Recently had a LAX-HNL flight held for about 25 minutes for our delayed connecting flight from DTW. There were about 20 people connecting to HNL, so I'm sure that had something to do with it. It was the earlier LAX-HNL flight, but the later one was pretty much completely full (I did manage to get protected on it while still in DTW by calling the Plat line). I'm guessing that operations may be making the call in a number of these cases. Not sure how empowered the GA's are to hold flights. If you read the other forums, there are lots of reports on other airlines of the GA's closing up the flights 10 minutes before departure time and people missing their connection even thought they arrived before the official departure time. So this is not something unique to DL.