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Waiting at the Gate
The Travel Critic · September 13, 1999

The only thing better than an on-time arrival is an early arrival. At least that's what Bill Thomas thought when his recent TWA flight touched down in St. Louis 15 minutes ahead of schedule.

"There was an aircraft at our gate, so we parked next to the gate for about seven minutes, waiting for the plane to pull out," he remembers. "Then we taxied away from our gate to another gate, where we parked while waiting for gate personnel to come the gate and park us."

His flight was still five minutes early. "We waited 10 minutes for the gate personnel to come to our gate and direct the aircraft in and move the Jetway to the door. Now we are five minutes late. We were a frustrated bunch of folks. I was at the back of the plane and just barely made my connection."

Adds Thomas, who works for the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, "I have come to dread the early arrival announcement."

The Department of Transportation doesn't keep stats on early landings. But Air Travelers Association president David Stempler believes there are more early arrivals these days because carriers have padded their schedules to improve their ratings on what the Feds do track - on-time arrivals. (The DOT counts a flight as "on time" if it arrives at the gate no more than 15 minutes after the scheduled arrival.)

"If you look at the flying times between many cities," Stempler says, "they're actually longer than they used to be a decade ago." But TWA spokesman Jim Brown says early arrivals that get snagged at the gate remain "very rare" and usually occur in bad weather or in a hub city like St. Louis.

"We try to do our best to stagger the arrivals when they come in and get the departures out," he added. "A lot of it involves doing what you can to prevent the problem from happening in the first place - using computer modeling and traffic management systems."

If TWA's on-time ratings are any indication, the carrier is indeed eager to get passengers to the gate on time. TWA has led the industry for seven of the previous 10 months for which numbers are available. In May, TWA had 82.6 percent of its flights arriving on time, followed by Northwest Airlines (82.3 percent) and Southwest Airlines (80.2 percent). American Airlines performed the worst, with a 65.1 percent on-time record. The average was 75.6 percent.

Early arrivals that turn late aren't unique to TWA. I've experienced a number of early arrivals - usually coming from Europe, when there's a stronger-than-expected tailwind - and it's invariably the same drill. We arrive 10 or 20 minutes early, get sent to a remote part of the airport to wait, and then arrive at the gate a little early or right about on time. I think the most frustrating aspect of an early arrival is that you know you're there, but there's nothing you can do to hurry things up.

"It seems to me that early arrival always meant, 'We are waiting for our gate to clear,' " says Curtis Derby, a retired art buyer from Milton, Fla. "The one I like the best was on a flight from Columbus to Orlando. The pilot said, 'Folks, we are being denied a gate on early arrival, so as we pass over the Georgia-Florida border I will be making some lazy esses in the sky to bleed off some time.'"

Who is to blame for early arrivals gone awry? It's never the same thing twice, according to the airline experts I spoke with. One time it could be the weather, another time it could be a staffing shortage or inadequate facilities or just poor planning. It's unfair to blame the airlines alone.

Regardless of who is at fault, passengers are entitled to know when and where these gateless early arrivals are happening. In addition to requiring airlines to report when a plane arrives, the DOT should also make them record the time between then and when the first passenger sets foot in the terminal.

Because that's the arrival time that matters.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.