Passengers have now been on board for over an hour. He offers tours of the cockpit but nary a glass of water nor a bag of peanuts is offered to any but First Class passengers. Passengers using cell phones are ordered to turn them off. Of course there is no reason why passengers in an aircraft on the runway on a shutdown airport cannot use cell phones, but we are already deep in the woods of illogic and the depths of disrespect. An hour's delay in landing versus several hours' delay in takeoff should be an easy decision.
Airlines engage in many tricks to make their on-time statistics look better.
This seems to be one of them. Here are five decisions that could have made this flight less of a nightmare for its passengers. Train gate agents in courteous and informative ways to deal with passengers inconvenienced by scheduling problems. When trouble occurs, the attitude of arrogance that comes over some gate agents is inexcusable. Do not insist on the ritualistic cell phone ban when there is no common sense reason to enforce it.