Originally Posted by
rowenb
My spouse and I were each trying to fly ORD-MSP yesterday evening: me on United at 5:35pm, her on Delta at 5:20pm.
It was interesting to see how the two airlines took very different approaches to updating passengers on the departure outlook. By 5pm, Delta had already moved the departure time to 7:00, while United had moved it only to 5:45. It wasn't until after 5:45 that United moved the time again, by which time Delta had already gone to 7:45.
We started boarding around 6:15, but passengers were still trickling in until about 7:10, and we didn't go wheels-up until about 8:20.
Meanwhile over in Terminal 2, my wife got to stay in her SkyClub until her flight boarded at 8:15.
Honestly I would rather have had Delta's candor and been able to hang out in the club for those hours...
IMHO very, very hard (and dangerous) to compare identical routes, but a hub carrier like UA at ORD vs. DL at ORD. Here's why:
1) DL has few flights coming into ORD. Likely they moved the departure time earlier in the day vs. UA because simply, DL's inbound airplane was coming in late due to ATC delays. If that plane came from MSP, or ATL, or DTW or SLC, it would have been held at the departure point, so they simply moved the flight earlier because their plane wasn't going to get there.
2) Compare this with UA. UA has a large operation at ORD where they have lots of opportunities to re-assign airplanes much of the time within hours of departure to keep the entire operation as on time as possible, while minimizing systemwide delays. For example, if UA had assigned aircraft 3210 to your MSP flight and realized that the inbound airplane would be delayed 2 hours beyond original scheduled time, they will likely instantly find another airplane that's also going to be inbound, to keep you on time, or at least minimize your flight's delay (remember the plane likely will turn back to ORD, so there's a huge trickle down effect).
The constantly minor changes to timing could simply be real-time adjustments to assigned aircraft, and as those realities change, there you have the small changes in time.
These two things can't be looked at in the same context. Not saying I have the inside scoop but I think this is highly possible.