Lux Flyer

When I read the title saying "abandoned" I was expecting something along the lines of the WN meltdown in December where people were given no options. Not being told to go to a 45 minute line where you ended up getting a hotel voucher and rebooking onto another airline. For future, every hub is equipped with agent on demand, so you should be able to video call an agent through the app instead of waiting in line.

They do, but not on close calls where the misconnect isn't clearly going to happen. If you're going to miss it by an hour, sure automated rebooking systems are more likely to start processing it, depending what options are available. Something close where time might be made up or a ConnectionSaver might beable to be invoked, nope they won't automatically do it in advance.

Yep all those things get considered, but it's not as easy as you make it sound, even with automation to help make those decisions since airports are giant logistical puzzles. There is limited gate availability, limited staff, equipment, etc. The KOA-SFO usually gets in about 9pm. They're expecting it around that time and the schedule is setup to have staff/equipment/gates that can support a wide body arriving in that time frame. It arrived an hour late or so which would put it in the middle of another arrival/departure block. The gate they wanted to use for it might not be available at that time since it wasn't scheduled to arrive then, the staff they would normally use for the 9pm arrival might be dealing with a 10pm arrival and they need to wait for staff to finish with that other arrival, etc. There are lots of moving pieces that need to come together, even with all the same day advanced planning notice you might have, you can't create extra space if that's what you need. Given the flight in question landed at about 10:10pm and didn't block in till close to 10:35pm, there was probably a gate availability issue accommodating an extra widebody at that time. .

Which builds into the next point about holding flights for connections, that decision can cascade quickly and gate agents/supervisors aren't generally in the position to evaluate all the downline effects which is why they will generally defer to the connection saver recommendation, station operations or the NOC. Those effects can be beyond even the specific departing flight being considered for a hold, what if there is another widebody waiting to go into that gate that would now be delayed further since that gate is being occupied longer? Or that ground crew since they're waiting to depart can't get their next flight loaded/departed on time, etc? It's not hard to see how to imagine how that can quickly cascade to affecting far more than a single flight and set of passengers.

If we ignore the fact that these types of posts often get exaggerated even unintentionally from OP's own distaste over the situation, and assume that everything reported as being said was verbatim, there are still multiple issues. First the assertion on the plane that connections were being held is very easy to be misinterpreted and ignoring the fact in these situations we have a tendency to hear what we want to hear if it is even tangentially closed. That may be true for some connections, but as far as I can tell nothing was specifically said that the SFO-EWR was being held, and that statement may have been true for other customers since presumably a plane of 300 passengers has people going to multiple different connections. And it seems like a later statement was made that they know about your connections, which is absolutely true as has been shown by another poster, the gate agent has access to see every incoming connection to their flight. For reference, if UA does decide to hold a flight for connections, they send out text message notifications to the affected passengers letting them know along with directions between the gates, estimated walking time, etc.

In terms of the gate agent being blunt, sure it could have been handled better, but I also try to put myself in their shoes to see how many times per day do they have passengers who barely misconnect asking for a one time exception to reopen the door, etc. Maybe being blunt is the best way to quickly communicate to the passenger that the flight has closed and they need to go to rebooking, it shuts down any argument over the issue and lets the gate agent get back to their work, even if it isn't the most polite way to put it . Which just because the door has closed doesn't mean the gate agent is done working the flight. There is still close out paperwork they need to do so final weights, manifests etc can be transmitted, which I believe the expectation at UA is that is completed within 6 minutes of door closure. I think all the hubs are equipped for this to be done from the jet bridge, and I'd think many gate agents would have just done it there to avoid precisely this situation. But clearly they decided to do it at the gate podium instead so the misconnecting passengers at least met someone at the gate even if the message they received was communicated in a subpar manner, as opposed to finding an empty gate (and actually being "abandoned"). As to not giving a reason, as mentioned previously, they might not know the reason, they aren't given all the information that goes into a decision to hold for a connection or not, just that they are authorized to wait until a certain time to close the door if a hold is approved.

FWIW, the gate agent in this situation did know about the people coming from the KOA-SFO flight, and even asked if there was any ability to wait for the connecting passengers coming from [gate] F11. Of course based on the account here we would assume the gate agent was indifferent to the OP's plight. Unfortunately misconnects happen, airports and airlines are gigantic logistic puzzles with way more moving pieces then we can see, and holding flights which UA does try to do when able isn't always possible.