Michael El

+2 my first thought when I saw this thread. I knew there was a reason I liked you Mike.

UrbaneGent

But that's not his fault - it's UAs. I don't understand why my fellow FTers are so, what's the word, abrasive and spiteful to other members situations until it happens to them.

PREFACE: not against you LilAbner, just in general. I have spoken to some who are afraid to post because they might get "eaten alive" by other members. I sometimes wonder if same posters conduct themselves in this manner IRL.

LilAbner

Listen, I have spent many a night (mostly in LAX) due to a mis-connect (last flight of the evening) and I was pissed every time. These threads pop up about 3 or 4 times a week, re NOT HOLDING a plane for people. I have been a "Runner" many, many times and sometimes I make it and sometimes I don't. I've had them wait for me, and I've seen my plane still hooked up to the jet-way for a half hour or more and they wouldn't let me board, because the flight was closed out.

When was the last time a train, anywhere in the world, was held for ANYBODY? Frankly, I'm really getting bored with the Smisek factor being interjected into every other response. What's so hard to understand that airplanes leave on time, for many, many reasons and gate agents do as they're told or they get fired?

If anyone is afraid to post because of lack of sympathy because they missed their airplane ride from point "B" to point "C" then maybe they should take a train!

Mike Jacoubowsky

But sometimes it does happen just like in the movies. Even for, at the time, a lowly 2P. It still might have come down just the way you described, but it really did feel like something out of a movie. United likely got a customer for life that day. ^

dsquared37

I've actually had this work twice, most recently in November. Met by a cart to take us to the connection.... on another airline. Oh wait, It was TG-PG.

Fancy that, it does happen in real life, albeit not with UA.

rudling

Funny how pedantic we (including me) get about the details. What if we substitute 'United' more generally for the GA in this case? What if the request was that the arriving GA call the zone controller, instead of the departing gate? Then all of these responses about the GA (specifically) not having the authority to hold the flight would be moot, right?

Does United hold flights for late-arriving connecting passengers? Rarely, perhaps, but yes, sometimes. At least a couple of times in the last 30 years I've arrived at a gate to be told "Rudling? We've been waiting for you," and had the door closed right behind me. I know many others have experienced the same.

Is there a little bit of unofficial discretion on the part of the departing GA? This is debatable, I guess, but I believe there is, even if it's about whether to close early or on time. But moreover -

Is there a person somewhere at the airport who makes the official decision to hold the flight for inbound connections, GA or not? Of course there is.

And if I'm connecting, does this person have all the info IT can provide about when my inbound flight parked at the gate, how far it is from my arriving gate to my departing gate, whether I have checked baggage, whether there's another flight that I could take that day and how full it is, (and, if they bother to check) what seat I'm in on my arriving flight, perhaps whether the jetway was promptly extended, etc.? Again, yes.

But there is some other information that this person doesn't have - for example, that I understand the urgency of the situation and am not likely to stop en route, have limited/light hand baggage, am free of medical/mobility issues that might slow me down (and am reasonably in shape) and am willing to haul *ss to the extent that I can, in order to make the next flight.

So, IMHO the relevant question is: is there a scenario where this additional information would be useful to the person making the decision about holding the flight, and might cause him/her to hold it, knowing that it would only be (e.g.) for 5 minutes instead of 10 or 15?

If the answer is anything other than "No - never" (and my own experience and that of other FTers suggests that it's not never, even if it is rare), then it seems reasonable that a quick comment over the shoulder to the arriving GA might be worthwhile. Blurting out "Would you mind calling and telling them that I'm running for 954" to a GA as I pass shouldn't delay me much, and if s/he was sympathetic and paying attention, then s/he might get all of that additional information in one glance.

So, whether s/he calls the departing gate agent (who is admittedly very busy) or the zone controller or other personage who's deciding the official fate of my connecting flight - if she calls and says "this guy is headed to 954, he's moving pretty fast and he's focused," will that never make the difference between making and missing my connection?

tarheelnj

Even if UA goes by the book on holding flights, there are still things that should factor into that decision, including the following:

1. Flight goes straight to the gate after landing (vs. "there's another plane in our gate, and even though there are several other open gates, we're going to sit here an wait for it to leave.")
2. The arrival gate agent is actually waiting at the jetbridge controls, and connects immediately after the plane stops (vs. "we're just waiting for an agent to connect the jetbridge").
3. For express jet flights, the gate-checked bags are brought over promptly. They should even have a special tag for bags for connecting passengers and bring those up first (I wouldn't like that personally, since I'm a hub captive, but it seems fair).

The above are delay issues within UA's control, and should be taken into account. At the same time, I sympathize with the people that need the outbound flight to depart on time (I'm often one of them.)

If you're the GA at a departing flight, and you're considering closing the flight early, knowing whether the missing passenger is a 20-something single person with sneakers who starts running from the inbound gate vs. an elderly couple (can you see that in Shares?) could make a difference.

fastair

I look at all of those things when working an outbound flight. I seewhat is currently at the gate of the inbound flight (ie te eta accurate, has the other plane already pused or will the inbound sit and wait. Is it an RJ with green tagged bags (not knowing of course if the individuals I am waiting for have them, but they type of plane.) Do the peole have checked bags (which will cause the delay to be longer as ramp must also unload those bags and transfer them.) Does the person have a WCHR request in on the connection (it shows on MY list of people on my flight.) I don't usually have the time to sign in to the inbound flight from it's originating station and see where on the plane those people are located (row 40 on a757 would be bad,) but know at least what cabin of service they are in.


I relay this info to the controller, as some of them are too busy with thei jobs to micromanage this much, when asking them for their decision. They also know if my depating gate needs the gate opened fo the next aircraft, how many bags have already been loaded/how many to go, how far along in boarding am I, how many other inbound flights have tight connections for my flight.

So evn if 1 were to be able to pass the request on to the dcsn maker, thereis very little that can b added that already known, or isn't outweigher by numerous other factors, that would make calling a reasonable thing to do in most situations.

tarheelnj

fastair, I wish everyone was as diligent as you. If you were working the outbound end of a connection I was taking, I'd know I had the best chance of making the flight, all things considered. Thanks for sharing the insight into how all this works.

JC5280

Don't forget...

Should they?

steve64

+100 for everything fastair has said ... from a vintage DFW Gate AAgent 20 years back, who then transferred to Ops

The fact that you're "on the ground and running for it" does nothing to change the fact that the outbound gate is authorized to hold for you or not.
And it's not really an authorization to hold for you. It's a posted delay of "x" minutes for late connections. Your connection might be the reason for the posted delay, but if you're not at the connecting gate within a few minutes the posted time, you run the risk of being stranded. This is particularly true if a revenue passenger from a later flight is on standby for your seat (in that case, it really doesn't make sense to continue holding the flight).

The people who make the decision to hold DO have the info available to them.
They are up in a ramp control tower somewhere watching the operation. They see the late inbound (that they weren't going to hold for) as it flies "over the fence" 10 minutes earlier than expected. They're watching it taxi in as they rethink the "hold strategy". They've had an idea over which flights they might hold for over an hour now (by the time an inbound pilot calls in advising they have late connections [duh], Ops is already 50 steps ahead of them). They have a camera on every gate and are watching the flight pull in, the jetbridge pull up, the baggage "hot carts" come & go etc.

Speaking for SABRE 20 years ago, there is an easy entry for the outbound Gate Agent to track connections. 3 keystrokes --> BX[pf3]
... or something like that ... it was 20 years ago for me. We kept the "manifest" entry hot-keyed to PF3. "BX" is the filter code for "inbound connections with baggage info".
It listed anyone who : had a boarding pass issued, had not boarded yet, and was on an inbound connection.
For each passenger listed, the info given was inbound: estimated or actual arrival time, arrival gate, count of checked bags & seat numbers (in & outbnd). Despite being a 30 year old computer system, the TPF operating platform [ie: SABRE, SHARES, any airline system)is blazingly fast; the response time for the BX list is typically less than a second. This entry alone is the lifeblood of a Gate Agent during the last 5-10 minutes before departure.

Contrary to how it may seem to you when you're the "late inbound" ... the hub airports for major airlines deal with late inbounds all day long ... unfortunate as it sounds, that's life at a hub. Procedures are already in place to handle such. Stopping to ask the inbound Agent to call ahead for you accomplishes nothing (all other things being equal/there are exceptions to every rule). It's almost as silly as the Pilot who calls ahead to a hub to let them know they have connecting passengers onboard. Each second spent not proactively moving towards your connecting gate lowers the chance that you'll make the tight connection.

andrewwm

Yes, it's not like this was pmUA policy also.

Smisek has nothing to do with this. The policy of generally not holding planes unless there are no operational cascading factors is the policy of every airline in the US.

UrbaneGent, did Smisek run over your dog or something?

LinBros

While certainly there are some GAs who are not as focused as fastair or who are having a lower performance day, my experience is that I make tight connections at both pmUA and pmCO hubs virtually every time.

I should note that after 35+ years of making tight connections I'm not as fast between gates as I used to be and I seem to be carrying more stuff with me so if possible I'm scheduling my connections with more buffer than in the past.

Understand that sometimes the only connection available is very tight and may be made tighter by factors, e.g. TSA/weather. At that point you can only say a prayer to the connection god and tust that your karma is good!

GBadger

As someone who has run from gate to gate many times, I will say that for *some* people running won't help. For others, it does.

These days most of my running is to catch the next RTD bus here at DEN. If I run, I can make it from the ends of the B concourse to the current RTD curbside on the East side of the airport in about 10 minutes (the about has to do with the timing of the train...). If I walk, that's a 25 minute trip.

Same used to be true at SFO -- when I was flying in and out of there a lot I was a DL flyer -- Terminal 1 to the BART station was a +/- 10 minute affair (again, depending on the timing of the AirTrain). Walking would be a significant amount longer.

Point of the story is that sometimes, for the right people, running can really shave time on a connection. I would hope that if my connection looks "questionable", that my seat would not be given away until the cutoff. For some people, it may be a 20 minute journey from gate to gate, but for me it might be 5.

Bear4Asian

"Check the monitors..." Is the first thing I always do on late arrival. I had 12 minuets between arrival at gate (DEN) and my connecting flight out. Check the monitor and see that my departing flight is 4 gates away. No problem. Had time to go to bathroom on the plane before asked to sit.