Originally Posted by
djk7
10 or 15 years ago, it was common for airlines to hold flights and even open the door for late arriving pax or near misconnects. Now the airlines are hugely (bigly?) concerned about DOT on-time stats and they are a lot more reluctant to do that.
It used to be a regular occurrence for the captain to give the "we're just waiting for (insert #) passengers on a late-arriving flight from (insert city)" spiel, and then everyone would clap when the latecomers finally boarded.
I honestly do not ever remember a time when I felt angry or stressed waiting for connecting pax, so I guess the Ops folks were empowered to make good judgment calls back in the day.