Originally Posted by
RSSrsvp
I was on Ft 566 on 1/6 (SJU-FLL) on Saturday 1/6 and it was bad enough that the flight departed over 2 hours late which I understood due to the nationwide schedules being disrupted by the winter storm in the Northeast. However once we landed in FLL we sat on the runway for 45 minutes until a gate opened and then had to wait an additional hour for our luggage to arrive on the carousel. The baggage area was a total nightmare and they kept on announcing carousel numbers for the arriving flights and then changing the information. Also is it so difficult to actually list the flight numbers on the information boards for each carousel instead of the ridiculous "Welcome to Ft. Lauderale message?
I can empathize with you on this one. The problem is FLL is so gate constrained that any delay will throw the whole system out of whack. If you ever have a layover in FLL (I have had several in T3/T4), watch the gates. When one flight leaves a gate, another flight immediately arrives at the gate. So, when a flight is late, it just has to squeeze in when it can. However, with that said, I do believe the airlines are partially to blame for these gate issues. They schedule operations at gates with no slack, so even one or two delays results in chaos with gates.
As far as baggage claim, that whole "Welcome to Fort Lauderdale" annoys me as well. Really, can't list the flights on the carousel? It's probably because luggage guys in back go to the first carousel available.