3 ms·

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. put

by 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.

by bbarn 9y ago

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.