SFO currently has one of the two main (landing) runways unavailable due to construction, which is not surprisingly causing some delays. Add in weather, and the delays on Thursday afternoon were an average of around 3 hours according to the FAA.

Myself and a number of colleagues were flying back from YVR on Thursday, spread over 2 flights - UA1230 scheduled at 3:00pm, and US2423 scheduled at 7:15pm.

UA1230 ended up being delayed around 6 hours (was due to be closer to 7, but they bought it up a little). The repeated claim from United was that it was due to the runway construction, and it was "beyond our control". As a result, no compensation was offered, and no hotels for those that misconnected (although countless people were proactively moved to other flights - including the 'later' UA2423). The aircraft for this flight had arrived before 2pm, so wasn't the cause of the delay.

UA2423 on the other hand was only delayed by 30 minutes, and that was due to a late arriving aircraft - they were scheduled as on time right up until shortly before departure. This means they departed around 40 minutes before the flight that was scheduled to depart over 4 hours before them.

Now I get it, scheduling is hard and complex, and UA is probably looking at things like connections/etc, but having them say that the delay on UA2423 was "beyond their control" is hiding a significant part of the truth, isn't it? The FAA sets how many flights the airlines can land, but as I understand it, the airline decides which flights will actually get which slot, right?

ie, United actively choose to delay the 3pm flight for far longer than they could have. If nothing else, they could have swapped the slots for the 2 aircraft from YVR, but they made the decision to delay on how much to delay the earlier flight - which in my book isn't "beyond our control".

(Personally I was on the 7:15pm flight, but moved to the 3:00pm flight at around 6pm when I realized it was going to be an easy upgrade for an extra hours worth of sitting in the lounge - so I don't have anything to complain about personally, but several of my colleagues sat at the airport for >6 hours as a result of the delay)