VegasJosh

OP is making assumptions looking in the rear view mirror with very limited information. Your facts are based that is was only 10 minutes and the flight landed 10 minutes early in bkk. When they are making this decision was made they had no way of knowing these facts. I am willing to bet if they had known your situation might have had a different outcome. I would also like to point out again as many have done that Delta did care, I am sure they had to pay something for the 6.5hr flight for yourself in J and the 11 others. You can assume that was quite a chunk of change to pay a non-skyteam carrier. You might not have liked the results but they showed effort and assisted. I think given the facts in retrospect (your flight getting in sooner then thought, and a quick flight to bkk) Delta might not be happy with the results either. They will give all of you some Pesos, paid ANA, made there customers unhappy, amongst other things. This was a lose-lose all around.

OHDL1

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anbhc

OP should check out this YouTube video of Delta's Operation Control Center https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4VOgZg-Tac to appreciate how many factors and decisions must be made in getting passengers from point A to point B.

There are so many factors that come into play when predicting passenger connections. They could have:
a) waited for the plane to arrive at the gate and then at that point in time decide if they have enough time to help the 12 passengers get to their connecting flight, but by waiting they risk not being able to rebook all these folks onto other available flights on other carriers or they could have done:

b) based upon the information they have at their flight control center wait as long as possible before pulling the trigger and rebooking to get these folks to their destination in a reasonable amount of time. The other 40 passengers connecting is irrelevant to the 12 passengers because there are different scenarios and factors that must be analyzed. What if for example there wasn't 40 seats on another airline available to rebook these passengers on that night, in which case they would have to overnight in Japan.

Bottom Line. I would prefer Delta to be as proactive as possible to get me to my destination as safely and quickly as possible and I give them a huge thumbs up for doing so in this case. If one needs to be somewhere for an important meeting, its best to give yourself a buffer of a day or two upon arrival especially when traveling internationally in case of unexpected delays.

The Delta folks in Japan are the most professional I've ever seen. They have used their own personal cell phone for me to call the Delta Diamond Desk and handed me their phone and asked me to have a seat and work over the phone to get myself rerouted just last week during Typhoon Phanphon. On other occasions when it was certain we would miss our connection upon arrival in Narita they had rebooked boarding passes and hotel reservations ready for us upon arrival.

saneman

I flew to BKK and Tokyo around that earthquake time. On the way to BKK, I was merely connecting at NRT . THe flight originated in Minneapolis and left late. When we arrived at NRT, there was about a half hour at most of connecting time. The Japanese delta ground staff along with the NRT airport stuff hustled us from the arriving plane to the connecting flight to BKK . They were very helpful. We made it and the flight from NRT-BKK took off about 15 minutes late. (now , the aircraft from NRT-BKK was one of those small ones with very bad seat pitch. I could not even lay the tray down on my lap).

RustyC

Re: OP. They obviously made the call to avoid having to scramble at the last minute...maybe your plane arrived a bit earlier and the other one pushed a bit later, but they'd have to do bags as well as pax to pull it off. Would agree that it's much easier to play wait and see on 12 people vs. the whole plane, but OTOH if it's Japanese staff then there's also the possibility that the workplace is managed differently over there. There's much less of an inclination in Asian countries to give line employees much empowerment. Education is rote-repetitive and all about following orders well, not telling people to do what's best for the customer within certain bounds and then having that reviewed. This applies with hotels, tour companies and other travel-related businesses as well, especially with anything requiring thinking-outside-the-box.

I'd be a bit irritated at the HND-off, though I s'pose NRT-BKK flights are sparser on partners. (If UA hadn't left you could mess with 'em and demand to be endorsed over ). They could also put people in hotels and fly out the next day, though with biz travelers on tight schedules that might not work.

Would lodge the complaint with customer care, but expect to get a form letter if there's any chance of playing a weather or ATC card, with compensation if any likely to be in the form of miles or something like that. They won't value your time like you do.

Calgary88

I had similar situation in March, flight delayed for 3.5 hours from MSP-NRT due to ventilation issue, when we got to NRT , flight to HKG already left.
Delta put us up in a hotel at NRT & flight out next morning.
DL offered us a US $250 e-voucher each passenger for next time.

I think it is reasonable to believe OP should get this as well.
Just take it easy and flight delay happens all the time. DL is pretty generous in giving out vouchers, in my opinion they are way better than others, like U*.
In addition, I would suggest to compliant politely and nicely, sometimes wordings make a whole lot of difference in getting you back the result that you want!

Powers106

Good summary, agreed.

Powers106

Also agree with this post.

Ironically now I have to even try to get MQM miles for the flight on ANA since those of course didn't post. I did get an automatic 5k miles though due to the rebooking, but still need to write a letter to customer care.

Powers106

I guess that is pretty much what I think. The Japan ground crew probably has limited hours as in ending work around the 7pm time frame since that seems to be about when all flights are gone ... so by booking us on a different airline they probably ensured all staff could avoid overtime. I think they have a cost calculator, sorry if you work for Delta as you are quite defensive, but I think it is pretty standard in this type of situation to figure out cost-benefit ratios, make an early decision and then not change since cost/loss is known and locked. I think Delta could have held the flight but decided it was cheaper to shuffle us to Haneda, even cheaper than putting us up in a hotel I guess (maybe the next day flight was overbooked by a lot of people). For the other lucky passengers whose flight was held, the economics played in their favor and Delta prioritized them.

RooseveltL

As others said there are multiple factors to determine if a customer can make a connection or not. Let us understand it isn't just the 12 passengers -

A. Can Aircraft A get bags over to Aircraft B quickly? Factors - if 200 passengers on A how long to rummage to find bags? If Aircraft B is closed and ready how long to open belly and insert bags? How far are gates?
B. Are the 12 ppl seated in front or rear of aircraft A? How long to deboard from A and get them over to B? E.g. If passenger 11 is last row middle seat at rear of aircraft - that is minimum 20 minutes? How far are gates? Is one of the passengers elderly, overweight, handicap?
C. Is customs involved? Can't predict the time? Must wait for bags to unload and recheck?
D. How long does it take ground crew at B to close/re-print passenger list? Wait before they can clear stand-by and/or upgrades? etc.? They would have to wait until the 12 passengers either make it or not for this to happen? The closure of an aircraft takes a few minutes even if all passengers have boarded.

If you think all of above can happen in 10 minutes - NRT must be the most efficient operations in humanity but typically it isn't just get the 10 passengers over.

Often1

Of course, the cost/benefit of holding a flight matters. However, even presuming that 20 employees or contractors were held over by 10 minutes, that cannot possibly come close to the cost of transport to HND. Not to mention revenue forgone if, as OP says, there was space on the flight.

RooseveltL's list is a good one, but does not take into account the fact that it is not simply the flight crew and ground crew at NRT. Everything is double-checked by somebody. Usually a dispatcher, likely located elsewhere. Weight & balance alone has to be recalculated and that cannot even start until the inputs for passenger count, nag count and fuel are all double-checked and entered. And, to the extent that a dispatcher who has just done this for the aircraft has do redo it, some other flight somewhere else gets delayed while its dispatcher is redoing the work.

No matter how many times you slice and dice this one, the fact is that DL is recognized worldwide for doing the utmost to avoid IRROPS such as this and while the customer-facing aspect of all of this comes down to a GA, a FA and perhaps the Captain, there are a lot more variables out there. None of us know which way those variables cut.

But, it would seem to be a poor economic decision not to hold the flight if it was reasonably doable.

sethb

The problem appears to be that they were too pro-active, rebooking unnecessarily.

If the flight left full (or with fewer than 12 empty seats), I'd ask for IDB compensation.

bubbashow

The hell you say!!!! There can't possibly be more to it than 1 small pack of angry passengers. How dare you hit us with things like logic and business sense? Isn't it more fun to make broad inflammatory statements from an uneducated base....after all this is the interweb.....let's stir it up.

zsmith2

My take away is that all flights should be held for late connecting pax? I guess making exceptions for some people make others feel unimportant? Does that also mean business class pax should not board first as it makes economy pax feel unimportant? I don't get assistance from the government should I feel that the government deems me not important?

motytrah

Well, to be fair DL does hold planes for certain people. But it has nothing to do with medallion status. There's an actual VIP list of important people and specific computer program that scans tickets and boarding to alert operations that they need to hold the plane. I'm told a lot of national politicians end up on the list as well.