Originally Posted by
emcampbe
pretty sure I’ve never had a [UA] flight wait for me either, but I know I’ve been on flights that have been held for others - I think always a group of several pax.
Originally Posted by
eng3
It "sounds" like a change I like. We'll see the results I guess. Thus far, I have never had a flight wait for me no matter how short the delay (even <=0min) though I have been on flights that waited for others.
I think I've been about 50/50 on "connections I probably should have missed that I made" and "connections I probably should have made that I missed" -- incidentally both of the most offensive missed connections happened in ORD (literally got to the gate, after running because inbound took a MX delay, only to see the door finish closing... Had I been a few seconds faster in both cases I probably could have literally grabbed the door before it closed.
Originally Posted by
fezzington
Internal delay codes caused many a fight IME...
"FAs aren't helping put bags in bins / Maint wasnt there on time even though we called 5 mins before push / Catering gave us the wrong stuff (when the right stuff was boarded) / GAs boarded late (when they boarded on time) / Pilot took too long on walkaround" are all (poor) excuses I've seen one department hurl at another. [...]
These codes were not the sole basis for things like flight story, they don't affect DOT reporting, nor are they ever really made public (except for the occasional employee posting something they shouldn't on FT
)
Exactly, some of the "this department vs. that department" blame throwing can be really tiring if you're the passenger stuck in the middle or suffering because of overly protective/paranoid people on one side or the other. I had one FA explain to me a few years ago (before FA integration was complete so I kind of hope it has changed by now) that as soon as a carry on crossed the threshold of the boarding door if there was a delay in departure as a result [having to get the bag back off the plane, tagged, etc.] it was the FAs "fault" and could face discipline but if the FA's stopped the bag from entering the aircraft any delays were the GA's fault...
Does the passenger really benefit/care about that kind of blame slicing and dicing? Is either side really incentivized to be customer focused or are you actually incentivizing FA's to be overly conservative about allowing bags on the plane which then encourages GA's to be overly conservative about checking bags? I very seldom have anything other than my laptop bag with me in the cabin with me so it doesn't really affect me but I can see that not leading to the best UX
On the flip side I really hope that this doesn't reduce the transparency for delay causes on United's digital channels -- I just posted over in the AA forum yesterday trying to figure out why Ms. LincolnJKC's flight was delayed, not because it really mattered in the whole scheme of things, but both of us are used to knowing the "Why" (operations, maintenance, weather) from UA it was a little disturbing to just see "Delayed" with no reason-- which is apparently all AA will tell you without diving into 3rd party solutions like Expert Flyer.