As has been noted before, the Airport may well have offered an alternative stand but the airline then chose not to go with it. Will be lots of reasons - don't want their passengers bussed if on a remote stand and if on a remote stand there would likely be no time to re-position the aircraft on to the terminal with a relatively quick turnaround, tugging from remote costs etc etc.
One wonders what happened on this occasion - what did the crew say to the pax? In any case, from the pax point of view the Airport gets the blame as usual when something goes wrong, even when the problem may be not be within MAplc's sphere of responsibility.
Will be interesting to see what feedback you get from the Airport
Suzeman