Who knew? [GA: we can't board as plane is pressurized]
 

Arriving into CLT tonight from CVG enroute to MCO, our inbound arrived and was delayed 10 or so minutes. Made our way to B from E gates, got to E8 at 7:52 for US747 that was scheduled to depart at 8:05 and the door was shut. I was the third to arrive, only to be followed by 23 more passengers for a grand total of 26. As the GA told us that the tower wouldn't let them hold the flight, she proceeded to then tell us that they can't open the plane door once it is closed as it becomes pressured - and opening the door after it is closed will cause all of the air come out of the plane and the plane won't be able to stay in the air once it takes off. So as the GA manually rebooks the passengers, we watch as US747 waits at the gate for another 25 minutes and finally pushes back at 828. Now you know the real reason why plane doors can't be reopened once they are closed.

It's mind-boggling that a GA would consider pax to be stupid/gullible enough to believe that.

We've moved this from pmAA to pmUS. /Moderator

I hope all of you complain.

As the aircraft gains altitude, they will maintain cabin pressure to the equivalent of 8,000 MSL or higher pressure / lower altitude.

As to the alleged pressurization problem from the GA, the explanation is about as substantive as a pilot telling the new guy to "get a bucket of prop wash". As a pilot I'd certainly have called the GA on it.

Other than potentially garbage information about a technical reason why a door cannot be opened, what is there of value to complain about?

The passenger arrived 13 minutes prior to the departure of the flight

The policy as listed at https://www.usairways.com/en-US/trav...ckintimes.html seems to require that the passengers be at the gate 15 minutes before departure to avoid being denied boarding

The agent should simply have pointed out that the passenger was late and that with the door to the aeroplane now being closed, that the passenger is unable to board

Don't overlook this part of the fairy tale, either.

Reading comprehension is key; it was 26 passengers.

The problem is that the GA didn't have the power to make the quick decision to get them on board. That probably is SOP, but the stupid lie about "pressurization" simply insulted everyone's intelligence.

1 late passenger or 26 : either way the OP seems by own admission , to have arrived at the gate within 15 minutes of departure after the flight had been closed

I didn't miss that there were more passengers, however that has no impact on the validity of a complaint against being denied boarding

The agent may well have no authority to re-open the flight and should just simply state to passengers "sorry , you arrived late and flight is closed" and not invent some stupid reason - I fully agree there - I just don't see what great outcome would occur complaining about the stupid reasoning

Passengers actions also may not help encourage such honesty - will the passengers then simply accept that they have no valid complaint or start whining and picking things such as the aeroplane still being there - it's not their fault they were late - its unfair - the agent is reasonable rather than simply let the agent rebook them

There is an inherent accountability that flight operations takes when thinking through their decision to pause inbound flights short of the jet way as they jockey flights and gates , all of which causes the passengers who have to get off to be delayed and unable to connect. To simply state the 15 minutes rule, while technically accurate - is to ignore the basic rules of customer service. Shutting the door to a plane that is on the last leg of its night, in lieu of 10 minutes to allow the litany of flyers who were scheduled to board, is short sighted. I know - you or anyone can point to the rule book that technically they are allowed to do this - but add to the decision the need to 1. Rebook these passengers 2. Push them to next available flight At 1:00pm the next day. 3. Risk the optics of the plane sitting there, docked and not pushing back for 25 additional minutes. The decision to close a flight like that, regardless of who made it, was a poor one. This is especially clear given the ludicrous excuses the GA floated to excuse the decision.

I agree that the agent should have simply said "sorry - too late" and ended the discussion there and not tried to invent reasons

It isn't up to the gate agent to choose whether to risk a delay to the flight and to not close the flight

It would be up to the operations area to make a determination on whether to hold the flight for the connecting passengers - if it had, the agent would ( I assume ) have left the flight open

If the agent has not been asked to delay the flight closure, then the agent was doing their job correctly in getting the flight departed

Was it US airways that chose to pause the inbound aeroplane or was it the airport? The airport operations may have needed to pause operations, but it is then up to the airline to decide what it will do in this case

It is not great to be delayed overnight, but my response was that I could see no grounds to complain as put forward by another poster ( which I inferred was complaining about the agent ) - other than the silly excuse for which I don't see what would come of it other than a stock reply saying how they understand how you feel but that the flight was closed and basically it sucked to be you that day

Sure, the airline is within its right to cancel the confirmed reservations of the OP (and the other 25 passengers) because they failed to arrive at their connecting gate on time, due to the failure by US to keep to its schedule.

Nothing in the Contract of Carriage requires US to cancel their reservations but only reserves the right to do so.

Huge customer service failure by US Airways and the gate agent. The agent sounds like a petty functionary who enjoyed helping 26 passengers misconnect. Since the gate agent sounds like a compulsive liar, the agent could have picked up a phone, pretended to dial, and loudly "argued" with someone higher up to reopen the flight so that 26 passengers would not be inconvenienced. When that effort was for naught, the agent could have said "Well, I went to bat for you but management wouldn't budge."

The passengers would have been none the wiser and the agent would have looked good. Passengers would still be pissed at US, but no more than they are now.

And if someone wrote in to complain about the failure of "management" to authorize reopening the flight, and someone at US cared, and investigated, the agents' lies wouldn't sound any more ridiculous than the current facts, and that's an agent who is a liar and probably didn't contact anyone with a request to hold/reopen the flight to accommodate 26 mis-connecting passengers.

Conversely it sounds to me that the agent simply did his/her job in getting the flight departed if not having be asked to hold it by those with the appropriate authority

How would picking up the phone and pretending to make a call be any better than what was done? both are equally bad.

Blaming the agent for doing their job seems unreasonable - it is possible that there are reasons why the operations side was not willing to hold the flight for the passengers, though that is unknown

If the US had rules as exist in Europe, I suspect that the airline would be more active in trying to ensure that the connections were met to avoid being responsible for meals/accommodation/incidentals and possibly cash compensation for the passengers

The GA is a ding dong for making up the story. As for the policy, the GA may or may not have been following orders.

Overall, I think it's a failure of the system to not recognize that 26 passengers were about to misconnect. Sure, they were supposed to be there 15 minutes prior to departure and "be ready to board" but the stated goal is to close the gate door 10 minutes prior.

For the process to incur the ire of 26 misconnected passengers instead of keeping the door open until that 10-min threshold, or not determining that this is one delay worth getting on the books, is shortsighted and stupid.

I would have told the GA that last week when this exact thing happened to me, I was accommodated by the customer service Unicorn, who let me ride him down the jetbridge to the plane, where the lead-Leprechaun opened the door and carried me to my seat. So I know it can be done.

I would absolutely complain as someone at US (maybe not the GA) should have stopped this from happening in the age of computer information. No reason 26 people should have been stranded by no fault of their own when US could have held closing the door 5 minutes.

Unless working in the operations area for that flight, you cannot know what impact holding the flight for the passengers already onboard could potentially be

Maybe US could have been in a position to delay the flight if necessary - it may also not have been and so treated that flight like any other