Originally Posted by
johnslloyd
The connection was quite easy and painless and would have been super-easy if not for my incoming WN flight waiting 35 minutes on the tarmac for our arrival gate to clear. Sitting on an idling airplane waiting for another plane to clear the arrival gate has become my #1 complaint with WN. LAS is my home airport on WN and LAS is the worst in this regard. There can be multiple free gates available, but WN is to cheap to staff them.
Staffing usually isn't the issue... It's the cascading gate changes that occur if you'd simply pull into an open gate. Passengers, transfer bag runners, and changing crew all have to be notified of the change. One seemingly little change could affect the rest of the day. Gate changes for the 100+ waiting passengers for the next flight especially at LAS could mean a long walk in short time. Yes, they plan gate utilization many hours in advance. Though things like delays still can mess it all up. Intentionally messing everything up by saying sure pull into this open gate causes more problems than good.
Of course if there was a Medical Emergency they'd pull into any open gate ASAP and deal with the effects later.
Hope that explains the very complicated gating issue a bit.