Arriving at the gate and waiting
I'm not a really frequent flyer, but love flying and probably travel on business every two weeks or so. On Tuesday, arrived on a Continental Express flight from Charlotte to Houston and landed about 7:30 pm, taxied , and arrived at the gate. The pilot announced that our gate had a mechanical problem, and we would wait for an adjacent gate to clear. In about five minutes, it did clear, and he completed taxiing up to the gate and powered the aircraft down.
Then we waited, and waited, and waited. Despite repeated calls by the pilot to the gate agent, no one appeared to operate the jetway. The baggage handlers arrived, appeared puzzled that no one was working the jetway, and proceeded to unload the baggage. Finally, at 8:15, a gate agent showed up and positioned the jetway so we could get off. As you can imagine, by this time, both the crew and passengers were losing patience.
How can this happen? Is this a case of management over-scheduling the gate agents? Is this laziness or incompetency? I realize that without additional facts it's hard to tell, but as crews and passengers, are you seeing more incidents like this one, or is this an isloated event...