thanks--thats helpful. I think the 'on the ground' team gets the bulk of the passenger frustration (and my pilot on wed night conveyed his frustration in every announcement thru the delay). I think the question many of have is why network opps isn't able to manage this kind of thing better--what metrics drive their decisions? what is an 'acceptable' wait vs unacceptable. I've seen some data about passenger willingness to wait before cust sat scores nose dive and UA is getting killed based on these types of issues (plus passengers remember last interaction more than first interaction -- i.e., a gate delay is much more memorable than a booking challenge)