Narrative:

We landed in iah just before a large storm system arrived at the airport. Upon taxi in we noticed the lightning really getting started and the flashing yellow lights on the terminals indicating the ramp closure. We auto-parked at our gate in accordance with the extreme weather guidelines before it even started raining. We made an announcement to the passengers about the ramp closure and the safety reasons for keeping the doors closed. The storm was moving incredibly slowly and after 1 hour the flight attendant (flight attendant) did a full beverage service and handed out stroopwafels that had been mis-catered on the airplane. After the second hour we [did] another full beverage service. The ramp opened up after approximately 3:15 from our on time. We kept the cockpit door open and showed the lightning strikes on a website I found that tracks it and explained the ramp safety rules to the passengers. We had a couple of folks get frustrated; but overall the flight attendant kept the mood calm. It helped that the APU worked and we could keep the cabin comfortable. I'm writing this [report] because ops was asking crews to pop open then reclose their doors in order to capture an in time so they wouldn't go over the [time] limits. No one was allowed off the planes because of the ramp closure so this didn't meet the actual requirement to let the passengers off so a lot of us were advising crews to keep the doors shut. I feel that; in this case; [the company] was trying to help their stats and lower the amount of planes that went over [time] limits so they didn't have to do so much paperwork.tell ops to 'shove it' in the most polite terms possible.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Air carrier flight crew reported a 3 hour 15 minute delay opening the aircraft door due to ramp closure for lightning strikes. As a result of this and prior reroutes; the crew exceeded the FAR allowable flight time.

Narrative: We landed in IAH just before a large storm system arrived at the airport. Upon taxi in we noticed the lightning really getting started and the flashing yellow lights on the terminals indicating the ramp closure. We auto-parked at our gate in accordance with the extreme weather guidelines before it even started raining. We made an announcement to the passengers about the ramp closure and the safety reasons for keeping the doors closed. The storm was moving incredibly slowly and after 1 hour the Flight Attendant (FA) did a full beverage service and handed out Stroopwafels that had been mis-catered on the airplane. After the second hour we [did] another full beverage service. The ramp opened up after approximately 3:15 from our ON time. We kept the cockpit door open and showed the lightning strikes on a website I found that tracks it and explained the ramp safety rules to the passengers. We had a couple of folks get frustrated; but overall the FA kept the mood calm. It helped that the APU worked and we could keep the cabin comfortable. I'm writing this [report] because ops was asking crews to pop open then reclose their doors in order to capture an IN time so they wouldn't go over the [time] limits. No one was allowed off the planes because of the ramp closure so this didn't meet the actual requirement to let the passengers off so a lot of us were advising crews to keep the doors shut. I feel that; in this case; [the Company] was trying to help their stats and lower the amount of planes that went over [time] limits so they didn't have to do so much paperwork.Tell Ops to 'shove it' in the most polite terms possible.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.