It very well could have been a fluke in the system, or a good captain. He said he told Ops they'd wait for everyone rather than leave. The flight was moved up to depart at 7:45PM sometime in the day, then pushed back to 7:55PM after I panicked on Twitter when I brought up all of us on 2188 ATL-SEA were going to misconnect (and arrive at gate A13). Not sure what happened, but 20 minutes after working with Twitter (DeltaAssist), our gate was changed to S16. DeltaAssist was willing to put me on the Alaska Air AM SEA/JNU flights - also nice of them.

Apparently there were other late flights - once we got in, the captain said there were 2 other flights we were waiting on.

I'll find out if Delta is changing its "hold" policies on last flight of the evening.

Was just night and day compared to 3 times last year of missing Alaska 69 to Ketch/Juneau when they shut the door early. 2 of those 3 times I arrived at the gate 5 minutes before departure but they already shut the door. (one of those times I was even mentioned it here that I called a friend in dispatch to find out if they were pushing early!)

anyway. Ontime, I get it. :/