Originally Posted by bosboy73

Christmas I think it was a few years ago. Like Dec 22 or thereabouts. Two nightly flights MIA-GRU. I was on the first one. We're not moving although everyone's boarded.

Captain comes on: Sorry guys - we're holding the plane for 60-90 minutes for an AA flight from SJC because it's carrying a whole group of connecting pax and even though we have another flight later tonight, things are very busy just a few days before Christmas and they would be greatly inconvenienced. Didn't quite mention anything about how the several hundred who were already on the plane would be inconvenienced!

So we just sat there and left 90 minutes late after the SJC pax were boarded. Ended up missing my domestic connection to Confins from GRU. AA was nice to rebook me on the next flight but it was from CGH so they also were paying affected pax taxi fare from GRU to CGH (but ONLY if you asked ).

I spoke to one of the SJC pax who told me the group were on their way to attend a capoeira retreat

Bottom line: It's the airline's call after they crunch the dollar figures and figure out the cost of goodwill gain/loss.