Landing on 8L/26R in ATL
A couple of weeks ago the flight I was on landed on runway 8L in ATL. We were arriving at E7 and actually exited the runway and were at a point where we would cross 8R/26L and head straight towards the gate.
Instead of crossing there, we went around the runway to the far west and then went by all of the concourses to get to Concourse E.
I'm wondering if this is a DL policy or a Hartsfield/ATC policy. I thought I saw an AirTran a/c crossing the runway.
This bothers me because we were at an ideal crossing point but we wasted at least 5 minutes to loop around the runway. We could've waited a minute or two, then crossed, and saved a lot of time. Going around was the reason why the flight arrived a few minutes late. It would've probably been a few minutes ahead of schedule.