Early Arrival......No Gate

jfk69 · Sat Sep 09, 2006 5:21 am

I was on a Jetblue flight from SEA-JFK yesterday and we got in about 10 min early. We taxied off of 13R to the T6 and was told by the Captain we would have to wait 5-10 min for gate 1 which was ours to open up. We ended up sitting there for almost 30 minutes, but the whole time we can all see that gates 10 and 12 were wide open. Is there any reason they couldn't just move our gate and change the gate for the next flight of people waiting in the terminal. To me it seems to make more sense to get a plane to the gate as quickly as possible and change a gate assignment for a upcoming flight then to have an aircraft just sit there idle......

All answers and thoughts are appreciated.

B742 · Sat Sep 09, 2006 5:30 am

I recently saw the same thing happen at LHR, a Jet Airways (9W) A340-300 had landed and was sat on the taxiway for at least 35mins as It waited for an available gate. In the end it turned back round and heading towards the other side of T3.

I don't know if this is common, but I've seen it a few times. I guess it happens alot at the larger airports with major traffic!

Pain in the ass though if you are on board Wink

Rob!

BCAInfoSys · Sat Sep 09, 2006 5:32 am

I had it happen to me flying BMI from MAN-LHR years ago. Sat on the LHR tarmac for nearly an hour before they deplaned us onto the tarmac, put us on buses, and took us on what seemed like a very long tour of the backside of LHR.

Needless to say, I had a 2-hour connection on my way to ORD-YYZ, and I barely made it. Turned me off from BD for a while...

tu154 · Sat Sep 09, 2006 5:35 am

well, think about it for a moment. Your flight is scheduled to arrive at gate one. ground crew is prepared and set up at gate one to recieve the incoming flight. The arrival screen shows that your flight is arriving at gate one. Your aircraft will probably be turning to another destination so the departure screen for that flight shows gate one. The passangers for that flight are waiting at gate one, and the ramp area at that gate is full of departing bags for the outbound. If you change the gate, you have to change many other things as well and may cause more confusion and inconvienience more people then just having the arriving flight wait for the gate to open. Simplicity is the name of the game in this industry.

bnamaxx · Sat Sep 09, 2006 5:35 am

I'm not a scheduler, but my guess is, at a hub, you move one flight, then you have to move another. Then another. Then another. I've had the same frustratioin at DFW many times. When you have multiple arrivals and departures so close together, I can see where reassigning gates could create mass confusion all around. I would have just settled for some airstairs and a bus.

srbmod · Sat Sep 09, 2006 5:41 am

Just because a gate is open, doesn't mean you can park an a/c there. In some cases, the a/c may be too big to use certain gates (or an airline tries to avoid using certain gates with winglet-equipped a/c).

Changing a gate is not a simple snap of the fingers. When you start swapping gates (and sometimes the flights going out of them), it starts a chain reaction that can cause problems. Some bag runners don't get the word about a swap and try to drop off the wrong bags at the wrong gate, sometimes a gate crew isn't told about the swap only to find out about it when someone from another gate brings several carts of bags over. Bags end up missing flights, people end up missing flights, a/c get delayed because nobody told the catering crews, cleaners, fuelers, etc. that the flight got moved and they have to wait for those folks to be done before they board the a/c.

Coronado990 · Sat Sep 09, 2006 5:50 am

Does anyone know the minimum buffer time between flights at a gate? I would hope that it is not back-to-back (meaning zero minutes), but at least 15 or so minutes for some "recovery" time.

floridaflyboy · Sat Sep 09, 2006 5:53 am

Another thing is, you guys were all together. The passengers waiting in the terminal to board that plane were probably not all in one place. Had they changed the gate on those people, some people may have missed their flight.

OPNLguy · Sat Sep 09, 2006 6:33 am

A great deal also has to do with if an incoming flight has connections for other flights. If flight #1 has connections onboard and has to hold out for a gate (so another flight with no connections can use the gate) it has the effect of delaying the multiple flights that are awaiting the connections, which exacerbates the station's gate problem.

I once had that kind of a situation, and it was necessary to hold one guy out for a gate. He was too impatient to do so, and pulled into an empty gate adjacent to the one he was waiting on. He "solved" his immediate problem, but it caused us to have to move several hundred passengers around between various gates. It also caused the flight scheduled to use that gate to have to hold out, which screwed 4 other flights that were awaiting connections from the flight holding out for the gate.

There are so many variables involved with these kinds of things it's hard to cite which one was specifically responsible for the OP's situation, but suffice it to say that if it was done, it was done for a good reason.

Gr8Circle · Sat Sep 09, 2006 6:41 am

Quoting BCAInfoSys (Reply 2):
Turned me off from BD for a while...

I doubt if BMI had much choice in the matter.....not reason enough to get 'turned off' from BMI or any airline in that situation....no airline would want to consciously inconvenience their pax....if the authorities concerned make them wait for a particular gate, they just have to wait....it could have been any airline.... smile

HPAEAA · Sat Sep 09, 2006 7:08 am

I've worked the gate board before for AA in ORD... trust me its not as easy as it looks... It becomes a domino effect when you start switching gates... I always did it when I could but there were times where I had to make planes wait an hour before I could get them to a gate...

Speedbirdie · Sat Sep 09, 2006 7:22 am

Quoting BCAInfoSys (Reply 2):

Turned me off from BD for a while...

As much as BD are our rivals, they had nothing to do with the no gate there.
We left HEL at 0555 this morning, landing at LHR 0830.. Well we park on a Domestic Stand as there are no normal gates.. Buses, tired p$ssed of passengers? Welcome to London Heathrow, the worlds biggest building site with 2 runways.
Its the thorn in our sides at Heathrow and people like myself have to endure no stand for hours day after day after day..
Its just as frustrating for passengers as it is crew as we are constanly having to 'apologise' for landing at an airport which year after year has no constant maintanance..
Such a shame..

LeonB1985 · Sat Sep 09, 2006 7:25 am

Quoting Speedbirdie (Reply 11):
As much as BD are our rivals, they had nothing to do with the no gate there.
We left HEL at 0555 this morning, landing at LHR 0830.. Well we park on a Domestic Stand as there are no normal gates.. Buses, tired p$ssed of passengers? Welcome to London Heathrow, the worlds biggest building site with 2 runways.
Its the thorn in our sides at Heathrow and people like myself have to endure no stand for hours day after day after day..
Its just as frustrating for passengers as it is crew as we are constanly having to 'apologise' for landing at an airport which year after year has no constant maintanance..
Such a shame..

Agree! Met some passengers not so long ago who, after a VS flight already delayed by about 90 mins, spent over 90 further minutes holding on the ground for a stand to become available. LHR is just a terrible mess!

chris133 · Sat Sep 09, 2006 7:58 am

Quoting JFK69 (Thread starter):
We ended up sitting there for almost 30 minutes, but the whole time we can all see that gates 10 and 12 were wide open. Is there any reason they couldn't just move our gate and change the gate for the next flight of people waiting in the terminal

Having done gate conflicts at a large station, it is not as easy as just pulling into another gate. Besides the fact that you now have to move passengers you also have to move the bags already on the gate. Then take into account all of the connecting bags and cargo that may be enroute to the old gate. Next there is the fact there my be no Ramp Agents availible to actually work the flight so you may end up being longer waiting on them than if you had just held out for your original gate.

swissy · Sat Sep 09, 2006 10:31 am

Happen to me twice with AC at YYZ once way to early 20 min. wait and the second time ground crew "was" nowhere to be found.

Once with AA at JFK early again no gate so we did some taxing around JFK and we had a good look at the TWA ac LT1011 (or what was left of it)....

Cheers,

DesertAir · Sat Sep 09, 2006 10:33 am

I have had this experience on AA a couple of times flying into DFW. The gate waiting ate up the early arrival minutes.

ntspelich · Sat Sep 09, 2006 10:34 am

Those gates that you see open may have flight in range, the jetways not be operational, or sometimes, they're extra gates for terminating/originating ops or mx purposes without staffing to run flights out of. I know that we have a ton of extra gates here in BWI that we could use, but unless there happens to be enough ramp personnel just lying around, it's pretty hard to turn planes there.

jetdeltamsy · Sat Sep 09, 2006 10:35 am

Quoting JFK69 (Thread starter):
To me it seems to make more sense to get a plane to the gate as quickly as possible and change a gate assignment for a upcoming flight then to have an aircraft just sit there idle......

In today's extremely competitive environment, gate assignments are frequently only minutes apart between outbound to inbound. Even the slightest hiccup and you get stuck in the box somewhere.

Sometimes passengers notice open gates elsewhere, but those gates are in other zones affecting manning and baggage routing.

It's more complicated than it looks.

QANTAS077 · Sat Sep 09, 2006 10:38 am

come down to Perth and you'll see it happen at the domestic terminal every afternoon...Qantas has 3 airbridges and a few hard stands here, if the 747 service from the east coast is late and the 767 from Brisbane or Melbourne ontime then you'll find them holding on "Delta" or another area for up to 45mins. Qantas is unwilling to spend more money to update it's facilites here...i know of a few cases where the gate has been blocked for A330's for upwards of 1hr in the afternoon...resulting in the return late afternoon to Sydney being cancelled due to curfew.

you'll see it alot over here...

HikesWithEyes · Sat Sep 09, 2006 11:36 am

Quoting JFK69 (Thread starter):
All answers and thoughts are appreciated.

Just out of curiousity, did your flight depart SEA early?

Geo772 · Sat Sep 09, 2006 7:01 pm

A flight arriving early at a congested airport can cause as much disruption as one getting in late. There is usually some small leeway on gate times but very often I see one aircraft push back and another come striaght onto stand at LHR.

cardiffairtaxi · Sat Sep 09, 2006 7:51 pm

This is a very common occurrence at LHR,especially early hours of the morning.Ive had customers waiting up to 1 hour for a gate.

Scottiedog · Sat Sep 09, 2006 8:20 pm

Quoting BCAInfoSys (Reply 2):
I had it happen to me flying BMI from MAN-LHR years ago. Sat on the LHR tarmac for nearly an hour before they deplaned us onto the tarmac, put us on buses, and took us on what seemed like a very long tour of the backside of LHR.

Needless to say, I had a 2-hour connection on my way to ORD-YYZ, and I barely made it. Turned me off from BD for a while...

Silly question - I know it probably had to do with the fares levels being offered, but why did you appear to fly MAN/LHR/ORD/YYZ, when BD fly direct MAN/ORD on a daily basis?

Seems that the North American market still only thinks of LHR as being the gateway to Britain, when MAN is there for the asking!!

Lucky42 · Sat Sep 09, 2006 8:31 pm

The old DTW was notorious for this..I used to laugh when the pilot would say we are getting in 20 mins early. You would see people get all excited I told one guy don't get too excited we might get on the ground early but wou will be on time or even late by the time you actually get off.

srbmod · Sun Sep 10, 2006 2:15 am

Quoting Coronado990 (Reply 6):
Does anyone know the minimum buffer time between flights at a gate? I would hope that it is not back-to-back (meaning zero minutes), but at least 15 or so minutes for some "recovery" time.

When I worked @ FL, we'd have planes waiting on the ramp for a flight to pushback/powerback so they could park at that gate, as there were no other open gates at that time (on some occassions, our gate got thrown a flight at the last minute because the gate it was supposed to use was unavailable due to either a late inbound or an maintenance delay on the a/c at that gate). As soon as the plane we sent out taxied out, we'd marshall the other plane in (the gate agent would just stay at the jetway). Sometimes a gate agent from the original gate or a supervisor will run the connection list to the gate so that those deplaning pax can get their connections (as more than likely the crew at the new gate didn't have time to run the printout).

There was a time period in ATL right after FL added four gates on C where some gate crews worked three gates instead of two. It'd get really hectic when you had three flights coming into your gates within twenty minutes and had so many bags coming off that you'd have to have two transfer drivers and sometimes even resort to borrowing another gates' driver or making gates come get their bags. Get one a/c unloaded and another would be coming in. I remember on several occassions, I'd be coming off of an a/c I had just cleaned (at the time, the cabin cleaning was done by a member of the gate crew) and one pulled up while I was on the other a/c.

zrs70 · Sun Sep 10, 2006 2:30 am

It happens often. A couple of years ago, flying into ORD on UA, the airport was so jammed, we ended up taxiing around the entire airport three times (around the terminal complex). There was no where to park us while the gate cleared.

GulfstreamGuy · Sun Sep 10, 2006 2:35 am

Here in LIT, We have our DC-9-51 to MEM that is scheduled to depart at 1620. We then have a CRJ from DTW that is scheduled to arrive at 1634. It is very common for the CRJ to get here very early. I have seen it arrive as early as 1402! Since LIT only has one NW gate, it has to remote park until the 9 goes bye-bye. 9E pilots sometimes bitch about having to wait but what the heck can you do?

GulfstreamGuy

kaddyuk · Sun Sep 10, 2006 2:56 am

I've waited over an hour for an inbound to get onto gate... The problem is an aircraft is delayed but with a rolling delay and you're told "Ten more minutes" then ten minutes later you get "Ten More Minutes"...

There are frequent problem airlines at Heathrow who do nothing to aleviate the problem of gate shortages. Then when the plane DOES get on the gate, the jetty doesnt work haha!

TransWorldSTL · Sun Sep 10, 2006 3:08 am

Quoting GulfstreamGuy (Reply 26):
CRJ from DTW that is scheduled to arrive at 1634. It is very common for the CRJ to get here very early. I have seen it arrive as early as 1402!

Is the CRJ capable of time travel?

carduelis · Sun Sep 10, 2006 3:37 am

One of the reasons for delays to stands at LHR, particularly T1 is that the aircraft operating domestically MANLHR is then scheduled to operate on an international European servce.

Some gates at T1 are solely for domestic flights, and others for international, so rather than changing the aircraft from a domestic stand after the pax have disembarked the aircraft parks at the international stand straight away. As there are Customs and Immigration linked to the international stands the incoming domestic pax have to be put into buses to take them to the domestic area, and vice versa.

If the domestic aircraft is a domestic to domestic flight you will very often see one aircraft coming off stand with another going straight into it's vacated area, just as another posted mentioned.

njdevilsin03 · Sun Sep 10, 2006 5:25 am

Spirt and FLL are on the top of the list with having to wait for a gate. Flew in from ACY a few weeks ago. We arrived 20 minutes early and were waiting for Gate H1 to push back. We were told it'd be 10 minutes...Every single gate at the terminal was being used. The plane at our gate was bound for Tampa but was awaiting passengers to clear customs from ealier flights. 20 minutes later we were told we'd be further delayed and they were looking for gates at concourse F but that didn't work out. Passengers were getting extremely mad and the pilot was telling people to calm down every five minutes...My mother went to use the bathroom in the back and said passengers were in heavy arguments with the crew members...Over 1.5 hours after we landed we were finally at the gate and everyone was steamed! And we weren't offered any water and were just sitting there cooking under the South Florida heat. Avoid that concourse H at FLL between 6 and 8 pm as best as you can. Because you will be sitting there waiting for your gate quite often!

AsstChiefMark · Sun Sep 10, 2006 5:28 am

This happens to me on half of my flights into MSP. The longest wait was 50 minutes.

Mark

KL642 · Sun Sep 10, 2006 7:20 am

One time years ago flying AA to ORD, we landed 10 minutes early. As we exited the runway the FO proudly announced "another American Airlines early arrival." We ended up waiting 1 hour for our gate!!!!

jfk69 · Sun Sep 10, 2006 12:25 pm

Quoting HikesWithEyes (Reply 19):
Just out of curiousity, did your flight depart SEA early?

Flight actually departed SEA 10 min late but arrived early.

ckfred · Sun Sep 10, 2006 1:35 pm

A friend of mine who flies for AA used to joke that 10 minutes early meant 20 minutes late, because by the time you landed, taxied to a penalty box, waited for the gate to clear, then taxied in, the flight was 20 minutes late.

It seemed that this used to happen a lot to me flying AA into ORD. If landing on 27L-9R, we would often sit off of the east end of the runway, near T5, waiting for the gate to open.

Since AA went to the rolling hub at ORD, my friend tells me that he sits in the penalty box far less often, because AA no longer has 30 to 40 flights leaving in a span of 20 minutes.

On New Year's Day, 2005, I was on an AA flight from ATL to ORD that touched down 40 minutes ahead of scheduled arrival time, and we taxied straight into the gate.

rongotai · Sun Sep 10, 2006 1:52 pm

I agree that the LHR thing is appalling. There is now nothing that makes my heart sink more than being told when taking off from LAX that there is a strong jetstream and we are going to arrive at LHR an hour or more early.

This is because on four occasions now the early arrival has seen us sent to a remote stand. By the time the buses arrive, we get to T3 and the luggage arrives, I have been an hour or more LATE in reaching the street.

cgagn · Sun Sep 10, 2006 2:13 pm

Quoting KL642 (Reply 32):
One time years ago flying AA to ORD, we landed 10 minutes early. As we exited the runway the FO proudly announced "another American Airlines early arrival." We ended up waiting 1 hour for our gate!!!!

I agree totally!! Nothing is funnier than an airline making a huge deal about being early in one sentence, then the next, explaining that we have to wait 20 minutes for our gate. Being early isn't always a good thing.

C-GAGN

ZK-NBT · Sun Sep 10, 2006 2:43 pm

It happens at the AKL International terminal fairly often, i've seen aircraft having to hold for 15-20 mins several times while the correct gate becomes avaliable. In some cases its due to a certain aircraft type not been able to park at some gates.

57AZ · Sun Sep 10, 2006 5:54 pm

Had that happen to me on my last flight into DCA. Delta landed early and had to do a 360 on the ramp due to congestion. Fortunately there was a flight that was right at push back, so we only had to hold for a couple of minutes.

wr70beh · Sun Sep 10, 2006 6:42 pm

Had it happen in IAH back in June coming in from LAS. Waited for about 20 minutes. Don't be fooled by the "getting in early" announcement. There is usually a catch.

rjpieces · Sun Sep 10, 2006 11:01 pm

It seems to happen quite often at Terminal 6 with jetBlue...Same thing happened to my mother last week who was on the DEN-JFK overnight...They landed and had to wait a solid 20-30 minutes before pulling into Gate 2 I believe.

And as a matter of personal opinion, there's nothing I hate more than landing and having to wait for a gate!

[Edited 2006-09-10 16:01:46]

CWAFlyer · Mon Sep 11, 2006 4:05 am

I don't know about how JetBlue is set up gate-wise in JFK, but it's entirely possible the gates were set up to accomodate a plane with an inop APU. Airlines don't typically have ground power and air at every single gate and have to park planes accordingly. Often times it has to do with where the plane is going next. In SLC for example, the SkyWest flights to Canada operate out of the first gate closest to the "Y", so it's not as simple as just moving the plane to another gate.

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