Agreed. It's completely stupid. I'd much rather stay waiting at the gate lounge over sitting on the plane in a queue. I don't care if it's "less efficient," the lounge is at least more comfortable than the stifling conditions of economy class on modern planes.
As a side note, there were babies on that plane in those temperatures for that long!? You literally go to jail for leaving babies in a car in the summer because at those temps for too long will legit kill babies. No wonder all of the babies were screaming on that plane.
I think the problem is about slot management and the way they work.
In ATC, at least in Europe but FAA is probably more or less the same, your flight can get delayed for whatever reason (meteo, atc capacity, airport etc…).
In case of a delay you get a SAM, slot allocation message with a new EOBT (estimated off block time). You can shorten this waiting time by various means, you will get an SRM (slot revision) and in order to be certain that you won’t miss this slot (or get a new worst one) you have to send a ready message.
Ready means door closed, ready for pushback. And that’s the problem here, that’s how you get stuck in an airplane on the ground, cause you’re « ready ».
That sucks, but a crew will generally not board a plane if they have a huge non negociable slot. But if they think the slot could improve so they can stick to their schedule, you’ll probably end up waiting in a shitty overcrowded cabin.
And sometimes it’s the airport doing shit like pre boarding a plane so they can pack passengers for another flight at the gate.
Wow, the more I write about how the industry work, the more I hate it. Time to change career.