Originally Posted by ZeppoX
Similar issues out of and into RDU. And I don't mean the daily it's-backed-up-in-NYC thing. Little glitches departing the gate and arriving at the gate seem like overday occurences, and consistently seem to be Eagle issues, not airport issues.
I'm starting to wonder how much profit this stuff is siphoning out of Eagle, in the form of fuel wasted while aircraft sit idling. (Though, in not all cases is an engine fired up yet.)
Out: Oops, we forgot some paperwork. Oops, we forgot that a scheduled maintenance inspection was required at this time. Oops, we are waiting for ground crew to find a tug so we can push back. Oops, we will be pushing back shortly, just waiting for the last bags to load.
In: Oops, we have to sit here because the gates are all occupied by darkened aircraft that are overnighting here. Oops, we have to hold here because the ground crew has not arrived.
My personal favorite:
Plane loaded, pushes back, stops abruptly.
Oops, we were supposed to get our tires changed today. We can do that right here so everyone sit tight.
Oops, this is going to take longer than we thought, so we're going to let you go back into the terminal.
Plane returns to jetbridge, but seatbelt light stays on.
Oops, turns out they did change the tires, but put the wrong ones on. Everybody sit tight while we see if that's OK.
Oops, they did put the right tires on, but somebody filled out the paperwork wrong. Won't take but a few minutes to sort that out.
Yup, sounds like a lot of my AE flights.
Here's one of my rants from two years ago following a particularly frustrating BOS-LGA flight:
Originally Posted by Blumie
Because I was recently targeted for a 100,000 mile bonus if I flew 10 full fare segments in October, I've spent a lot of time this month on AE flights between BOS and LGA. For the most part the flights have gone smoothly, even though AE is such an amateur operation compared to the mainline airline. Today, however, was a new low. The 7:00am BOS-LGA flight was delayed for 20 minutes because of what was described to us as a "beaurocratic delay": apparently the aircraft was available in plenty of time for an on-time departure, but there were "beaurocratic" problems with getting it moved from wherever it was to our departure gate at B23. Fortunately my flight back to Boston this afternoon will complete my 10-segment challenge, and I'll be able to get back to the relative comfort and competence of the US and DL shuttles.
[Edited to add: Boy am I embarrassed about my spelling of "bureaucratic" --twice -- in that old post!]