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Wow...I can’t believe that employee on employee on customer treatment

Wow...I can’t believe that employee on employee on customer treatment

Old May 13, 2018, 3:26 pm
  #16  
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Originally Posted by LondonElite
What is TLDR?
"too long; didn't read"

IMO ("in my opinion" ) the post was not nearly long enough to deserve a response of "tl;dr". It's fine.
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Old May 13, 2018, 3:28 pm
  #17  
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Thanks. So this is mountain/molehill territory, right?
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Old May 13, 2018, 7:57 pm
  #18  
 
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Originally Posted by LondonElite
Thanks. So this is mountain/molehill territory, right?
I wouldn't say so. OP didn't make a mountain out of this and I'd say the agent mistakenly berating another agent in front of a customer is a little more than a molehill. It's not something I would judge the entire company over but it's certainly a "..." anecdote.
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Old May 13, 2018, 10:15 pm
  #19  
 
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Originally Posted by lincolnjkc
I’m not even sure how to TLDR this.

At IAD A3
I'd forgotten what a cluster the IAD A1 series of gates were until I had the pleasure last week. Total chaos. Boarding 2 or 3 flights at the same time through the same door. Multiple announcements for neighboring gates - nobody can tell what the hell is going on.

At least when I went through it seems the staff was doing the best they can with a really bad setup for boarding all those commuter flights.

Last edited by WineCountryUA; May 13, 2018 at 10:40 pm Reason: cleaned up formating
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Old May 14, 2018, 2:29 am
  #20  
 
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And besides “Where do you get this info” How the heck does one know what it means.

Originally Posted by cfischer
ouch ....

P IAD/OUT 207A L04.02 ☨
P IAD/OFF 219A
P CLE/ON 312A
P CLE/IN 318A L03.54 ☨

“In the box” and all this other inside baseball really makes it frustrating to make sense of might be an interesting thread.
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Old May 14, 2018, 5:35 am
  #21  
 
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Originally Posted by LRMErnst
Where do you find the above information?
...And how do you read it?
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Old May 14, 2018, 7:02 am
  #22  
 
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Originally Posted by cfischer
ouch ....

P IAD/OUT 207A L04.02 ☨
P IAD/OFF 219A
P CLE/ON 312A
P CLE/IN 318A L03.54 ☨
So if I'm reading the above correctly...

The flight was out of the gate at 2:07 AM, which was four hours and two minutes late.
The flight took off at 2:19 AM
The flight landed at 3:12 AM
The flight was in the gate at 3:18 AM, which was three hours and 54 minutes late

Originally Posted by laxmillenial
I don't think front-line employees are as aware of the yellow wraps as Mileageplus is. I fly with mine and when seated in F (domestic), was asked if I was an employee when a late boarding passenger came on and was looking for baggage space. I identified the bag as mine and stated I was not an employee to a FA and she looked a bit puzzled seeing the "United" on the yellow wrap, but she said ok and nothing further came from it.
I haven't had to gate check a bag in quite a while...but flew ORD-GRR on a 145 the other day. I was the 6th or 7th pax to board and drop my bad on the jet bridge, and my bag was the first one off the plane when we landed. I think the handle wrap helped.

- LE

Originally Posted by Bear4Asian
“In the box” and all this other inside baseball really makes it frustrating to make sense of might be an interesting thread.
"The Box" is the penalty box

`Place where planes--generally after ground stop, GDP, or just running late get to wait while their gate opens; may also be used on departures for metering or flow delays. ORD actually has a space officially called the "Penalty Box" [on airport diagrams and a "Scenic Pad"] but used generically as a place somewhere out of ATC's way to bide time.`

Last edited by WineCountryUA; May 14, 2018 at 10:30 am Reason: merging consecutive posts by same member
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Old May 14, 2018, 12:06 pm
  #23  
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Originally Posted by LRMErnst
"The Box" is the penalty box

`Place where planes--generally after ground stop, GDP, or just running late get to wait while their gate opens; may also be used on departures for metering or flow delays. ORD actually has a space officially called the "Penalty Box" [on airport diagrams and a "Scenic Pad"] but used generically as a place somewhere out of ATC's way to bide time.`
Right, most airports have a literal box painted on the ground (or multiple), although it's usually referred to as "the block" by ground (i.e. "your new wheels up time is 44 past the hour, I'm going to need to you to pull into the [runway] 30 block" - what basically no pax wants to hear during taxi). Sometimes aircraft are just pulled out into a little-used taxiway (like Taxiway L at SFO) and colloquially we refer to any situation where a plane is stopped and not in line for something (the runway or de-ice pad) as being "boxed".
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Old May 14, 2018, 12:17 pm
  #24  
 
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Aren't the GA's in A concourse at IAD all non-mainline staff? I stopped asking them for help years ago. Not that its an excuse but they typically have never known the intricacies of UAL business nor have a professional attitude.
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Old May 14, 2018, 1:08 pm
  #25  
 
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Originally Posted by LRMErnst
So if I'm reading the above correctly...

The flight was out of the gate at 2:07 AM, which was four hours and two minutes late.
The flight took off at 2:19 AM
The flight landed at 3:12 AM
The flight was in the gate at 3:18 AM, which was three hours and 54 minutes late
Thanks, that's helpful!

-mvitale
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Old May 14, 2018, 5:29 pm
  #26  
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Originally Posted by paule123
I'd forgotten what a cluster the IAD A1 series of gates were until I had the pleasure last week. Total chaos. Boarding 2 or 3 flights at the same time through the same door. Multiple announcements for neighboring gates - nobody can tell what the hell is going on.

At least when I went through it seems the staff was doing the best they can with a really bad setup for boarding all those commuter flights.
It's like someone intentionally went out of their way to make it as awful as possible.
- There are two sets of doors leading out to the "fingers" but instead of putting a ticket lift station at each set of doors they put two ticket lift stations on one side and use the other for arriving pax only . It seems like just doing ticket lift on both side would alleviate a lot of the confusion/stress/disorder.
- It's a total crapshoot as to how boarding will be processed -- some will use both ticket lift positions for the same flight, some will dedicate a ticket lift station to a flight while the other is used for a different flight (but of course without any signage this makes things an even bigger mess). Some will board "all" flights using both ticket lift positions [but when they do that they usually negate the benefits by boarding group "1-4 for flight 1234" while boarding group 1 for flight 4567, and preboarding flight 8912].
- Someone with satanic tendencies in ops likes to put 4-6 flights with the same departure time at the same "Axy" gate ... e.g. for the flight that prompted this post, had it been on schedule there would have been 3 flights departing at 10:05 and 2 flights departing at 10:10 out of the A3-series of gates.

I don't mind IAD generally, but I hate the 3rd world country that is the A-gates with a passion; the only thing that makes it less awful is two of my GS shuttle rides have been C/D to A or VV.

Originally Posted by DENflyer3
Aren't the GA's in A concourse at IAD all non-mainline staff? I stopped asking them for help years ago. Not that its an excuse but they typically have never known the intricacies of UAL business nor have a professional attitude.
Below-the-wing is all Swissport, and the folks who stand out on the fingers to make sure you don't wander onto the wrong flight are definitely contractors.

Based on what I was seeing/hearing there Thursday night/Friday morning. (and the supervisor I pulled aside's ID badge) I'm pretty sure the agents in the terminal are all UA employees, but really far down the seniority list.
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Old May 14, 2018, 8:26 pm
  #27  
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Originally Posted by lincolnjkc
It's like someone intentionally went out of their way to make it as awful as possible.
- There are two sets of doors leading out to the "fingers" but instead of putting a ticket lift station at each set of doors they put two ticket lift stations on one side and use the other for arriving pax only . It seems like just doing ticket lift on both side would alleviate a lot of the confusion/stress/disorder.
- It's a total crapshoot as to how boarding will be processed -- some will use both ticket lift positions for the same flight, some will dedicate a ticket lift station to a flight while the other is used for a different flight (but of course without any signage this makes things an even bigger mess). Some will board "all" flights using both ticket lift positions [but when they do that they usually negate the benefits by boarding group "1-4 for flight 1234" while boarding group 1 for flight 4567, and preboarding flight 8912].
- Someone with satanic tendencies in ops likes to put 4-6 flights with the same departure time at the same "Axy" gate ... e.g. for the flight that prompted this post, had it been on schedule there would have been 3 flights departing at 10:05 and 2 flights departing at 10:10 out of the A3-series of gates.

I don't mind IAD generally, but I hate the 3rd world country that is the A-gates with a passion; the only thing that makes it less awful is two of my GS shuttle rides have been C/D to A or VV.



Below-the-wing is all Swissport, and the folks who stand out on the fingers to make sure you don't wander onto the wrong flight are definitely contractors.

Based on what I was seeing/hearing there Thursday night/Friday morning. (and the supervisor I pulled aside's ID badge) I'm pretty sure the agents in the terminal are all UA employees, but really far down the seniority list.
Is a 'ticket lift position' where BPs are checked? Sorry, not familiar with that term.

In any case, yes, there is a special chaos that results from these RJ flights being scheduled within 5-10min. of each other. IAD might be one of the worst, but it happens systemwide. I always wondered how much they save by scheduling this way instead of with 20-25min. separation.
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Old May 14, 2018, 8:42 pm
  #28  
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Originally Posted by fumje
Is a 'ticket lift position' where BPs are checked? Sorry, not familiar with that term.

In any case, yes, there is a special chaos that results from these RJ flights being scheduled within 5-10min. of each other. IAD might be one of the worst, but it happens systemwide. I always wondered how much they save by scheduling this way instead of with 20-25min. separation.
Exactly -- my fingers wouldn't let me type podium (both for the general misuse of the word [pet peeve: anywhere besides an airport you stand -behind- a lectern and -on- a podium] and the typical airline connotation for the central location where service happens pre-boarding.

The practice of "banking" flights has long mystified me, not just as far as RJs go. On one hand I'm sure it makes business sense (or it wouldn't be something that virtually every network carrier does) -- but on the other it seems extremely inefficient as far as labor goes -- if you figure that you need 'X' agents (and rampers, etc.) per flight/gate and an agent spends 'Y' minutes working a flight, it would seem that by spreading flights by 'Y' (plus a buffer) minutes would allow 'X' agents to work the same number of flights versus having 5 flights at the same time where you need 5*X agents (though I guess if your agents are hourly and you have a sufficiently deep pool of labor this may be moot) ... I digress, but the business side of commercial aviation fascinates me.
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Old May 14, 2018, 9:04 pm
  #29  
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Originally Posted by lincolnjkc
Exactly -- my fingers wouldn't let me type podium (both for the general misuse of the word [pet peeve: anywhere besides an airport you stand -behind- a lectern and -on- a podium] and the typical airline connotation for the central location where service happens pre-boarding.

The practice of "banking" flights has long mystified me, not just as far as RJs go. On one hand I'm sure it makes business sense (or it wouldn't be something that virtually every network carrier does) -- but on the other it seems extremely inefficient as far as labor goes -- if you figure that you need 'X' agents (and rampers, etc.) per flight/gate and an agent spends 'Y' minutes working a flight, it would seem that by spreading flights by 'Y' (plus a buffer) minutes would allow 'X' agents to work the same number of flights versus having 5 flights at the same time where you need 5*X agents (though I guess if your agents are hourly and you have a sufficiently deep pool of labor this may be moot) ... I digress, but the business side of commercial aviation fascinates me.
With you on the usage of lectern and podium, but I certainly don't look forward to any lecture from a GA. Usually that ends in an undesirable seat change or a bag checked.

Would love to see a comment from someone familiar with ops. I have done the same math and obviously wondered the same.
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