nutwpinut

This happened to my aunt at LAX. She had a flight NRT-LAX. The flight landed 1 hour and some odd minutes early, showing 1 hour early arrival. They sat on the plane for over an hour and ended up being 12 minutes late.

AA didn't update until close to the original arrival time. It was weird, the flight has not yet arrived, but will be arriving in the past. Flight aware, showed plane landed, but not yet at gate.

I thought I was going to be late picking her up and I ended up waiting almost an hour for her.

nutwpinut

1 hour 21 minutes taxiing...

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/...825Z/RJAA/KLAX

Landing - 11:01AM PDT
Taxiing - 1 hour 21 minutes
Gate Arrival - 12:22PM PDT

Scheduled - 12:10PM PDT

Austin787

Happened to my Mom at LAX. After landing her flight sat for 40 minutes waiting for a gate. She missed connecting flight LAX-SYD which caused her to miss departure for her cruise. So she was rebooked on LAX-AKL-WLG departing two days later then boarded her cruise at WLG.

ThreeJulietTango

I never realized that CLT handled so many flights with such a relatively small number of gates. MIA has about 60 mainline gates and the same number of total flights and still runs into issues with gate holds, though it's gotten better in the past few months since they overhauled their gating strategy and they reopened some gates at the E satellite.

At MIA, being MIA, different parts of the same concourse are controlled by either FAA ground control, the aviation department, or AA themselves depending on their location. Even the pilots get confused about who to call sometimes.

dgparent

I fly out of either HTS or CRW so CLT is on pretty much every itinerary I book. I can't remember 1 single flight that landed early and we had a gate open that was manned. Either we wait for a gate or we get to the gate and no one is there.

TonyBurr

Pre merger this was far too common at PHL on US. Long, LONG waits could occur not just for a gate to open but far too often to get ground crew to come out and wand us in even if the gate was free or bring the jetway over.

FullFare

LAX right now is possibly AA's worst place for getting a gate, hopefully temporarily due to construction (who knows when it will end). It's a shame because it has 4 well laid out runways and taxi time shouldn't be horrendous (as they frequently are at ORD and JFK).

I've waited for a gate for over an hour and a half on JFK-LAX twice this year. When you look at the scheduled arrival times vs in-air actual flight time, they have padded these arrivals by over an hour and half, sometimes 2 hours, on their published schedules.

Don't know how to win this game.

As for the pax getting up to use lax while on ground, best to ask forgiveness once are on a trip where flight has already flown. I think it was DL or somebody else who booted the pax for needing the lax before a long delay on takeoff. I thought that was poor airline management.

RichardB0777

Landed at LAX today on AA 382 five minutes early for a scheduled arrival time of 1015a. Sat on the runway for 90 minutes waiting for our gate to open up. Didnt get the gate until 11:45. my seat mate and a few folks missed their connecting flights. Can't imagine how frustrated they must have felt.

FullFare

And I would add that all of the "big 3" majors (UA, DL, AA) are in tough shape at LAX, with AA being the worst of the bunch, due to it's really cramped alleyways to push its flights. If anything goes wrong with a flight being pushed by a tug, at least a half dozen flights can go kablooie.

And, IMHO, the problem is exacerbated by all of the big 3 staking out LAX as a hub. Just trying to cram way too many flights into overloaded sectors on the airport, with their regional planes being used to feed their hub from all directions.

atcdan

As an ATC at a top 5 airport, I can tell you that the majority of these issues with aircraft not having open gates are due to the "banking" of the airline schedules as AA has done at all of their hubs including LAX. You know who doesn't have this problem? DL at ATL. They operate a rolling bank throughout the day which may make for a longer layover, but keeps more gates available in the event outbound flights are delayed.

boerne

Can confirm 15 min early arrival BOS_CLT 6-30, waited 30 minutes for a gate. Fortunately CLT_AUS was delayed so I did ok, but it was originally a 40 minute connection. The concourses were packed. It could have been the long weekend, but an EXP I was talking to waiting to board said the crowds in CLT were always heavy due to the smaller square footage of concourse space, in his opinion. And the above mentioned banking and fewer gates probably play a role. I try to avoid CLT in general. Have not had the same problems in PHX but have not been through there in the past 6 months. So perhaps, I will need to make my personal MCT 60 minutes on most bookings. What we don't know if there is a subtle program to delay things. I am all about safety, but you can be safe and efficient.

Fraser

I thought my one hour from touchdown to gate in February was bad and unusual. I don't fly AA to LAX with regularity so don't really have a pattern to play with.

When we hit the gate the Purser's initial PA was "Finally!" and that was almost it! I shall admit I did recline the J seat some when it was clear we weren't going anywhere for a while.

onesocalkid

LAX just sucks continually with early arrivals and late deplaning...I'll back there four times in the next fifteen days and I am in the Eagle's nest to boot! Ugh.

livebetter_travelmore

I was on CLT -> AUS (AA 644) on Saturday (7/1), and it was delayed almost an hour departing. The airport was a zoo. Yeah, I know it's the 4th July weekend. I had grossly miscalculated. I thought that Friday (30th) would be the really busy day, and Saturday would be perhaps light. I could not have been more wrong. Spoke with lots of people in the terminal who missed flights and were on standby. That's a raw deal on a holiday weekend. All the flights looked full. Bet it took them a long while to reach their destinations.

canadiancow

Currently in CLT for the first time in years.

Arrived from BWI, and while our gate was free, we had to wait for 6 (I think that's what the captain said) planes to get out of the way.

The earlier SFO flight was C15 (I arrived C14), and I probably would have made it if we hadn't been delayed.