beltway

OK, this is a new one for me....

Just flew into DCA on US 1764. Landed on time, and went promptly to a gate on the north side of the far north pier. (I didn't catch the gate number, but it was in the vicinity of gate 35.) Several minutes after the seat-belt sign went off -- at which point peple had rollaboard bags out of the overheads -- the captain announced that "they" had sent us to the wrong gate. Worse, the other incoming aircraft expected at this gate could not, for some reason, swap gates with us.

Result: with much grumbling, bags were re-stowed, pax re-seated and -belted, and the plane eventually pushed back and taxied around the pier to gate 38 (same pier, south side). All in all, this escapade chewed up about 20 minutes.

Maybe I'm overreacting, but this seems pretty bush league. I'm betting the pilot was quietly furious, although to his credit his comments on the PA were very even-tempered.

(And for the record, US baggage at DCA managed to keep alive its unbroken streak of putting bags on carousel 12 after posting them as carousel 11. I used to get annoyed, but after seeing this again and again I view it as the corporate equivalent of performance art.)

LCC, how very much I do not miss you....

tommyleo

The "corporate equivalent of performance art" comment is hilarious. But to be fair, is it the airline's fault when baggage is not placed on the correct carousel? I'd imagine that the airport staff is responsible for this.

BoeingBoy

Depends on what you mean by "wrong carousel". The airline's staff (or whoever the airline may contract to do ground handling) actually handles the baggage. If it's supposed to be on 11 and ends up on 12 it's their fault. However, I'm not sure who is responsible for any monitors which display which carousel a given flight's baggage is supposed to be on - so it could be airport staff if the monitor info is wrong.

I guess what I'm trying to basically say is that if a GA gives the carousel info it's the airline employee's who likely screwed up. If the carousel info is displayed on a monitor, it's could be either parties fault.

Jim

ruckh

I think the lovely lady making announcements at the customs baggage claim at PHL deserves mention. Not only does she make constant announcements about carousel assignments, she returns frequently to update waiting passengers about the status of their bags.

"Passengers on flight 729 from London Heathrow, your bags are on their way from the aircraft."

"Passengers on flight 735 from Manchester, your bags are just now arriving on carousel 9."

It's not a recording, it's a real live human. Kudos to that woman.

vincentvan

I had a similiar experience last week at SAN. What was even more helpful is the woman even announced when the baggage had been completely unloaded onto the carousel (not that US ever mis-directs a bag). I had never heard this at SAN. I wonder if it is a new service there, or a "rogue" event.

formeraa

Here's the deal: Gate configurations and/or placement sometimes require that certain aircraft types go to certain gates. It's just a matter of spacing and.aircraft size. For example, 2 A320's might fit at adjacent gates where 2 A321's might not (and that's a simple example). It sounds like someone in operations screwed up the gate assignment, realized their mistake, and asked the flight crew to move the plane.

sbtinme

Every airport that I'm familiar with assigns the responsibility of ensuring that the display board belt information is uploaded and adjusted ENTIRELY by the ground staff for each respective airline. For example, the software that my home airport uses has a very simple screen airside that the ground handler simply has to do two things:

1.) enter the airline and flight numbner
and
2.) enter the belt that s/he loads the bags onto

It's as simple as that. Yet, I'd say they're wrong well more than half the time. It's really mindblowing in the extreme.

I'm not aware of a domestic airport where the airport management assumes responsibility for uploading baggage carousel info for the public.

dcstudent

I can't speak to other airports other than DCA/IAD but at DCA it is airline staff/airline hired contractors who offload bags from the planes and then set them on carousels. Additionally, it is the airline that inputs the baggage claim number that then appears on the monitors at the airport.

In short, at DCA, it's the airline that is responsible for both unloading the bags and posting the carousel number.

Bridogger

I think what a lot of you are failing to note, when blaming the airline for this debacle, is the pilot himself. I have seen it happen on several occasions where pilots have taxiied to a gate other than one they were instructed to pull into. They ususally don't get marshalled in and they just turn around, and half the passengers probably don't even realize this has occurred... but I doubt if this happened to be the pilot's fault he would make an announcement saying "Oops folks, I screwed up and parked us at the wrong gate, please be seated and I'll be fixing my errors."

It was probably just pilot error.

phlwookie

I suspect this is a particular issue at DCA, too, where there's not tons of space to work with between gates.

At MIA, for instance, AA has to tow aircraft into a few gates due to limited space, and my pilot on LHR-EWR in EWR, back when UA flew that route, seemed to be practically parallel parking to wedge the 777 into the gate.

N965VJ

I doubt it was pilot error. In fact, I don’t think an aircraft can pull into a gate without marshallers.

Barcky

So what happens with block time in this event? Does the crew get paid and monthly hours ticked off for having to move the aircraft or does the crew get ticked off because they have to do it for free?

violist

I find this less likely than the other possible explanations, not because
the pilots are smarter than the other people in the chain of action, but
rather because they have fewer pieces of information to get wrong.