Originally Posted by
Aussienarelle
Yes, agree first world problem.
Cancelled my plans for attending church with my friends this afternoon.
Fortunately my friends now know to not rely on me if the plans are after arriving on a United flight.
I should have known better than to allow for 45 mins at LAX. Mea culpa.
while you are getting a lot of "its the breaks" replies, In my 20+ years of extensive travel I've only seen one airline that does not make an effort to hold A/C, and that is UA post 3/2/12. The old pmUA would hold A/C, particularly if it was the last flight of the day, when a passenger with status (not silver, but I had it often as a GS/1K) or a premium passenger with zone making the call. Only issue I ran into was at DEN, and zone there was known -so the GS folks there said - to be an issue. I've not had the kind of issues I had on UA post 3/2/12 with dalays, but I have had DL hold planes by a few minutes, and certainly have not had one leave EARLY. Maybe American does it.
I think the bigger point is that as usual UA has engaged in what is barely first order thinking. They realised OT was an issue, so incentivized staff to get planes out early. Of course this involves planes leaving early, and then getting in early, perhaps to no gate, along with second order impacts of POed passengers when the arriving delay is UA's fault. I don't think UA's analysis ever got to the impact of having elites/premium passengers be delayed due to UA's fault, and show up just in time, only to find the door closed.