4 ms·

Return to the gate (is one available? probably not) burning thousands of dollars of extra fuel, disrupting the gate schedule and inconveniencing perhaps thousan

• bbarn 9y ago
  The plane shouldn't be leaving the gate if it's not planned to depart in the next half hour. Shuffling passengers from "relative" comfort in a terminal vs. putting them in a hot box for hours without the ability to go to the restroom, is wrong. Arriving planes can deplane people, back away empty if they aren't leaving soon instead of filling up with their next cargo, allow other planes to arrive and deplane, and idle WITHOUT human beings for the sake of a little fuel cost savings.
  • philipodonnell 9y ago
    They do it because they can mark the plane as "departed on time" if it pushes back from the gate with the passengers.
    • _red 9y ago
      This may be a large part of it, but its a reasonable approach for the airline to take. By "departing" on time they are showing that they did their job, the actual delays are FAA / Airport problems....so airlines view is "why should we take the blame" because airport ABC is incompetent.
      • ubernostrum 9y ago
        Except that the airlines are often part of the problem. If you didn't know anything about airlines, and just looked at historical on-time data for airports for the last decade or so, you'd think Newark had some major operational issue and just couldn't handle flights, because it was one of the most chronically-delayed airports in the US. But the reason for the delays wasn't a problem with the airport's operations; it was a problem with United, which has a hub there. At the time all of the big traditional carriers in the US were expanding the use of higher-frequency flights on smaller jets operated by regional affiliates (as opposed to lower-frequency mainline service, which is more expensive for the mainline carrier). But United under Jeff Smisek's leadership went well beyond what anyone else was doing, and ended up pushing Newark to its absolute limit in terms of capacity. Result: traffic jams at the airport producing endless delays. United should not be allowed to shrug and say "it's the airport's fault" in that case. A similar thing happened in Dallas more recently; after the American Airlines/US Airways merger, AA switched to running DFW as a banked hub. The term comes from having "banks" of large numbers of flights arrive and depart almost simultaneously, rather than smaller clumps of flights arriving and departing throughout the day. In theory this is more efficient; it reduces the number of passengers with multi-hour waits between flights, requires less staff to handle flights during downtime between "banks", and helps maximize the use of the aircraft. But while US Airways had experience running banked operations, AA largely did not, and their staff at DFW simply weren't able to pull it off. Result: chaos at DFW, with flights landing and then having to wait 30-40 minutes for a gate to open up, and passengers missing their precisely-timed connections because they were still sitting on their inbound flight when their outbound flight pushed back. While airlines love to complain and say it's the airport's fault, the number of genuinely capacity-constrained major airports in the US is surprisingly small. Poor scheduling and operations at the airlines are much more common causes of these problems.
      • philipodonnell 9y ago
        There has to be accountability if passengers are stuck on the tarmac for hours. You can't have one party saying 'I did my job' and the other saying 'I did my job' but the passengers are still sitting there. Better to make the party with the most control responsible and have that propagate through the supply chain. If the airports are causing airlines to miss metrics or receive fines, the airlines should be putting pressure/changing routes until the airports improve. If everyone is just twiddling their thumbs then the fines aren't large enough.
• philipodonnell 9y ago
  Yeah, that's not what happens though. Airlines have a strong incentive to put you on the plane and push back from the gate even if they know the flight will not leave for hours because it makes their "on-time departure" number look better.
• mikeash 9y ago
  If the consequences of letting people off the plane are dire, the airlines will work harder to ensure the situation doesn’t occur in the first place. There is no good reason for passengers to be forced to sit on a grounded plane for hours. If no gates are available, use stairs.
  • mehrdadn 9y ago
    > If the consequences of letting people off the plane are dire, the airlines will work harder to ensure the situation doesn’t occur in the first place. There is no good reason for passengers to be forced to sit on a grounded plane for hours. If no gates are available, use stairs. Weather can screw things up...
    • mikeash 9y ago
      Weather screwups can be mitigated with contingency plans. Dealing with weather is part of the business. Airlines need to have a better way of dealing with it than keeping passengers stuck on a grounded plane for hours.
    • grogenaut 9y ago
      weather is pretty repetitive and can statistically be determined. Or you know just come up with a "plane is parked safely" rule that lets people go pee. from what I understand once the plane has rolled back, it's technically taxiing which means you have to be in your seat and belted. As one pilot said "we're not moving faster than a city bus and we're not in traffic. Busses have people crammed and standing up to and over the yellow line. But that would be considered unsafe in a plane." Taxiing speeds are 16 to 19 kn (wikipedia). Busses go fater than that AND accelerate (up or down) faster than a plane at those speeds.
    • s73v3r_ 9y ago
      And I honestly do not care. That is the airlines problem.
• bogomipz 9y ago
  >"disrupting the gate schedule and inconveniencing perhaps thousands of other passengers to allow one person to disembark? Sounds unreasonable to me." I'm sorry where did you get the idea that this has anything to do with allowing "one person to disembark." The Tarmac Delay Rule referenced in the article and referenced in the OPs comment prevents airline's from keeping passengers on the tarmac for greater than 3 hours[1]. It seems pretty reasonable to let people back into the airport after 3 hours of sitting in a cramped seat on the tarmac. [1] https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/new-dot-consumer-rule-limits-airline-tarmac-delays-provides-other-passenger https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/new-dot-consume...
  • jessriedel 9y ago
    > I'm sorry where did you get the idea that this has anything to do with allowing "one person to disembark." Presumably from the "kidnapping" talk in someone1234's comment. I also interpreted at one or a small number of people wanting to return to the terminal at the price of additional delays for everyone else.
    • joering2 9y ago
      Everyone wants to come back to the gate. Source: myself being stuck on tarmack for 2 hours 45 minutes with 180 people, no AC, and “seatbelt on” sign (no way to get up to stretch your bones)
      • jessriedel 9y ago
        This doesn't contradict my comment.
• mehrdadn 9y ago
  > But if you're sitting on the tarmac of an airport, there's no reasonable argument for why they cannot de-board people after a two or three hour delay. It fails the reasonableness test. This kind of thing happens when the plane is in line waiting to get de-iced in a storm. I'm just a layman but I think what can happen is that the off-boarding/on-boarding process will add so much time that it will either delay the de-icing of other planes (if they end up waiting for you) or add extra time to the process such that the anti-ice chemicals lose their effects by take-off time.
  • s73v3r_ 9y ago
    De ice the plane before people board.
    • mehrdadn 9y ago
      IIRC the extra delays can make the de-icing lose its effect enough for it to not be safe to fly anymore.
      • privacypoller 9y ago
        absolutely - I've been delayed, then further held up while they apply more deicing fluid. Stupid Canadian winters...
    • cjrp 9y ago
      De icing fluid is only effective for a set period of time > Holdover Time (HOT) is the length of time an aircraft can wait after being treated prior to takeoff. Holdover time is influenced by the fluid dilution, ambient temperature, wind, precipitation, humidity, aircraft skin material, aircraft skin temperature, and other factors. If the Holdover Time is exceeded the aircraft must be re-treated before takeoff.
• hasbroslasher 9y ago
  > Also there is an upper bound on this sort of thing because crews have duty hour limits This isn't generalizable, but I have a friend who's a flight attendant at Southwest. They only get paid for time when they're literally flying. Getting on/off the plane and up into the sky from the tarmac are unpaid time at work.
  • rgbrenner 9y ago
    paid hours and flight hour limits aren't the same thing. The FAA says flight time starts when the plane moves under its own power. So once it moves away from the gate, even if it's just to sit on the tarmac, it still counts as flight time.. and pilots have a limit on the amount of flight time they can log.
• ubernostrum 9y ago
  Depending on the flight, a "taxi" time long enough to trigger the three-hour rule is already a major waste. Remember that not every plane has its tanks fully topped up every time it lands, and that every minute the plane spends with its engines running prior to actually taking off is a minute that it's burning fuel. I've been on flights that had to return to a gate to refuel because they spent long enough on the ground after pushing back that they could no longer reach the destination. In at least a couple of cases the long delay was predictable from conditions at the time boarding began, but the airline went ahead and literally burned money in pursuit of closing the door on time.