What's going on in Dulles?

[jergar999]

I wish I had it so good. I do a lot of air ambulance flights to reservations and other unmaintained rural facilities. After landing on a 3000x60 runway that has no fence I taxi onto the gravel ramp and shut down. The "pilot lounge" usually consists of a dingy yellow and brown mattress someone has discarded right next to the runway or ramp.

 

[great cornholio]

In the fingers as I heard someone else call it I didnt see any running water at all. In the other part of the G gates there was a bathroom so I hope it has running water. And nope its not just Saabs there anymore. The G gates was home to ERJs, CRJs, and Saabs when I was there. The rampers are awesome. They claimed to be short handed but almost 20 of them were hanging out at the empty gate next to us and with the wx that day and ground delays Im sure they were overworked all day, but you think they would try to get the last plane of the night out asap so they could go home since it was pushing 1am and we were still on the gate. Although I was looking forward to the ramper rumble when I started hearing arguing, but it never got past that...oh well.

 

[I.P. Freley]

Interesting... I haven't had bad luck with the rampers in "the fingers". It's the REST of the "Dulles Experience" that is so godawful.

The gate agents have been both nice and helpful, and the rampies... Well, maybe they DO need a little coaching and perhaps a little "rah-rah team" to get 'em going, but at least they haven't been ACTIVELY slow or incompetent like an unfortunate number of rampies in another hub I can think of...

Give 'em some credit, they can SEEM like they are trying.

At least that's been my experience, keeping in mind I've only been in and out of there a dozen times or so.