Due to icy conditions at FRA today (Dec 1st), our BCN-FRA flight was delayed about two hours. That would cause us to misconnect with 927, scheduled to depart 5:25pm (our arrival ended up being about 5:30pm). UA 927 was initially booked full in all classes but left with 93 empty seats due to a lot of delays. It would have had to have been delayed about 45 minutes for a reasonable chance at most of the misconnects arriving at the gate.

Why did LH tell us UA was holding the plane? Had they told us we should rebook, it would have been a whole lot easier then, than it was after we landed. Don't get me started about UA's chat function. I tried that while waiting in a 90 minute line at LH customer service and the initial agent put a "hold" on an alternate flight (because he said everything was sold out) to a different airport. LH said they couldn't touch it because UA changed the destination (from SFO to SMF, which I told the chat person wouldn't work).

And knowing that pretty much every single seat was booked on both Dec 1st (tonight) and Dec 2nd, did it make sense to send a plane out with 93 empty seats (which had been booked full)?

I understand there can be issues with crew timing out and a domino effect caused by late-arriving planes.

In the end, it took over two hours to get someone on the chat function who could make things happen. I'd given them the flights that would work for us (did all the homework for them), finding empty seats on FRA-LHR-SFO, but the first person just spun wheels for about 90 minutes, getting "help" from others before finally giving up and someone new came along, and made it happen very quickly.

These were paid business class seats; my wife is Stage IV cancer (and doing very well right now!) and economy just isn't a good idea right now.

Last question. We did not collect our bags but an LH employee said the bags should follow us on our new flights. Is that correct?

Thanks-