At T3 it's BAA. They take into account many factors when they allocate a gate. In your case, there are only a few gates on the airfield that can take a 340-600, so perhaps that's why it got a gate before you (could have been an hour'swait for another 346 gate), also in my experience it's often the airlines themselves that want you to wait for an occupied gate. For many reasons. Perhaps for them a ten mintue wait for an airbridge stand is better than you parking immediately on a gate with no airbridge, and then you'd have to wait for half an hour while somone rustled up enough coaches to take you to the terminal. Maybe they just don't want all the dispatchers and ground staff, who are poised at the original gate, to have to walk all the way to the other side of the terminal which might take 20 minutes, and then find that there's equipment blocking the stand etc.
Last edited by Gonzo; 19th April 2004 at 21:35.