Originally Posted by
lightbulbs
This is an example of where well
run airlines with good tech teams have made meaningful progress. United has a software driven system that will analyze the situation and recommend best action in terms of whether to hold flights or not for passengers with tight connections. Almost all the analysis of what’s optimal (how many passengers, how much time to connect, whether the crew or forward flight schedules would be impacted, etc) can be broken down to data which an algorithm can make a pretty good call on whether to hold a flight or not. When the software decides to hold a flight for connecting passengers, the gate agents are aware of who they’re waiting for and why, and even the passengers on the delayed flight are communicated to as to why the flight is being slightly delayed. All a bunch of optimizations that software engineers can code which then can be effectively and consistently deployed across the entire network. Wonder how long it’ll be before AA manages to do this…
The problem is that an algorithm won't be able to determine which passengers will haul a%% to the gate and which ones if they tried to walk fast they'd die on the spot because of obesity. This isn't 1990 and OJ Simpson running through the airport to get his rental car. Or the passengers that will stop to go to the bathroom, get coffee, and in particular get on their phone to do who knows what. At some point there's got to be a cut off unless there's a number of passengers coming from a single flight.