A319 OSB's
 

It's been a while since I've been on one of these buses' and yesterday flying home cmh-phx, I noticed I was not able to put my costco 22" rolly longways into the bin like I would on a 320. I tried both ways, wheels in, wheels out, but to no avail. The bin cover would only come down half way, so I had no choice but to put it in sideways, ala 733 :( I felt bad for the guy next to me as he had to scramble, but there was nothing I could do. I looked around at other bins that were open and noticed that other 22 inch rollerboards were also put in sideways.

Has anyone come across this before?

By the way, I gave our flight attendant a A&B coupon upon deplaning. He was so efficient and compentent and I wanted him to know how much I appreciated his service. What I found especially nice was that near the end of the flight he came around to passengers in F asking them if they were connecting and if they were he had gate info for them. ^

Thanks for having enjoyed his service. We always like nice comments from customers.

Some of the newer bags, while still 22", have trouble fitting in the bins other then sideways. The new additions to the fleet that are coming online have larger bins.

The gate information that the FA gave out was likely from his preliminary paperwork and it is a very bad idea to give that out. Why? Because gate assignments are fluid. A plane has a mechanical at the gate, the inbound is late and they use one of the spares to A-Section the flight, etc. Can you imagine being told that you come in to A-6 and head right for A-30, only to find out the flight is now going out of B-4?

The information he gave out was likely 4.5 hours old by the time you arrived PHX. While it may seem lazy the best thing for the FA to do is what the company says to do, have the people check the monitors for the latest gate information.

I was actually wondering this myself as I remember a f/a telling me one time that there was no possible way to get connecting info until the plane has landed. We landed at alpha 7. I could imagine a pax walking all the way to B30 only to find the actual connecting flight was at alpha 8 :eek:

On a broader note, I wonder why other airlines can do it? AA displays the info on it's PTV's (lgw-dfw) so it must not be a technical impossibility. Perhaps HP doesn't have the software it needs for it?

AA routinely gives out connecting gate information, while in the air. I thought that there was a printer in the cockpit for this. It is automatically transmitted to the PTV's on newer international aircraft.

HP is a low tech airline. Their computer system may not be able to handle this function.

My rule is to ALWAYS stop at the nearest set of monitors and check the gate information -- even if there is a LIVE person giving out gate info upon deplaning. Gates can and do change quickly (even within 5 minutes of printing a list). America West Express (Mesa) once changed gates THREE times on my flight and blamed it on the pilot "pulling into the wrong gate". You can just hear the captain saying to the first officer, "Hey, Bob, there's an empty gate, let's pull in there!" -- yeah, right!