no available gate causing flight delay

[dave8675309]

so back on October 19th i was flying from Austin TX to Tampa Florida 5pm flight which was flight 228 all was going well and flight showing ontime when in fact we were far from ontime. why were we delayed because another flight wanted to take over our gate and it pulled up 5min before we should have begun boarding and took 25min to deplane then another 20min before it left making our plane not arrive at our gate until 40min after we should have left then they had to deplane and board us up causing us to be over an hour late. they never gave us an update on when we would leave they just kept saying Tampa will be next....

why wouldn't you move us to another gate as there were other gates open rather than delaying us with no good reason weather was fine plane was fine except the Internet didn't work oh and I got a good seat no middle seat for once.

how do i talk to someone about this easily preventable delay???? 

[dfwskier · Accepted solution]

Hi Dave.

Sorry to hear about the  delay. I can only guess what happened to you, but here goes. I'd guess that

the plane you were supposed to take wasn't yet at the airport.. If it had been, then I think the airline

would have sent it to one of the other "open" gates. Then you would have been routed to the other gate for boarding. That happens to me all the time.  Your plane, loaded with pasengers, wouldn't have just sat on the tarmac for an hour waiting for it's originally schedued gate.

Anyway, to answer your question, if you want to talk with someone about the delay, your best bets are twitter or e-mail. The top left of Southwest's contact us page explains how to use either.

https://www.southwest.com/contact-us/contact-us.html?clk=GFOOTER-CUSTOMER-CONTACT-US

Hope your future flights are less challenging.

[bec102896 · Accepted solution]

@dave8675309

So I was actually on this flight a few weeks a go and yes I agree that delay was annoying but they happen I do however have some info I got from talking to the gate agent while waiting for the plane that day. 

the reason we couldn't move to another gate is that in Austin Southwest has 6 gates so the gate you and I saw open didn't belong to Southwest so they could not use that gate. I know there is an expansion going on at the airport including another airline moving to the new south terminal this week and I am guessing that will help with gate availability in the future as I am guessing Southwest might have access to a shared gate for situations like this. Another note is there were numerous delays at that time with other flights so that's why those gates weren't available. 

While i I was waiting for our flight to arrive at the gate I did see EMS arrive at the gate which was because of a medical situation and that's probably why that plane took over our gate and our flight was delayed. also that's probably the reason it took so long for that flight to deplane. 

I know our flight was on the ground about 35min before if could pull in to our gate and he it did delay us a bit but luckily they were able to make up some time in flight. 

if you would like to discuss your experience with Southwest directly I would check out the contact options which were posted above by @dfwskier

hopefully next time you fly out of Austin there won't be a delay because of gate availability 

Blake