Why don't late flights, once en route, get prioritized in the air and at the airport
 

I had a flight this past weekend that left the gate 10 minutes late because the plane was waiting for crew. I had a tight connection at the destination airport. But:

1. The ground crew at the first airport took forever to pull the jetway back and push the plane back.
2. At the destination airport, the plane sat on the taxiway in traffic; what would usually be just a few minutes between touchdown and arrival at the gate took at least 10 minutes.

So I missed my connection.

When a flight is already late, why don't crews at the airport prioritize it (and let it go in front of other planes on the taxiway, and expedite things at the gate)?

my first guess is that the flight you’re on probably isn’t the only late flight that the arrival airport is dealing with; even if it is, the airline’s ramp operations are independent of the FAA’s ground controllers

my story involves a late inbound jet to DCA, leading to a late departure for DTW; we landed on 3R (the east runway), and taxied all the way around the south end of the terminal … as we turned to park at A68 I could see the jet we were supposed to be on for SLC (and thence PSP) being pushed back from A70

three hours later we were on a nonstop to LAX, seated in 11D and 28A instead of 3C and 3D

yeah, it’s never fun to misconnect, but you just have to suck it up and deal with the situation

The airlines do priorities late flights.

ATC has no system in place to do so.

Overall, consider (as another poster has mentioned), you're likely not the only one who is late or on a tight schedule...

But consider...

1) If you're already in the taxi lane, how do you propose to "skip" ahead of other planes? Who's "late takeoff" should take priority? Also remember there are constantly planes both taking off and landing. The pause between either activity is to avoid backwash interfering with the next plane. Shortening the interval could cause a plane to crash.

2) Once you've landed, what is the expectation? Other people are expecting to move on with their journeys too... effectively, why should they be delayed (further) because your flight was late getting in (regardless of reason). About the only reason I would expect to yield a gate while moving towards it is if there were an inbound medical emergency. There might be other similar situations, but not much else.

I generally avoid any flights where I know I could miss the MCT (eg, I will include a buffer when designing my itinerary). Could that be fouled up? Sure. But more often than not, I don't have reason to worry. And for the odd times I do miss my connection, I either have an alternative that I can present to the transfer desk, or they will have made the arrangements already. It's a bit more painful for international flights, but domestic, not too concerned). If I don't need the buffer, then I just use the extra time to relax, surf the web somehow, find a quiet spot to hunker down and try food that i haven't tried before. It's just a couple hours to do something different.

Every minute presumably has value in the airline industry, yet they sure seem not to act that way. Of course there are very complex overlapping operational considerations that customers don't understand, but I can confidently opine that, in general, ground handling processes at airports are poor and/or they don't much care.

This occurs at a macro level too. For example, Qatar Airways used to have something like 20 flights per day to Dubai, which they advertised as a convenient shuttle-type service. This was one of the minority of their services that was O/D focused and it also catered to high-end business travelers. You'd think they would assign a couple of the gates closest to the entrance/exit, never require a bus transfer for these flights, and otherwise take simple steps to make the experience as convenient as possible (even dedicated passport and check-in areas for these flights, also intelligently located, would be a nice innovation). Yet they took none of these steps. The flights seemed to arrive at random gates, often far away, sometimes requiring a bus, even when the new airport was not that busy. Maybe they'd have less leverage in Dubai of course, but at least in Doha they could have made it easier.

Sorry, I must not have been clear.

At the departure airport, when the airplane door closed 10 minutes after the scheduled departure time, it was a small airport and there were no other planes arriving or leaving then. Yet my plane sat there at the gate for a while more before it was pushed back from the gate. Why? There were no other planes needing ground crew assistance; why did that take so long.

And at the arrival airport, once we landed, we just crawled along and stopped frequently, sitting there on the tarmac to let planes come and go.

My main gripe is about the departure airport, a small one with only a few gates. If my plane would have been pushed back from the gate when the airplane door first closed, we could have arrived on time. But we just sat there, as though the ground crew was taking a break or something.

There might have been ATC delays, pilots receiving new info, a problem with the equipment, any number of things beyond the ground crew taking a break.

Re: As dinoscool3 has mentioned, there could be any number of reasons. A weather pattern which has changed path (which is becoming more common these days) or congestion at the destination airport (there are rules that limit the number of airplanes in the air and on the ground in a given area). A path re-calculation, not enough slots being open for departure due to something happening (not likely at a small airport, but that depends on your definition of small).... No-one wants to just sit on the runway waiting. That's usually the most stressful time for them.

And once you arrive, same thing. Congestion.... knock-on effects are common. When one of the airlines has an IT meltdown, it's felt all over the world. Same for flight delays. All the onward-bound passengers need to be accommodated somehow. To a point, some of those things are accounted for, but not everything can be.

Often controllers are saturated with planes and can't take more flights until some land. That's why there's going to be delays at the gate and at times when a/c pull of the taxi ways to wait. It could also be the destination airport is backed up and halts flight taking off for that airport for some period of time.

Small airport with fewer resources so the ground crew could have moved to their next scheduled task. Coming back to deal with your flight then makes every subsequent flight delayed. Better to have one flight delayed for longer than several flights for shorter periods?

I have tried to get an answer to this question many times before but can't. It happens routinely at all types of planes and at all types of airports. Door closes, you push back and then you just sit and sit and sit. 5, 10, 15 minutes or more. What on earth is going on? Presumably, everything was checked, double checked and triple checked or we wouldn't have left the gate. Why on earth are we just sitting halfway out of the gate? No other planes can come in to the gate, many probably have trouble going by to other gates.

In the end I guess I'm just thankful that whatever is taking place gets me to my destination safely but it is it quite a curious phenomenon.

In most cases, you're waiting for traffic to clear and to join your place in the sequence for departure.

sometimes there’s a jet in the alley behind yours; sometimes ground control is playing Tetris with 8 (or 18, or 28) other jets on taxiways (as well as the host of catering trucks, service vehicles, etc on the tarmac); sometimes the flight crew have to contact dispatch or ops …

If the captain didn't make an announcement as to what was going on, this will forever remain a mystery.

I would say that it's extremely unlikely that the ground crew decided to just sit around and do nothing for 10 minutes.

Ground crew ops are kind of a mystery. Just recently (and to OP's point) my inbound plane had to sit and wait due to a mechanical issue with the plane occupying our gate. The problematic lane was fixed and left the gate about two hours late. At this point the inbound plane had sat away from the gate for about 90 minutes. So, gate is empty but nothing happened. The pilots for my flight were mulling around and I asked them what was going on and they said there was no ground crew available. So, it was another 45 minutes before the plane could pull in. I would have thought that we'd get into some priority line for a ground crew since we were already late but I guess not.

The airport was OGG (Maui) which is usually okay but it doesn't take much for things to go sideways. I suppose the same can be said for any airport.