One of the most agonizing aspects of air travel is waiting out a flight delay, desperate for information.
Within the United States, for example, one in four domestic flights runs late, meaning that about 400,000 passengers sit captive at gates or on the tarmac every day .
“They’re very poor at getting on the intercom and saying, ‘Here’s our situation,'” said Jennifer Shirkani, owner of a management consulting business in Manchester, New Hampshire, who flies about 100,000 miles, or 161,000 kilometers, a year. “In some cases, there’s not even a crew member at the gate until two minutes before the scheduled boarding time. So we’re really on our own to find out what’s going on.”
If you have ever felt frustrated by the disconnect between what you hear from a gate agent, see on an electronic display, find out when you call the airline or even see out the window — no aircraft ready to go — it turns out there is a disconnect. Literally, there is a convoluted flow of information.
Passengers are at the end of a communication chain that involves multiple computer systems, gate agents, pilots, flight dispatchers, air traffic controllers, and other personnel, with updates moving along different paths.
“You can have three or four different systems providing information, one quicker than another at any point in time,” said Cindy Bouchard, a former airport customer service supervisor with US Airways.
During a delay, gate agents and the flight crew communicate with the airline along separate channels, and do not necessarily talk to each other. Pilots typically get more updated information because they are in direct contact with the airline’s system operations control center — essentially, the brain that keeps track of every aircraft’s schedule.
In the United States, pilots also communicate with tower personnel who are linked to the Federal Aviation Administration’s command…