Delta Flight Delayed 70 Mins On Ground for Deplaning

Not my words
Delta flight 2048 from Minneapolis took about 70 min after landing to deplane in Sioux Falls due to “Delta’s ground crews worked to board another flight at an adjacent gate,” airline representatives said in a statement.

“Just experienced the absolute worse customer service. Way to go @ Delta!! Our plane had to sit for an hour in Sioux Falls due to YOUR staffing issues. How thoughtless of you!” a passenger tweet

My words:

First off, I’ve heard some weird reasons for delays. But what in the world causes a flight to be delayed at its gate for over an hour due to the gate next door being boarded? I’ve seen time after time again where people deplane and board and back and forth on gates so close to each other where it seems like people are going in and leaving the same gate entrance (at certain angles). I’m seriously confused. Are they saying they had so little ground staff that the entire ground staff was working on another flight?
You don’t even need a lot of ground staff on a deplane. I can see boarding being an issue but deplaning you just walk down the airbridge into the terminal and bam it’s done.

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Well silly me. Thanks for the heads up. I put a space between that so it’s no longer a tag. Good catch.

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This doesn’t sound like a big deal. Planes get delayed all the time.

The reason is pretty odd though.

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It was a big enough deal to be posted on the media. I’m just confused why it was a delay at all. Lol that’s my only question and really the only reason for this post.

I agree, it isn’t something worth making a huge fuss over.

Small airport, not many Delta staff.

But deplaning takes barely any staff. So what staff are needed to deplane? Just use the FAs if need be. I don’t understand first off why it took an hour for the other flight to board and why the delayed flight couldn’t deplane with the help of onboard staff.

Well if I had to guess, Sioux Falls isn’t a massive airport, Delta probably only has two or three gates. If the ground crew was understaffed they wouldn’t have enough people to tend to both planes.

You need the dude with the glow stick hands, a dude driving the jetway, and a dude with the treadmill to unload bags.

If most, if not all, of those people are working on the adjacent aircraft, they wouldn’t be able to take care of the aircraft delayed.

Sioux Falls is a tiny airport, having a delay to understaffing probably isn’t to uncommon.

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So the delay is coming from the vehicles? I thought they were talking about the inside of the airport. Makes much more sense if it has to do with the walkers and director, etc.

…so?

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Misha,

You know if this were Frontier he would have thought twice about posting a topic like this…
Delays happen basically everyday. Just sayin

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