It was not just the distance between the terminal to the runway but the amount of time it took to get there. At one point I saw there were about 30 planes in front of us waiting for their time to take off. This caused an incredibly tedious and frustrating crawl from the gate to the runway. During this hour plus process we stopped for 10-15 minutes many times and just sat there. THERE WAS NO COMMUNICATION from the flight crew telling the passengers the status of our flight. It would have been much easier to take if the Pilot would have told us he saw 30 planes in front of us and it would be 90 minutes before we hit the runway. The lack of information was the most frustrating thing for me and my fellow passengers.
Originally Posted by
lhrsfo
The OP's situation sounds unusual - and it clearly wasn't a distance issue since AA leaves from the middle of the airport so only had half a runway's length to taxi. It was probably runway congestion or, more likely, transatlantic slot congestion.
IME LGW can have very long wait times at the end of the runway as it's an incredibly congested single runway operation. In terms of distance, the longest I've had was at CDG where it must have been at least 15 minutes of quite fast taxiing.