fti

I had an interesting experience yesterday, Saturday August 11, in Seattle. My SFO-SEA flight AS 1711 was 50 minutes late and I was connecting to AS99 SEA-
ANC. My flight landed at 7.14pm at D2 and I was at the boarding gate N3 for the ANC flight by 7.21pm. Another guy and his infant son were on the same flights and they made it, him also convincing the gate agent to hold the flight for his wife and two other kids who were coming.

Before I boarded, the gate agent asked the agent at the next gate N2 if they were going to hold the ANC flight for the 10 passengers connecting from AS435 from SJC. I didn't stay around to hear the answer, but obviously they did not wait. AS99 departed 3 minutes early at 7.37pm.. AS435 from SJC arrived at 7.38pm at gate N2 - right next to the departure gate for the ANC flight. Couldn't have Alaska Air held the flight for 6-7 more minutes to allow those 10 connecting guests to walk just one gate over to make their connection? Maybe Alaska Air didn't want to pay out 10 x 2,500 miles in baggage guarantees? Maybe they truly are like all the other big airlines who are more concerned with on-time performance than customer service (though flights arriving within 15 minutes of scheduled arrival time are considered on time anyway).

SOCguy

Except the flight departed :03 early, as you noted below.

Were you looking for an answer or have you made up your mind? Before I get to the answer, were you advocating AS just board the guests and leave their bags behind? Trust me, the trivial cost of a baggage guarantee plays zero role here. But knowingly separating guests from their luggage is not an approach AS advocates. If there's a hold for guests, there's a hold for their bags. So 6 or 7 minutes is not realistic. If three of those 10 guests were in row 32 on their inbound, it's not a matter of a couple minutes, it's more like 10 or more for them to deplane, board and have their luggage transferred over.

From the point of the view of the guest that's making a tight connection or possibly missing their connection, it certainly seems like a simple decision to make. I get that. But those that make that decision also have to weigh the point of view of the 150 guests already onboard expecting an on-time departure, and maybe the 150 guests sitting on an airplane waiting to park at the gate you're currently occupying, time slowly waning on their own connection times, etc.

To answer the question, factors such as number of guests, what reaccommodation options look like (how long until the next flight? are there enough seats?), any airport limitations at the arrival end (e.g. scheduled runway or facilities closures), will the flight arrive late and impact the next flight (and possibly create additional misconnects), crew duty limitations and others.

princeville

All the factors that go into the decision of whether to hold an aircraft or not have been hashed out in many other FT threads, if you're interested. I'm guessing one of the biggest factors in this case is that AS has many flights per day between SEA and ANC and I'm sure all of those passengers made it to ANC that night.

A few months ago I was on an AS LAX-ANC flight that leaves close to midnight. We boarded and ended up waiting close to an hour for several passengers that were hung up in customs waiting for their bags after arriving from Costa Rica. In this case there were no later flights to put these passengers on, so they would have been stuck overnight. If holding it would have significantly disrupted downstream ops they probably would have sent us on our way, but obviously they weren't overly worried about their on-time performance.

Often1

The decision to hold a flight is made by Operations. Many factors are taken into account, not the least of which is whether AS has already offloaded the 10 connecting passengers and boarded standbys.

Bottom line is that if you arrive at the departure gate past the gate deadline, you should plan on not being boarded.

TA

as was described by others well in a long-ago thread:

"...there are so many factors beyond what the passenger sees. An informative bit of info from John26 in a previous thread:

"...There is too little information to speculate on this. But some of the questions a Zone Controller might be examining include:

• What is the aircraft going to be used for after landing at its next destination?
• How much ground handling time will it have versus how much will it need? (Are cleaners scheduled for that airport?)
• What about ATC - are we on flow control right now?
• Do we have a ground program in effect right now?
• What about weather right now?
• How about the weather at the next destination or enroute?
• Flight #abc from XYZ needs this gate space - we are going to lose the ontime arrival since there are no other gates - are we willing to do that?
• How many of the 20 onboard will misconnect if we take a 5-minute delay?
• Will their bags make it with them (or will they or the bags get stuck behind or ahead somewhere in their itinerary)?
• Is the crew (either FAs or pilots) approaching their maximum duty time?
• Does crew scheduling have any reserves they can pull to cover if someone has to walk?
• If it's a pilot and they actually have reserves, are they qualified on this aircraft type?
• Where is the CSR working that flight needed next? We need them to work the XYZ departure several gates away now - is this going to cause a delay to board the next flight? Oh wait - the inbound aircraft for that's going to turn to become that flight needs a jetway driver - I need that CSR over there now or we'll lose the ontime arrival for that flight, too.
• What about the guys on the ramp? We need them to guide in another flight right now - they need to get to their next gate.

This might give you a small sample of what goes into making these decisions. ..."

taken from this thread

channa

What's the impact of a misconnect on a route like that? Isn't there a SEA-ANC every hour? Not a huge deal for those who misconnect. If it were a once daily type flight, maybe that would be a different story. Or if the later SEA-ANC's were full, etc.

PDXPremier

As a data point, last month my SEA-LAX was delayed which caused me to show up for my LAX-BWI red-eye flight about 5-10 min. before departure and they had already given away my seat by the time I showed up so I assume they had no plans to hold the flight for me I may have been the only passenger connecting on to BWI so I'm sure it wasn't on the gate agent's radar to even check and see if I was coming in on a delayed flight. I also think when there are 10-20 passengers connecting and they haven't shown up due to a late connection, they may be more likely to hold the flight.

ashill

Yeah. Using the schedule for next Saturday (Aug 18), there are five (!) SEA-ANC nonstop flights on AS after the 19:40 flight. So I'm sure those misconnected passengers would be reaccommodated that night, as others noted. Standby passengers may have already filled up the 19:40 flight (perhaps some of them standing by from the later flights and therefore opening up seats on the later flights). And passengers on the 19:40 flight may have had connections beyond ANC (though I don't know if there are many/any flights out of ANC after its 22:20 arrival); any delay might have risked those connections.

AS737

6 flights if you count the 12:40am flight. For the most part, no matter when you're there, there's probably a SEA-ANC flight departing soon.

jsguyrus

sltlyamusd

I definitely had AS hold a flight for me before. It was the last SEA-ANC flight of the night and I originated on the east coast. Parked at the gate next door and they got me and my bags on board.

Possibly it is more rare nowadays, but AS will definitely hold a flight, especially when there are no other rebooking options that won't cause a massive delay.

brettsir