Why Do You Have To Wait For A Gate After Landing?
If you’ve ever been delayed after landing while the pilot announces you are “waiting for a gate to open up,” remember— it’s us on the other end of the announcement. And we’re just as frustrated as you. In fact, sometimes we can see open gates at the terminal, even as we make the announcement. We just aren’t allowed to park at them, because United’s management has no system to dynamically reroute the people and equipment needed. Most times, it doesn’t have to be this way.
A small investment would result in a dynamic gate assignment system, one which would assign landing flights to available gates, and direct ground support services to the appropriate place. The cost would be amortized in little time by the savings of on-time arrivals and downline on-time departures, not to mention fuel savings in this ultra-high-cost environment.
And in the Department of Simple Ideas, here’s one: We often take delays getting to the gate at the end of a flight because another plane is blocking our route to the gate. This could often be cured, and save time and fuel, by pushing back departing flights out of the way of the path other planes need to use to get to the gate. Pilots have to start engines and run two or three checklists after the plane is pushed back. This takes five minutes or more. If these planes are out of the way while the pilots do it, other planes can get in. Experienced senior management would know that, or at least know enough to listen to those who do.
Administrator
in ground operations
|
5 Comments
|
5 References
View Printer Friendly Version
Email Article to Friend
Reader Comments (5)
Yesterday we waited for an international gate at SFO for over 20 minutes with 6 gates available. When we asked about a gate change we were advised that the gate was assigned and that we should just be patient. So we sat there in our 777 and patiently burned gas and watch passenger morale drop. The passengers needed to hear their pilots fight for them. I realize that SFO only had 10 hours to prepare for our arrival, but really!!!
Don't forget about THE most common reason that you are waiting four your gate:
The company has cut back so severely on ramp and CSR personnel that none are available to park you and/or move the jetway.
As a frequent Denver flyer I see this problem everytime... There are always plenty of available gates, but we have to wait for the "assigned" one.
Last time we were sent to a "remote" waiting area to idle for almost one hour - while there were almost a dozen available gates.
Jan Jensen is right - there's not much you can do if there's an open gate but no one to guide you in or drive the gate to your door after parking.
A dynamic gate system would be nice, but having adequate staffing pretty much solves all ills.
I partially agree with Jan and EK.. not much you can do if you show up and there's no ground personnel.. the whole airport could be open and it still wouldn't matter. I also know that airlines staff their CSRs and rampies based on the published flight schedule. It may be a bare bones crew, but scheduled per the flights none the less. And in a perfect world (and I completely understand that this is not OUR case) if a flight arrives on schedule, there should be gate agents and rampers ready and waiting for that flight irregardless of which gate they arrive in to. Now a caveat to that theory is that if ANOTHER flight has arrived late, but infront of an on-time flight, the delayed flight takes priority and could suck up the resources that WOULD be used for the on-time flight. There are many factors that play out, and a lot of what ifs. Bottom line it always boils down to someone being frustrated and a lot of late people.