags only just beat them.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| twoodwar wrote: |
| Just through Geneva yesterday. We waited longer for our baggage, than the flight from Liverpool. 2 hours!! A total joke. Beware, or be patient. Our skis were last off but the bags only just beat them. |
That's bonkers! 2 weeks until we go, fingers crossed it's not that bad as need to be in VT before the Liverpool game kicks off 
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