A lesson taught again by flight delays: Airlines need to be in the communication business
I managed the dubious achievement of spending an extra hour or so on different Dulles Airport taxiways two days in a row–and one of those was much easier to deal with than the other.
The first one was the worse one. After a delayed departure from San Diego (at the end of a Qualcomm event for which the company covered travel costs for journalists and analysts invited), we landed Thursday night and then took about 50 minutes to cover the last mile or so.
The pilot gave one update after we’d stopped by IAD’s private-jet facilities, one of the farthest points possible on a taxiway from our assigned gate in the C concourse, explaining that recent thunderstorms had caused multiple delays and left our gate occupied. And then we had extended periods of silence as passengers who had connecting flights in the event’s last bank of transatlantic departures started getting antsy and then angry.
We did finally reach our gate at 10:40 p.m., and from the departure boards showing those late flights getting delayed to 11:15 p.m. or beyond, it looked like everybody should have made their connections. I was just happy to be able to take the last Metro train home.
Less than 16 hours later, I was back at Dulles for a flight to Orlando. This one pushed back on time, then stopped on the way to runway 30–and we didn’t have to wonder why, as this pilot explained that they’d discovered an issue with the emergency-evacuation lighting not working that required us to return to the gate for maintenance technicians to assess.
He kept coming back on to update us on the progress of things, both at the gate and then when we spent close to an hour parked near our previous stopping point while air traffic control had to revise our route and the airline’s dispatchers redid the numbers on our flight.
This second flight had two other things absent from the first: audio from the flight deck available via the seatback screens (what I still think of as Channel 9, from its spot on United’s old audio system) and Starlink inflight connectivity.
Being able to hear our crew communicate with ATC kept me ahead of developments, while free WiFi that actually worked let me follow our flight’s progress in the Flightradar24 app on my phone. I also could have used that satellite connectivity to tune into LiveATC.net on my phone, but then I’d have had to pick particular feeds after our departure.
After we landed, I thanked the pilot for taking time to let us know what had been holding up things and for having Channel 9 on… and then he said he didn’t know that system had been on, joking that this meant I’d known more than he did.
But intentional or not, being kept in the loop and having ways to put myself in the loop made me feel a little more appreciated as a customer. I’ll try to remember how that felt when I’m going on about my own work, here and on social media.
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