Originally Posted by
CALMSP
to an extent yes. But if we're talking 6 hours, that's a failure on UA. Hard to imagine the ramp was closed for 6 hours. What's sad is that there truly is no alternative that UA has come up with when irrupts happens. It's just let the customer suffer for hours on a plane. Trying to run a full schedule when weather is known coming in is UA's fault (or any airline for that matter) and contingency plans need to be better. Bring pax in, tow it off and park it and let another come in.
Originally Posted by
buckeyefanflyer
It was reported at EWR yesterday several aircraft stuck on tarmac for 6 hours or more with no gate. Why is there no backup plan have a few empty gates bring the aircraft in to unload passengers then move the aircraft out and bring in more stuck aircraft. No aircraft should be on a tarmac for over 1 hour. FAA has rules. Need more managers on duty during irregular ops to control this.
It is easy for people on discussion board to talk about “can’t they just do XYZ” but given the scale of operations and the severity of the storms that rolled through, don’t think there is an easy solution.
Let’s just take the proposed solution of setting aside a “few gates” to help deplane passengers. Yesterday there were dozens of flights impacted. Setting aside the time that no ramp employees were out due to safety/lightning strikes, what do you think the turnaround for each plane would be? If we assume 30 minutes per aircraft, each gate could offload 2 flights/hour. Plug in the numbers and you’ll see you either need lots of gates or you will still end up with delays. And not to mention all the bags/cargo that would also need to be unloaded and processed.