What happened at the PHL Express operation on 1/5...

[wings396]

Heard that most of the gate agents walked off and left the gates uncoverd on the night of 1/5...any info on this one. This was passed on to us from some passengers that were stuck there for hours. Many flights were cancelled today and also got word of only ONE deicier being used for the entire operation.

 

[magsau]

It must have been in relation to the weather in the northeast last night. I was commuting home on ACA (ua express) from IAD yesterday and they pretty much gave up the operation and cancelled all of the afternoon bank of flights.

The only good thing in the cards for UA is that we do not have to pay them for those xld flights. But at the same time we have all those stranded pax that blame mainline UAL for the problems of UAX. Probably the same at U.

 

[wings396]

That is probobly what happend. The problems in PHL were part weather related as they were in IAD with UAX. The problems there went deeper with 4-5 hour deicing delays and the passengers reports of no gate agents to be found. I have seen PHL go down the drain in bad WX, but not to this extent.

 

[dashtrainer]

I've heard it was because ALG management imposed work rule changes because the union representing these folks and management could not come up with an acceptable agreement. It is my understanding that these workers now have to pay all of their medical insurance premiums which can be around $700.00 a month. When your only making $7.50/hr, your basically working for nothing.

 

[Heinrich]

I flew out of PHL last night about 7pm. There was about a one-hour delay for de-icing. It was snowing, rainy and overally messy. Planes were in all de-icing stations but there seemed to be only 1 or 2 in operation simultaneously. Hard to tell from my window. But there were plenty of gate agents at that time.

 

[ITRADE]

One flake of snow hits the ground at PHL and a national emergency is declared.[BR][BR]Those close-separation parallel runways make for awful headaches.

 

[dash8dr]

typical PHL one rumor is.....finger prints are due and personnel are not willing to submit and walked off the job. that would not suprise me one bit...........we had pawobs everywhere and phl was stacked with bags and 3 people on the concourse and 2200