I wonder on both B6 and US, at what cutoff time, will the agents offload checked in passengers in order to accommodate standbys on a full flight? I'm guessing B6 15 minutes and USS 10 minutes?

Also I'm wondering if there is any official or unofficial policy where B6 or US will wait longer to offload the seat of an elite than the seat of a nonstatus pax.

I remember when I was a UA 1K it seemed like to offload a United Global Services pax, the gate agent had to clear it with the station global services concierge who may know, for example, if said pax is running late. The concierges usually were based out of the clubs at nonhub stations. I got to know 1 or 2 when I was 1K, and that was VIP service; i.e. if you got to know them and they treated you like a Global Services pax.

AA has a similar program called Concierge Key, and I think in BOS and DCA they have agents who look after these CK members and who also probably handle the 5 Star service with AA. I don't know how AA does things with CK, but my observations about how UAQ does things with GS makes me wonder?

Also I just saw a tweet from @jetblue where they told a pax running to a JFK LAX flight that flights leave the gate 15 minutes before their scheduled departure time. Really, they have to be padding the on time numbers or something! Tell me I'm crazy, but in the 90's they didn't do this! They had a 10 minute rule that was very very sometimes enforced but I don't think it was routine that a flight would be closed out 10 to 15 minutes early. So by doing this, its giving the airline 10 to 15 minutes of extra wiggle room.

But again, is JetBlue targeting the shuttle commuter? Sure, they are happy to take our money, but they don't appear to have developed procedures to particularly accommodate this kind of customer as DL and US have because those two have been in this shuttle game for so long; dating back to the Eastern and Trump Shuttle and the Pan Am Shuttle.

One good thing is that on B6 BOS to DCA they now serve a full beverage service. At one point, they were experimenting seemingly randomly with express beverage. I am not sure if BOS JFK is still express beverage, but again on the legacy shuttles, all pax still get free beer and wine! When they did express beverage it was i.e. water or OJ...ha and it was random. But now I would say 99.99% of B6 flights its a full beverage service which is good!