Rant: US flight delayed, asked to wait at gate
 

On a June 6th US Air flight from DCA to Manchester, NH, US Air preannounced via email a 2 hours delayed departure because of "crew availability". Yet USAir insisted that passengers "be at your gate as originally scheduled" in case they could roundup a crew -- And leave earlier.

This policy is an abuse of passengers for the economic advantage (cost cutting under staffng) and convenience of US Air, in disregard of the flying public. This action should be deemed unacceptable.

Have passengers become no more than air freight, to be transported at the airlines' convenience? Shouldn't this be illegal and in violation of the airlines contact with passengers, if it isn't already?

personally, I'd prefer to board and leave as soon as another crew can be available rather than wait 2 hours because that's the safe call for them to make at the moment. things happen, not always within the airline's control, when you have scheduling dependencies - I don't think this rises anywhere close to 'abuse'.

No

Welcome to FlyerTalk.

And, apparently, welcome to flying. Your take on the situation seems to be that of one who hasn't done much of it.

Live free or die!!! And stick it to the man!

Was this off a jetbridge or out of the 35X mess?

There are several reasons why they may be able to get the flight out earlier, and if bad weather is headed in, may be a very wise decision. Being at the gate prior to original departure date allows them to be very flexible. Just like, with such a change, you can try to change flights to get something more solid. Knowing this upfront can be more comforting.

Every time I see gate 35X I have nightmares.

Making that illegal would lead to airlines announcing delays in 10 minute increments, even when they know 90% that its going to be 1+ hours.

I know when that happens know and everyone (myself greatly included) hates it!

GA: Looks like we're going to be about 10 minutes delayed to fix a loose screw.
<ten minutes later>
Still trying to get it good to go, be about another 10 minutes
<ten minutes later>
Looks like the mechanic says we're going to need to bring in a different aircraft and that will be about 10 minutes
<ten minutes later>
Waiting on the tug to get our old plane moved
<ten minutes later>
You get the idea. Not fun times...just tell me you think its going to be 2 hours, and I"ll keep checking my app for an updated time.

Enforcing the full 2 hour delay would cause unnecessary misconnects.

This tends to happen now as it is. I don't remember the exact number, but flight delays of less than x minutes do not need to be reported as delays, or at least a big delay. Just like we learn how to work the system, the airlines do too.

If it wasn't for all the supporting services that need to be scheduled, I've always thought they should just start queueing up people for different destinations and once they have a full plane, send it out! I know it would not work, so no need to flame me, but it was a thought.

Seriously? You don't know the answer to this? :)

As an experienced flyer, I'm going to take a different view than most posters. Should the practice be illegal? No. But I believe that if the airlines post a delay via email and phone calls, they also should be required to post the same type of alerts whenever there is a pull-in. And if they've posted a delay and someone misses a flight because of the pull in, the airline should re-book without penalty.

We're self-loading cargo because we allow the airlines to treat us as self-loading cargo.

US (at least used to) have a "return to ontime" notification to alert that a "scheduled" delay has vanished. I have noticed lately, however; some of the notifications are not as dependable as they once were.

I currently have a TXL-JFK-DCA routing that I am legitimately considering changing to TXL-JFK, LGA-DCA partially because of how bad the late-night arrivals into the 35X mess have gotten, whereas the US Shuttle from LGA comes in on a real gate.

(The other factor being that the scheduling of the JFK-DCA Eagle flights is terrible for Europe arrival connections - the midafternoon flight is too early to meet legal MCT and then the next one doesn't leave until 9:30 PM. I don't really want to get into 35X at 11 PM...would it kill them to have a 6 PM JFK-DCA flight???)