Originally Posted by
Absolute
I did IAH-SFO-TPE on Sat, and that was absolutely the issue. I left IAH on the 0825 flight, and later found out one of the FA's on my TPE flight was also in the jump seat on it. He told me we were lucky, as the average delay was 5 hours for incoming flights at SFO, which was why both the business and economy cabins were so empty due to mis-connects - and the decision had been made that they simply couldn't hold flights.
In my observations, if the SFO GDP is for 1-2 hours average delay, they won't hold the long-haul flights. You're legally screwed. However, if it exceeds 3 hours, they will consider the sheer amount of work rebooking so many people and leaving with empty flights and delay the long-haul departures somewhat. And of course there is the elite factor that we don't see.