I have a question regarding CSA and Gate Agents

[Markm1811]

Do you guys/gals ever get the brunt of issues arising from things the CSA or Gate Agents tell passengers. Example. I have a relative flying in from a well known NJ airport and they were told that the delay ( 3 hours) was due to wx affecting their inbound flight from say Canada. The only issue with that was that there is a screen in the gate area on CNN with WX on that showed No such WX issues, I looked it up on ADF too and sure as heck High Clgs and great Vis. My relative said that some other people commented that there was no WX issues including a couple of pilots and apparently a new gate agent finally conceded that it was a late Equipment problem. Do you frontseaters even know what the gates are saying about your flights..

Makes me wonder about when I issue instructions (eg No LAV on board) if they even share the information around the gate area..

Fly Safe.

Midnight Brit
coming to an ACARS near you 4 times a week

 

[JediNein]

The announcements sound like Charlie Brown's teacher, "muwah muwah muwah wah". Now the gate is 30x busier because everyone thinks any announcements means "come to the gate and ask 9 zillion questions about the flight, the next flight, your connecting flight, the seat next to you, the flight you think you are going to take next year sometime, and so on."

Generally, the agents do their best. Telling the customer a lie to make them go away doesn't look good and does not do much for customer satisfaction surveys. But then, the company I worked for actually cared about customer satisfaction.

Fly SAFE!
Jedi Nein

 

[Thedude]

It could have been low ceiling or low vis....just beacuse you didnt see a weather system on the radar doesnt mean that the weather was good. But then again I have known a few agents to lie.

 

[U of I Tweak]

We generally tell the passengers the truth. Besides, we'd prefer that it's a MX issue. When it's weather passengers don't get any type of compensation (meals, hotels etc).

Of course most of the passengers don't believe us. We had a cancelled flight last winter because braking action was nil and there was a pretty hefty crosswind. A passenger informed me that his watch indicated that the pressure was rising, so the weather should be getting better and the flight could go...

Also, we regularly deny passengers when they show up too late. One said, "the real reason I couldn't get on was because the flight was overweight, right?" No, the real reason she was denied was because she showed up 20 minutes before the flight's departure.

I had one gentleman show up one night after his earlier inbound had cancelled due to weather. He "knew"that was a lie because his friend the doctor said that it wasn't snowing.

Or there was the plane that diverted from BMI one night due to fog. The pilot noted that a little old lady "didn't know why he couldn't see the runway. I could see it just fine."

One more thing to keep in mind; the weather at both the departure and destination could be great, but if the weather is bad somewhere else, or if there was a ground stop earlier in the day, the plane could have been delayed hours before the "current" delayed flight. We have delays all the time that are a result of late equipment arriving in DTW, and hence being delayed into CMI. If it was weather that delayed it originally, it's still a weather delay even though it is indirect.