Originally Posted by
MrAndy1369
My friend was on AA 2239 today (7/30). She told me that as they landed into DCA from DFW, the aircraft stayed on the tarmac for two hours, until they finally located a gate.
She said a lot of passengers were upset, some even stamping their feet out of anger, because after the plane finally moved to the gate, they had to wait another 15+ minutes for the jetway to be connected. It was a hellish experience for her, and she was told by the AA call center to basically bug off and that there was nothing they could do, because they had to wait for a gate.
My question: how often does this happen? Is this the new normal? To add insult to injury for her, when she called, the AA call center had to put her on hold because "it was an US Airways codeshare flight." WTH? DFW-DCA is now a pmUS flight?
My friend is very curious about why this happened, and why they couldn't have found another gate, or even deplaned pax manually using a ramp and having security escort pax to the airport. She, among other customers, were very angry. Is she due any compensation?
Looks like your friend bought the ticket as a US Codeshare. Operated by AA but ticketed by US.
While 2+ hours sucks i'm sure, there's not really much that could've been done. Obviously there was a plane that was occupying the gate that your friend's plane was supposed to have and gates at DCA are hard to come by, so it's likely they were all utilized to the fullest extent.
As for why they didn't deplane on the tarmac and bus people, i'm not sure but that would have been logistically challenging to find a place to do that as well. Usually they don't do anything extreme like that until at least 3+ hours.