JeffS

Perhaps you inadvertently misquoted Kacee? The actual comment was:

pruss2ny

on a side note, situations like this more and more make me feel bad for the GAs and other cust facing employees...OP had no dogs in this race, but still feels entitled to roll over into an already tense situation and chime in w/ his/her 2 cents...and then is shocked to get "attitude" from the GA....

travel is stressful. delays happen. missed connections happen. and bad customer service happens....but between situations like this and about 92% of the obnoxious tweets to @united, i just find myself cutting more and more slack to the employees.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

After watching the series "Airline" on A&E (ran 2004-2006, now in reruns) about stuff happening at Southwest Airlines, I have no doubt United GAs et al have a tough job. Hard to believe some of those customers agreed to be filmed. Weekly phrases from WN customers: "I'll sue", "I'll never fly Southwest again", "The #@% plane is sitting right there!", "Your attitude sucks"....

ttuna3

Given some of the BS the GAs get on a regular basis I'm surprised that there's not more of this type of thing happening. That being said it's a serious ongoing failure of management in not having the rebooking arrangements already made (or at least ready to print) at the gate in SFO. Given that it sounds like the misconnect was caused by a tech issue in DEN then UA already knew there would be an connection issue and should have made arrangements during the flight from DEN to SFO. On a lot of other airlines I've seen CSAs at head of the jetway of the late inbound with signs looking for the people with connection issues either an escort or their new flights before the mad dash across the airport. Oh wait, we're talking about UA.

Doug 1029

The door was opened twice for me last year and god was no where in site. It does happen.

TomMM

A couple of months ago I was on a flight where they held the door open for a few delayed passengers. That delayed us about 5 minutes. The loading of their luggage held us up another 25 minutes. Once we taxied we had to get in a quickly building line of aircraft for take-off which took another 20 minutes. So yes, UA was nice and held the door open for only an extra 5 minutes but which resulted in a 50 minute delay.

emcampbe

I actually have been proactively protected on a later flight in a similar situation - redeye SFO-ORD was late (can't remember the cause) and I was connecting to CVG. Upon landing I had an email (IIRC) telling me I had been protected on another flight. Can't remember exactly what it said, but something look go to a kiosk/app/my account to see the details of the protected flight - it was the next flight.

controller1

We go to Hawaii each year and do exactly as you do and we do not live where it snows! If one can do this, it is cheap insurance.

Additionally, if I could not do this, I would schedule a layover of not less than two hours. I would certainly not schedule a layover of only 70 minutes.

BearX220

I did not. I disagree that it is appropriate to reflexively thank an airline employee when your trip is disrupted, especially as the disruption is generally a choice made by the airline, and as GAs in particular can be indifferent or even vindictive. I have little trouble believing the report upthread that the GAs were laughing at displaced pax. I thank employees when they do something positive.

Kacee

I thank employees when they answer my questions ("So it looks like I missed SFO?").

I have generally found that being courteous and treating UA cs personnel with respect gets better results. In addition to simply being the right thing to do.

Often1

+1 - All depends on what you want out of the encounter. Be courteous and thank the employee and they may go the extra 10 feet. Be rude and discourteous and you wind up in the middle seat next to the lav on tomorrow's flight.

Belittling the little guy even further is never ever productive.

BearX220

I never recommended belittling anyone, did I? But I'm not going to act grateful for airline screwups.

Indelaware

OP, you ask, "What is a Gate Agent's responsibility when a connecting flight is delayed?" The answer is simple - viz. it is the GA's responsibility to assist the tardy passenger in rebooking onto a later flight or directing the passenger to someone who can do that (e.g. special services desk.)

BlackMountain

Honey v. Vinegar aside, I didn't see any response to my question above regarding what United's official position is on GA's customer facing duties after door close. My general impression is that once the flight is "closed" the GA is done from a customer service perspective - anything that they do for passengers showing up after that point is outside their scope of work. Is my perception wrong or is the GA expected to service the late arrivals in some way before they move on? If I am right, then no amount of foot stomping is going to help you.

For what its worth, God was working at least two gates that I can think of in the last three years; not having checked bags or an attitude probably helped as well. I am also pretty sure that the agent calculated it wasn't going to impact the arrival time either way.

fastair

While arrival time is what the DoT measures and publishes, from a GA role, other than the dptr time, there is little impact they (we) have on that. A GA doesn't have to explain his actions to mgmt on an aircraft that departed gate on time but arrived late, while they (we) do have to explain a flight that left late but still arrived early.

As for bonuses, our individual performance has such a tiny impact on the month at a time system data, I doubt its a motivating factor for many people. We are not bonused for individual performances, but for month long system performances. Systemicly, we would like flights to arrive on time, it's what really matters, but too many variables are outside our locus of control, what we do have an impac on is departure time, which has a strong influence on the end product of arrival time.