booper

Witnessed a sad event at SFO Gate 90 yesterday, around 9am.

7 passengers came running up late for a flight to Hawaii, and the door was already closed. The plane sat there for literally an additional 15 min before moving off the gate, but they would not re-open the door. Apparently the 7 late passengers (at least 3 different family groups) were coming off a flight from Denver which was delayed due to weather.

I thought the Gate Agents should have been more pro-active, in noticing the missing passengers were all from the same flight, and that flight had just landed. Couldn't they have asked the FAs to wait until the last possible minute before closing the door?

To make matters worse, after the distraught passengers left to try to rebook (several in tears, one was a small child) the gate agents were laughing amongst themselves (I believe) at the stranded Denver passengers. One of the Denver passengers came back to the GAs, and said, "I know you're just doing your job, and it wouldn't be so bad if we had missed the flight, but it's like you didn't even care." At which point I chimed in with my two cents, but only got more attitude from the GA, so I left the situation before it escalated.

Anyways, I thought this was a situation where the GAs could have gone the extra mile, but alas did not.

JeffS

Neither the gate agents or flight crew decides when or when not to hold a flight for late arriving passengers.

Kacee

Yup that decision is made by operations.

And once the door closes it basically takes an act of god to reopen it.

nachosdelux

or the captain

Liz

FAs DEFINITELY do not make the decision on door closure!!!

bajrbajr

I think Operations will hold the flight for a few minutes in this type of situation as long as the flight is not over-sold by the late arriving passengers. In which case they would slam the door on you severing your leg to avoid having to dish-out VDB or IDB compensation.

I such case you would only receive compensation for your leg being IDB'ed.

because it would be good customer service and the Courteous thing to do?
I've been on flights that have been held for late-arriving passengers... no big deal.

dank0014

I don't have a problem with the GA closing the gate, but I would question the way they handled the situation.

Though no proof they were laughing or didn't provide a lot of support in this situation and I wasn't there, I do know that I've had this happen to me personally and numerous GA could handle the situation in a much better way in helping passengers understand and indicating what they can help with and pointing them in the right direction.

I tend to see GA get on the defensive immediately upon paxs arriving, which I know can sometimes be caused by how the pax addresses the GA upon arrival. But in a customer service job, you sometimes just had to keep your mouth shut and let the customer vent for a min or two, and then say, I understand, apologize and please understand it's not our intent to do this, but it is what happened and now here is what we can do....

Palal

A few reasons this could be ...

The GAs are CYAing as always. If they delay the flight, they won't get their quarterly bonuses. If they re-open the door, the flight will go out late and it'll be their fault.

The flight already closed and re-opening it would require to bring the jetbridge to the flight, re-open the door, seat the pax, re-do the weight-and-balance, close the door, remove the jet bridge. You don't know why the flight sat there.

Or a mechanical problem

mduell

You repeat Kacee...

pseudoswede

My sister and her family were one of the 10 ex-DEN pax that got stranded. The original flight went mechanical after boarding was complete, and they had to swap equipment. They left DEN 75 minutes late, which was exactly the connection time they had in SFO originally. She called me at about 10:30 PT absolutely fuming at the lack of compassion the GA showed. According to my sister, the GA said that she was unaware that there was a late in-bound with 10 pax.

They got a meal voucher, $100 travel credit each, and rebooked for the 5:30pm SFO-KOA flight. They did make a nice day out of it, as a friend picked them up from the airport and did a little sightseeing.

mduell

SFO-LIH... were already teetering on being late, I can see why they wouldn't hold it for a couple tiny groups.


United Flight 361
Delayed due to aircraft preparation (Arrived Gate 10 Minutes Late)

Departed: San Francisco, CA (SFO)
Date: Sun., Nov. 16, 2014
Scheduled: 9:05 AM
Actual: 9:14 AM
Terminal: Terminal 3, Concourse F
Gate: 90

Arrived: Lihue-Kauai, HI (LIH)
Scheduled: 12:47 PM
Actual: 12:57 PM
Terminal:
Gate: 10

Aircraft:
Boeing 757-200 | #5547

mduell

Must be a different flight, this was gate 90 which is SFO-LIH not SFO-KOA.

pseudoswede

Oops. Well then, 17 total pax got hosed when their delayed in-bound DEN flight caused them to miss their flight to Hawaii. My sister was flying to KOA (9:09am departure, gate 85). I'm also guessing there were some more that missed the SFO-HNL flight (9:05am departure, gate 86).

StingWest

Me too, and more often waiting for bags!

I think this is an area that UA operations should be more focused on. Holding a flight for 5 minutes because 7 passengers are a couple minutes late should be part of the elasticity built in to the system. The system should be aware of all connecting passengers and their flight arrival times.

The attitude of the GAs should be reported to management - no excuse for this!

warreng24

Flyer Friendly!

To be fair, my IAH-BOS flight was held about 10 minutes past departure time for a F (revenue per the mobile.united.com site) passenger connecting from DEN.