Eagle from DCA
 

I thought I would try to take a direct flight dca -grr instead of going through ord (or Dtw in delta)
wow....been standing on a bus over ten minutes waiting to be taken to the plane
no updates, feels like cows being herded
the frustrations are mounting.
never again...not worth saving an hour of flying time

Dramatic much? Gate 35X sucks but 10 minutes in a bus beats a connection any day...

35X is a known pain point for DCA flyers. I've always avoided it, flying out of BWI as an alternative.

That's why this major construction project is happening. It's bad, but surely better than a connection.

One thing I never understood is why they board by group onto the bus. There's no advantage to getting on the bus first. Actually it's best to get on last, which minimizes time on the bus.

Undoubtedly the reason you're stuck standing there is they are paging the last passenger or two that has not boarded yet.

So, next time just wait until they say "final boarding call". And as others have mentioned, it's still better than a connection.

They hold the bus until t-10 unless every passenger is on.

It looks like this morning's flight arrived into GRR 13 minutes early. I would hardly call that a bad experience.

Yeah, that's strange, but I guess they're just following the standard procedure and treating it like any other gate.

The bus is among the least pleasant aspects of US air travel I experience. There's nothing quite like flying business class back from Europe and ending the final leg on the bus.

Reminds me of my DCA-JFK flt last July. We promptly were loaded onto the bus at 30min mark, crammed about 40 of us in there in a good 5 minutes, then stood packed on this hot bus for quite awhile. People were getting extremely ticked off as we then stood waiting for the last few people for at least 15 minutes as the bus was heating up more and more. We've all seen how ticked off some NYers can get, and there was a few that got off and were screaming at the guys who help watch you to make sure you get onto the bus. Then to make matters better, we start off toward our plane, and with 0 word at all we drive around the planes, and head back to the gates. There we were promptly offloaded and finally told it had maintenance. Really is a pathetic set-up that I am shocked is still around.

Interesting, since I've found remote bus gates far more prevalent outside the US (and often used for much larger aircraft than regional jets).

35X is truly awful. A few years ago, we were all boarded onto a bus, but the bus was held for 40 minutes because a plane was pushing from gate 35 next door. I have absolutely no idea what caused the delay to be that long, but it was. There was also no working AC on the bus that day (this was before the newer, current generation of buses were deployed). I nearly missed my connection in PHL (we're talking by a matter of minutes) as a result. It was after that experience that I swore I would avoid Air Wisconsin and any encounter with gate 35X ever again, including connecting in any other city just to avoid it.

Exactly. 35X is awful, but it's a known quantity of awful. And it's going away.

I sympathize. Gate 35X can be a pretty dysfunctional setup.

And unless people complain, to the point of booking away from AA, where's the push to change? On the other hand, perhaps better a bus gate than no gate (and service) to these destinations at all.

Let's hope the new design is a winner.

My point was not that it is not common outside the US, but that inside the US there is little that I experience in the US that is quite like 35X. There are long walks and crappy terminals, but the crappy terminal (downstairs at 35X) plus the often funky bus ride is special here.

I suppose, but it's a bit tautological to say that a bad feature of one airport is unlike any other. With apologies to Tolstoy, every unhappy airport is unhappy in its own unique way. There may be nothing quite like 35X at DCA, and in the same vein there's nothing quite like the horrid IAD "mobile lounges," the haphazard bus-connected terminal layout at LHR, the perennial "labor disputes" at CDG, the "orange shirts" at PHL, or the 7 terminals connected by a traffic jam at LAX.

Fair enough, but 35X seems special in its own way. DCA is generally a pleasant enough airport but there is something Dantean about the descent into 35X that is unlike the rest of the experience.

True - it's an out of character blemish on what's otherwise one of my favorite US airports :)

I've been flying out of DCA for almost 20 years. 35X is a HUGE improvement over the old 35A. Granted, it's not great and the new commuter terminal will solve the problem, but US/AA has made attempts to make the experience less of a headache.

Speaking as one who lived for many years between DCA and IAD: Implying that the IAD mobile lounges are as bad as the DCA 35X buses is just silly.

I will add that the post AA-US luggage move was not an improvement. AA seems to barely manage to process luggage at DCA when it is busy, especially now that there is such a huge effort to get people to gate check.

Agree. Though it has always been appalling to me to know that the terminal was built in ~1995 and they couldnt think ahead enough to accommodate that capacity efficiently. So now more $$$ is being spent to fix it...

Yes 35x is maddening but my biggest complaint about DCA is the lack of seating in the food areas, they added all these restaurants but removed 90% of the seats. I almost never grab a bite to eat at DCA anymore because there is no where to sit and eat it.

I guess you're entitled to your opinion, and I'm entitled to think your point of view is equally "silly." :rolleyes:

DCA was renovated with the ability to do 16-17 million passengers per year comfortably. MWAA's strategy was always to push as much traffic as it could to IAD (which needs all the help it can get). I don't think they foresaw Congress chipping away at the perimeter rule or the US/DL slot swap followed by the divestitures required by the AA merger, meaning lots of regional flights were replaced by WN and B6 mainline. The airport is now bursting at the seams with something like 23 million passengers per year, and it shows, especially with the no seating and extremely slow baggage (and you'd better hope the weather stays good!). For all IAD's faults (which for me are the distance from home in downtown DC plus the amount of time it can take to get to C/D), it can be a more reliable airport and I sometimes prefer it, especially in winter when weather could get bad/

grr





















..

Welcome to FT!

Good point -- I've never stopped to count the seats, but I always kind of think in the back of my mind "people get out of the way, why don't you sit down, etc." and maybe they just can't. I either wait in the AC or arrive so close to departure that I walk onto the plane, but I forget that lots of people still arrive one or two hours before their flight with the expectation of sitting and waiting some place.

I am used to being bused around especially at CDG and FRA. The planes park at remote stands and you are bused to and from the plane. Same with AA Eagle at LAX.

The difference at the overseas airports is they operate more than one bus to the plane. It seems much more efficient than what goes on at DCA which I avoid due to the archaic system of shuttling passengers to and from the plane especially from an international flight.

Can you just imagine busing to an Airbus 380 at DCA? At SFO we are so luck ywe don't have buses. At least I have always parked at a gate at SFO when we arrive from an International flight and then its a nice 5 minutes walk to customs in the tunnel with moving walkways or a cart. Much better than being cramped into a bus.

Hope DCA fixes this soon with the construction. These mobile vehicles remind me of a Spaceship. Whoever designed this should have gotten the Failed Airport Design Award.

How about using one of these to board an Airbus 380 where all passengers are crammed into one of these buses?:D

You seem to have gotten DCA and IAD mixed up...

Those mobile lounges are out at Dulles (IAD)....and I don't think you ever have to worry about seeing an A380 at DCA with the short runway and all.