This AM arriving from SBN on an RJ at DTW.
It's a 31 minute flight. We taxied for 40 minutes, then waited for the
ground crew to show. That took 15 minutes.

Its amazing they built a beautiful state of the art terminal but forgot to install an automated marshalling system in place in so many airports where the pilots park at the correct spot themselves and the GA just has to drive the jetbridge to the door.

OK, I was flying in from PHL yesterday, the plane arrived from DTW late due to weather in PHL. So anyway, we touched down at DTW at 3:10p. However, nwa.com indicates the arrival time as 3:30p-that's where it's becoming interesting. 3:30p is about the time we actually PARKED at the gate. We sat 50 ft away from the jetway for 15 mins before we were ushered in. What p***ed me is that this kind of thing is becoming so common and what's worse is my ATL bounded flight (which dp at 3:29p from across the hall, from A15) actually left early (3:26p according to nwa.com) I had to wait until 5:30 for the next one. Even the pilot and the WorldClub agent showed displeasure about this sort of stuff. There is no coordination whatsoever in holding flights just for a couple mins for people arriving across the hall-but instead it left early. What the heck? And what's with the 3:30p arr time? Are they trying to fudge around the time to cover up the ground crew not showing up when they had to?

I'm routinely on the 5AM C9 OMA-MSP and we seem to ALWAYS sit there waiting for 10+ minutes for the ground crew to come to guide the aircraft in to the parking mark. It is no secret that every department at NW has been cut back to almost alarmingly tight crews and assets. When this happens I find it hard to be sympathetic when the airlines complain about the cost of jet fuel.

A 40-minute taxi, wow. Maybe the crew needed some remedial training.
I sure hope that is not indicative of the Notre Dame offense this season.

That's MBS to DTW - 30 minutes in air 30 minutes site seeing..

Haven't read thru every response, but it's funny this topic is on here... because when I got into DTW on the inbound and outbound of my trip to DUS over the past couple of weeks I have made comments about exactly this to whomever I was talking to.

Seems like I get stuck waiting right outside the gate for the ground crew to direct us in the final 50 feet more often at DTW than any other airport. Aside from that, it's a wonderful terminal... but the waiting is starting to bug me.

[QUOTE=eddie1973;9832739] What p***ed me is that this kind of thing is becoming so common and what's worse is my ATL bounded flight (which dp at 3:29p from across the hall, from A15) actually left early (3:26p according to nwa.com) I had to wait until 5:30 for the next one.


Well, what p***es me off is when my flight is delayed waiting for connecting passengers, and makes me late for MY connection and it does not wait for me.
Dave

It just means that the cost of fuel is low enough that it isn't worth the cost to hire adequate staff or to better deploy the staff you already have.

I think it just means that the airline is woefully inefficient, or incapable depending on how you look at it.

I haven't flew in 2 weeks, so next week we'll see how things go at MSP. If it's still a problem, I am going to TTU every time it happens and I suggest others do the same.

To the casual traveler, it might not seem like a big deal, to others if it's happening every flight, every week, that's a lot of frustration on our end. Having to play catchup to get to your next flight and just the amount of loss time... waiting...

I would rather wait in the WC then the AC any day.

FYI, arrival time is counted as the time an aircraft actually parks at the gate so 3:30 would be accurate. If it's 50 feet short then it's not at the gate and hasn't actually arrived at it.

Different experience here. I rarely go through MEM, but I go through DTW and MSP often. While I have experienced this type of delay a couple of times in MSP, it seems to happen much more frequently in DTW. Just as ballpark estimates, I'd guess it happens close to 50% of the time arriving in DTW, but I'd be surprised if it's more than 10% or 15% in MSP. YMMV

If anybody has any BTS data comparing on-time performance of MSP and DTW arrivals, please share. It's certainly frustrating to be close, but not at, the gate, but across the 10s of thousands of flights a day, long waits just for a gate are not all that common.

% on time arrivals
city April '08 ytd 2007

DTW 74.37 73.74
MSP 75.11 72.57

ATL 73.74 74.44
EWR 61.85 59.45
ORD 59.27 65.88

Given NW's relative dominance at DTW and MSP, it's not possible for another airline to perform so poorly as to skew results significantly.

As a counterpoint, I've had no significant gate waits (more than a couple minutes) on arrivals at DTW over the past couple of months (5 arrivals on NW, 1 on CO).

I was on NW237 this evening, and we must have waited 15 minutes just in front of the gate as we waited to be ushered in. What is going on at DTW that prevents them from getting us to the gate? Its not like a surprise that we were coming.