Originally Posted by
spooldup
I am always curious what % of our delays are within 30 mins of departure/arrival. I have had a lot where we block out late technically, so it counts as delayed, but we arrive early, on time or only a little bit late.
But yeah, it makes sense. Until I get treated better by gate agents (who wear nice clothes and have actual CS training) and have better overall customer service, I wouldn't take us for business travel over someone else unless the price was so disproportionate that it didn't make sense to spend an extra hundred or so.
We have to send an ACARS delay report for even a one minute delay it seems. So, I imagine blocking in a minute late is also counted. I have pushed so late I thought there's no way we are getting there on time and yet we get there maybe 5 minutes behind schedule. There are still way too many instances of sitting around on a taxiway waiting for gates or parked with the nose wheel on the gate number trying to get rampers to understand there's a baggage cart inside the red line and instead they grab a chock and throw it to the side thinking "that must have been it."
Recently I arrived at the gate for a head start flight and it was insanity at the frontier gates. 4 head starts scheduled to depart and completely understaffed. The reason being was operational efficiency. Translation we would rather everyone depart late than to pay people to staff properly. That's some happy horse **** right there.