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Originally Posted by kjnangre
(Post 29552237)
That seems rather harsh. In this case, DL sent an email saying that the flight would depart late. At some time later, they retracted that email.
It is very possible that these 2 passengers honestly believed they were on time If one is already at the airport, changes to the times might be a inconvenience but doable as usually there are ample displays and announcements However if the 2 pax were coming from home or en-route to the airport based on the 1st delayed email, the initial 35 minutes delay could have been the only communication they received from Delta at that time. Too many times I have witnessed people and organisation makes the assumption that all their customers are always connected to their systems and always checking status every 5 minutes. When I am travelling overseas, many times I do not have data service and sometimes not even a (roaming) mobile connection. Delta has never texted me any changes. Change notifications had always been email or the app if any were even received. |
Originally Posted by mpheels
(Post 29552301)
We finally get to BWI, and sit at the gate for another hour while the GA figures out how to align the jet bridge with the plane, while the FA patiently coaches her through the process..
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Originally Posted by Danymal
(Post 29551511)
Hi all:
I'm a longtime lurker and first-time poster. I'm generally quite happy with the service I receive from Delta, even as a lowly GM. Events on a Endeavor Air flight last Friday irked me and continue to bother me today, so I figured I would see whether any of you seasoned travelers have ever encountered a similar situation and if so, how you and Delta addressed it. The short version is that the flight I was on returned to the hardstand after taxiing towards the runway in order to board two additional passengers who somehow managed to miss the initial boarding process. The longer, more detailed version is below. DL3819 from LGA to BGR was originally scheduled to depart at 8:15 PM on 3/16/2018. At 3:58 PM, I received an email notification indicating departure was delayed until 8:50 PM on 3/16/2018. A short time later, the status of the flight reverted to an on-time departure, as the inbound CRJ-200 aircraft flying the flight landed at LGA at 7:35 PM. At 7:47 PM, I received a second email notification indicating the departure time was delayed until 8:20 PM on 3/16/2018. All initial passengers boarded the aircraft and the cabin door closed shortly before the initial scheduled departure time of 8:15 PM. The aircraft pushed back from the hardstand at which we boarded and began to taxi toward the departure runway. When the aircraft was parallel to the western concourse of Terminal C (the higher numbered C gates), it came to an abrupt stop and the interphone chimed. Never a good sign. The FA picked up the interphone. I heard her say: “are you kidding me?” The flight deck then announced that we would be returning to the hardstand in order to board passengers who had failed to board with the rest of us during the initial boarding process. When we returned to the hard stand, only two additional passengers boarded. There was no indication that either of them had Medallion status. Apparently, these two passengers got to the gate, a bus gate, expecting the flight to depart at 8:50 PM. The remaining 43-odd passengers, myself included, were not under this misapprehension. After the aircraft returned to the hard stand, the aircraft had to take on more fuel to compensate for that which the aircraft burned off taxiing to the runway and then returning to the hardstand. Ultimately, we arrived in BGR over one hour late because of the inability of two passengers to get to the departure gate when all the other 43-odd passengers knew it was time to board. Have any of you ever encountered an aircraft returning to the gate and taking a delay in order to board additional passengers? Could the captain have refused to return to the hardstand in this instance? I have had the misfortune of arriving at the bus gates at LGA (C12 and C13) 14 minutes prior to scheduled departure time only for the gate agent to tell me that the flight is closed and there is nothing he or she can do to enable me to board the flight, even though the aircraft is clearly still on the ground with the door open at that point. It seems nonsensical to delay and inconvenience over 95% of the passengers on a flight to benefit less than 5% of the passengers on the flight who couldn't manage to board at the appropriate time. If gate agents took pity on the two passengers who failed to board with the rest of us, they should have put them in a cab to JFK in order to catch the next flight to BGR, which was scheduled to depart over an hour later at 9:30 PM and was behind schedule, rather than inconveniencing the rest of us. Do any of you feel differently? Perhaps this story belongs in the current "Worst Reason for a Delay" thread. |
Originally Posted by PayItForward
(Post 29552346)
From the OP, there were many changes to the departure time.
If one is already at the airport, changes to the times might be a inconvenience but doable as usually there are ample displays and announcements However if the 2 pax were coming from home or en-route to the airport based on the 1st delayed email, the initial 35 minutes delay could have been the only communication they received from Delta at that time. Too many times I have witnessed people and organisation makes the assumption that all their customers are always connected to their systems and always checking status every 5 minutes. When I am travelling overseas, many times I do not have data service and sometimes not even a (roaming) mobile connection. Delta has never texted me any changes. Change notifications had always been email or the app if any were even received. I bet that if you searched this forum for "Delta left without me!!" kinds of posts, most of them would be situations like this, where a flight posted as delayed, but ended up leaving on time |
Sometime in 2006 or so, flying PVG-CKG on MU. Flight is cancelled with “ice on runway” as excuse, and all pax rebooked to flights departing almost at the same time (within an hour of our original MU flight) on CA and 3U. Totally bogus excuse, since the flights would use the same (iced or not) runway?
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Worst Reason for a Delay
Great reading! I was on an AA flight from Barcelona to JFK that was delayed 2 hours due to a broken coffee maker. Funny thing is, it was my first time in first class and I was on my way home, so instead of being inconvenienced by the delay, I felt like I was getting value add : )
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Several safety stickers were missing from a panel next to the cockpit. Nothing was wrong with the unit, but they couldn't fly without the stickers and had to receive FAA approval to use printed temporaries. 1.5 hours.
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I’m generally pretty lucky when it comes to delays and IRROPS but the strangest reason for a delay that I can recall was last summer when I was onboard my DCA-ATL flight about to push back from the gate and the captain comes on the PA and states that we are going to remain sitting for a little as the ATC facility had been evacuated due to toxic fumes. About 30 mins of sitting and the captain says a plane needs our gate and we are going to go sit on the taxiway instead but 5 min later we are told to deplane. 3 Hours later we Finnaly reboard with only 40 pax (almost all pax misconnected and decided to fly out the next day but I didn’t have a place to stay so just flew to ATL) and got to ATL at about midnight (3 1/2 Hours late)
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Earlier this winter - one of the storms was blowing through New York, and I was flying home from Atlanta. Morning and afternoon flights were cancelled, and I considered myself lucky as my 7:30 PM was delayed about an hour and ended up being the second plane to land at LGA after it reopened. We pulled up to the gate at a little after 11 PM, but when they tried to roll out the jet bridge it was frozen in place. No one had bothered to check it after it had gone unused for maybe 24 hours. We had to wait for a tug and then get towed out and around to another gate, finally deplaning around 12:30 AM.
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Originally Posted by Danymal
(Post 29551511)
DL3819 from LGA to BGR was originally scheduled to depart at 8:15 PM on 3/16/2018. At 3:58 PM, I received an email notification indicating departure was delayed until 8:50 PM on 3/16/2018. A short time later, the status of the flight reverted to an on-time departure, as the inbound CRJ-200 aircraft flying the flight landed at LGA at 7:35 PM. At 7:47 PM, I received a second email notification indicating the departure time was delayed until 8:20 PM on 3/16/2018. All initial passengers boarded the aircraft and the cabin door closed shortly before the initial scheduled departure time of 8:15 PM. The aircraft pushed back from the hardstand at which we boarded and began to taxi toward the departure runway.
When the aircraft was parallel to the western concourse of Terminal C (the higher numbered C gates), it came to an abrupt stop and the interphone chimed. Never a good sign. The FA picked up the interphone. I heard her say: “are you kidding me?” The flight deck then announced that we would be returning to the hardstand in order to board passengers who had failed to board with the rest of us during the initial boarding process. When we returned to the hard stand, only two additional passengers boarded. There was no indication that either of them had Medallion status. Apparently, these two passengers got to the gate, a bus gate, expecting the flight to depart at 8:50 PM. The remaining 43-odd passengers, myself included, were not under this misapprehension. After the aircraft returned to the hard stand, the aircraft had to take on more fuel to compensate for that which the aircraft burned off taxiing to the runway and then returning to the hardstand. Ultimately, we arrived in BGR over one hour late because of the inability of two passengers to get to the departure gate when all the other 43-odd passengers knew it was time to board. 2) You mentioned bus gate. Quite often, there are multiple flights boarding at the same gate with several buses going to different flights. It's very easy to get on the wrong bus and not know until getting on the plane. Or, the flight used two buses - 43 passengers got on bus #1 and the other two passengers got on bus #2 and the bus #2 driver drove the two passengers to the wrong plane. |
From a few years ago, but definitely one I’ll never forget. I was traveling from DTW to LHR and a flight attendant accidentally deployed an emergency slide when trying to close the doors before departure.
Three hours and a new plane later we were finally off. It was entertaining seeing the ground crew snapping pictures of the slide hanging off the side of the plane. https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...75d0023c45.jpg |
TLV-ATL (some time ago, of course), flight was delayed due to malfunctioning avionics box responsible for synchronizing the two engines. Relief pilot kept coming out to the gate to tell us what was going on. First checked with LY for a replacement part ... they wanted 4x the value of the box, so that option was rejected. The book said to do an engine run-up to get the box behaving properly. That didn't work. Another half dozen attempts, all to no avail.
Then the relief pilot comes back out and tells me they are going to 're-boot' the airplane. You know, turn it completely off, let it sit for a few minutes and start it up again. Said he got the idea from fixing his laptop that afternoon. Crazy thing is it worked ! And moments before the cabin crew would have timed out. |
Originally Posted by kjnangre
(Post 29552183)
I think the real question is why did the plane refuel? It is not because of taxiing. Taxiing uses negligible fuel. It is not because of 2 additional passengers. When the plane was initially fueled, it would have been done on the assumption of a full flight.
Without the refuel, the delay should have been on the order of 15 minutes. For the last flight of the night, that's fairly reasonable and I would support the decision DL/Endeavor made (especially since there was some Delta-created confusion about when/where the flight would depart) |
The two passengers who boarded late were definitely not Endeavor, Delta or DGS employees. BGR is small outstation staffed solely by DGS. I know the agents who work there. They are great, by the way. The late-boarding passengers were not in uniform and did not appear to be familiar with airline lingo, so I doubt they were Flyertalkers either!
With respect to the bus gates, I am unfortunately all too familiar with C12 and C13, the bus gates at LGA. NYC to BGR is the route I fly with the greatest regularity (I make GM via segments) and during the winter months Delta operates CRJ-200s on the route most of the time. At LGA, more often than not, if you're flying on a CRJ-200, you're departing from and arriving at the blast fence and getting to and from the aircraft by a bus from C12 or C13. I hope none of you share my misfortune in this respect. They have actually replaced the buses at LGA recently. The new buses have LED destination signs like public transit buses that I would think Delta would be able to use to display the destination of the aircraft to which the buses is headed, but they don't do this. At least not yet. In any event, Delta used three buses for the initial round of boarding and I don't remember any other flights boarding at the same time as my flight to BGR. Additionally, neither of the two passengers for whom the aircraft returned to the hardstand mentioned that Delta had put them on a bus to the wrong flight. I'd think at least one of them would have mentioned this error if it was the cause of their predicament. And speaking of their predicament, even if the airline shared some blame, I would be mortified to board an aircraft that returned to the gate for me and one other passenger while the remaining passengers who had boarded on time and were now late because of me glared at me as I walked aboard. I responded to the survey I received for this flight and also lodged a complaint online. Does anyone think I'll receive any skypesos from Delta because of this delay? |
Originally Posted by Auston
(Post 29553806)
From a few years ago, but definitely one I’ll never forget. I was traveling from DTW to LHR and a flight attendant accidentally deployed an emergency slide when trying to close the doors before departure.
Three hours and a new plane later we were finally off. It was entertaining seeing the ground crew snapping pictures of the slide hanging off the side of the plane. https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...75d0023c45.jpg Did you at least get to use the slide to deplane? Just saying that may have been the only way they could have gotten me off.... |
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