I flew SFO-LAX today on one of the CRJ flights. We landed like usual on the north complex and taxi'd over toward terminal 5. We approached T5 and kept going; great, I thought. We're headed for T6. Nope. Kept going. OK, I was thinking at that point that we were in the penalty box.

As we neared the remote DL storage area at LAX (where they have planes parked for overnight storage), out near their maintenance base, I began to wonder what the heck we were doing. We pulled into their maintenance area and taxi'd toward the back of the ramp past a 757. We slowed to a stop and shut down, then I felt a tug hook up. Slowly it rolled us into a parking position at the absolute back of the parking ramp. Several minutes later they opened the door and announced that we had parked at a remote stand and would be bussed back to the terminal.

Two busloads of passengers rolled up for the outbound LAX-SFO flight and discharged their pax. We gathered our gate checked bags and boarded the bus for the terminal. En route we were treated to such amenities as steep steps into the bus (great for those with rollaboards!) and no air conditioning.

Total time from landing to terminal arrival was approximately 35 minutes from my count. Warning to those booking tight CRJ connections involving LAX. The arrival gate for our flight shows as "HGR" on DL.com. If you see that listed it looks like you're going to the remote stand. I'm not sure the scope of their remote ops at LAX. There didn't appear to be many parking stands where we were (we were at the furthest spot) but there was a little sign with "SFO" on it so I'll assume that means their use of remote gates isn't limited to SFO operations.

I wonder if this has something to do with AS taking over gates in T6. It pretty much assures my business for shorthaul LAX markets that DL serves via CRJ (SMF, SFO, SAN, PHX) will be going to Southwest for now as adding an additional 35-40 minutes to the return of a short flight just doesn't work for me.