ThatT1Feeling

There you go. One person�s irritating (sometimes costly) delay is another person�s lifeline.

DYKWIA

It's the right thing to do if you're the person connecting, the wrong thing if you're already sat on the plane waiting for a drink

KARFA

one person's delay vs 150 odd irritated people (and possibly another 150 if it knocks on to the return). personally i wouldn't wish ba to hold a flight for me - not that they every have anyway

orbitmic

They pretty much never do it for 1 though. They may do it for 10 or 20. The equation sometimes easily becomes: "130 odd mildly irritated people because they will arrive 15 minutes late vs 20 people including kids who might have to spend the night at Heathrow and be very significantly delayed and disrupted". So almost symmetrically to you, I'll admit that unless I have a connection or a crucial meeting, I'm usually not too fussed if I'm stuck for 15-30 minutes waiting for connecting pax.

sigma421

Just for context, from the chatter I heard at the gate (was there for a while while a biometric issue was sorted), they were waiting for 12 people.

KARFA

And there might be families with kids on the plane who are desperate to make the last train home when they get to their destination and would otherwise end up being significantly delayed or disrupted if 30 minutes late like in the OP's case.

We can all use a bit of poetic licence for the story to make one side seen more worthy than the other

orbitmic

Absolutely, there can be, and it undoubtedly does happen that some of the passengers delayed 15-30 minutes will suffer very significant inconvenience as a result (though in all likelihood, not all 150 passengers?) But typically, if BA hold a plane for a connecting passengers, it is a case where they are "sure" that this will result in overnight delays, and sure that it is not going to just happen to 1-2 passengers. That's why I was suggesting that a scenario of 1 vs 150, and all 151 annoyances are equal was not necessarily the likeliest set up.

If the argument is that whilst not delaying the plane might cost 10-20 pax a presumably very unhappy overnight delay, it is also possible that even a 30 minutes delay for 150 passengers could well have bad ripple effects for 10-20 of them, I'd certainly find the possibility more likely

orbitmic

That makes a lot of sense to me. When I have experienced those situations, 10-20 has indeed been the typical "bracket". I must say that i have never seen a plane held for a long time for, say, 2-3 passengers.

Globaliser

If your travel plan depends on your flight arriving less than 30 minutes late, it's already got more holes than a pair of fishnet tights.

KARFA

if your connection plans depend on your flight arriving less than 30 minutes late ���.

Globaliser

Ditto. I'd expect to misconnect, I'd plan on the basis that there will be a misconnect, and I'd be pleased if it didn't happen.

HIDDY

Used to be a common thing before flying became affordable to all. Those were the good days.

13901

Believe it or not, there is a procedure and its application (was?) decided on the day by Ops. There is some discretion, obviously, but as a rule on a normal day they won't hold a flight unless the latecomers are a large group, or there's no availability on other flights they can catch. Impact downroute is also taken into account, using AA, IB and back in the day also CX contacts. So on a normal day in June they might get the connecting service out on time, but on December 23rd they might hold it to wait. The entire flow of connections is taken into account when making this sort of decision.

There was a large, windowless and often rather smelly room in T5A connections - just behind the wall on the right of the Ready to Fly area - where the oneworld connection centre was and in there you had people analysing all inbound flights to see what was about to miss, and what to do about it. They have some kind of chart that shows all the connections in danger. We were trying to do the same with bags...

scottishpoet

ba would not be holding the flight for someone whose connection time was below mct

i think there is a world of difference booking connecting flights that meet mct with booking a very tight flight to train transit in the hope the flight is not late and not having a backup plan

Globaliser

This was not a BA flight, but someone I know was flying LHR-HKG on CX earlier this week, and the flight waited over 1� hours for connecting passengers. If they had misconnected, the next flight was VS about 11 hours later, or there would have been a 24-hour stop for the next day's CX (which was already pretty heavily booked). For context, on the previous day, there had been no scheduled CX, the BA was cancelled because HKG had been suspended, and the VS was cancelled late.

It's the sort of event that's worth thinking about whenever you plan a short connection. It could get scuppered simply because someone else's connection is given priority over yours by holding up your first flight. Gamble if you wish, but it's always wise to have a backup plan.