Instead of handing out red flags, United could also (1) raise their minimum connecting times, (2) operate fewer larger planes on routes that are ATC slot restricted during bad times rather than packing schedules to the gills with many small flights that cannot all operate in bad weather, (3) pad flight durations to match actual 90th percentile arrival times.

To be honest -- I don't know if it's just good luck or conservative planning or what -- in the past few years I have rarely misconnected on UA. I have had itineraries with delays that guarantee misconnects and have changed them proactively, but it's pretty rare to have no better alternatives and try walking up to the gate I want only to see the plane pulling away.

Usually I can sprint thru a domestic hub and make it almost in time — even with the marginal extra 5-15 min delay from pax de-planing inefficiently.

But 2016 has been worse.

I misconnected once in February, having booked LAS-SFO-DEN with a 31 minute connection, ending up with a 15 min mx delay and needing to transit from SFO's intl gates to their domestic gates, and still almost made the flight -- arrived at the gate as they were pushing back the aircraft. It's difficult to fault UA too much there because they did offer to rebook me to LAS-DEN nonstop and I declined (had a confirmed upgrade on an intl-config SFO-DEN).

I also misconnected once in March, flying ORD-SFO-OGG and taking a 2+hr mx delay that turned into a forced overnight at SFO due to 747 mechanical shenanigans. That was sad, although on the bright side, the SF CS agent who rebooked us was totally delighted to extend our stay in OGG by an extra day (pushing back our entire return trip by one day) to make up for the lost time.

Solutions at the margins (help get pax off the plane faster) might help a little bit, but the operational issues that are the root cause need more thought.