Originally Posted by drvannostren

I can't say why this instance happened exactly, however as a ground handler I can offer this...

Depending on what gate you arrive at this could be an issue. Imagine if you will a CRJ that has like 20-30 "carry-on" bags green tagged, or I believe pink with DL. At YVR where I work, E90/91/92 & 94/95/96 are all basically ground gates, we put those bags on a cart, leave em for the people to pick up and move on. 90-92 all have bridges, but the way the passengers de-plane kinda force them past this area anyway.

Now, switch over to gate E88, which is a bridge gate where the passengers would deplane directly into the terminal. Now as the ramp agent, I've gotta haul 20-30 of these bags (which are almost never weighed) 2 at a time AT BEST due to weight and size, up a rickety stair case, which isn't wide enough for me to carry them at my sides, and if raining/snowing gets quite slippery. The reverse issue was solved with those gate slides you've most likely seen. Unfortunately, going back up, very few airports have solutions (I recall seeing one US airport IIRC where a belt loader basically attached to the bridge would lower, so the guy at the bottom could put em on, guy at the top receives them) and creative solutions aren't allowed by SOPs and also get lambasted on social media, like if I were to TOSS the bag up (wouldn't do it, wouldn't work and it's risky for everyone's safety) or drive the belt loader up to the railing and use that, but with bridge auto-leveller and other traffic that's not allowed and if the bags fall off twitter will be alight with RAMP AGENT RUINS MY BAG AND PROBABLY HATES DOGS TOO!!

So doing it the only reasonable way means losing a member of the crew for MOST of the offload, and that's if I have anyone to lose. A regional jet is easily worked with 2 people, but if there's only 2 of us, it means I can't lose someone for most of the offload. Much faster would be to offload the plane normally, using all my equipment and manpower, then dumping them all on the carousel and to be honest, if I personally had done this, your bag would've beaten you to the carousel 99/100, at YVR, because I know it, 100/100.

So I'd suggest it's something like this. HOWEVER, the one thing I'll say in your favor or whatever, is why it took so long to offload. No regional jet/prop plane should take 30 minutes to offload, it's more like 10 MAYBE 15 tops and that's with getting the whole plane closed up and cones down etc, like totally totally done. So my guess is something went wrong, tug ran out of propane/battery, belt loader broke down, employee got injured, aircraft damage was found which means the scene should be frozen. Something like this. Unless DL/UA share ground handlers at SYR, one has nothing to do with the other. In addition to that, even if they DO share ground handlers, you can bet that the UA crew had nothing to do with those DL flights. If one of my crews has an incident, they freeze the scene, stay there, etc etc. Meanwhile my other 2 crews can offload 3-4 DL flights in the mean time, so again, one has nothing to do with the other.