18sas

My goal is to get to the airport, get through security, get to the gate immediately as boarding begins and walk straight on the plane.
Amazingly I've only ever missed one flight in my life, though I've had many close calls.

18sas

You don't actually do this, do you?

andrewk829

LOL. I did as people advised here and monitored the inbound aircraft. Incidentally, Delta sent me two subsequent messages, each pushing back the departure time slightly. On the second such message, announcing a 1:01 PM departure, it offered me the opportunity to change my flight at no charge. But none of the alternatives offered would have gotten me to Seattle prior to the delayed flight. One tempting option, just to do something fun, was an SNA-LAS-SEA routing that offered a 2-hour layover in LAS. Then there were a couple of crazy ones, including SNA-LAS-LAX-SEA, and I think there was another that was SNA-SLC-SFO-SEA. So had I wanted to, I could have done a "mileage run".

TO answer the question . . . I presented myself at the bag drop counter at about 11:40 AM, and all was well.

andrewk829

By the way folks (OP here), thanks for all the replies. I am frankly pretty amazed that there is no consensus (even among road warriors) or policy as to what a passenger should do when informed of a delay prior to airport arrival. It would be nice if the airlines, when announcing a delay, would give some indication as to whether the delay is "confirmed" (i.e., departure will for sure be no earlier than __ o'clock") or merely "estimated".

One relevant experience I'll remember is about ten years ago, I was flying United at LAS. The plane was delayed (a delay that was announced after I arrived at the airport). I had some work to do so I planted myself at a nice work counter 3 gates down the concourse. I monitored the flight on the United website, and there were some subsequent extensions of the delay. About 25 minutes prior to the updated departure time according to the website, I walked down to the departure gate only to hear my name being announced as a "final call". The gate agent told me, "in this situation, never go by what's on the website". And then they closed the door 10 seconds after I walked aboard.

hfly

All this about barely a one hour delay? My rule is that if its an hour delay I proceed as normal, if we are talking about domestic flights into a place where the airline has a decent amount of traffic. If its a real outstation, the kind of place that has maybe 2-3 flights a day and they are spaced out, I would go with the new time, and check the inbound a/c to make sure. If its long haul international, and a thin route, i.e. one that goes once a day, I check the inbound aircraft and time myself to it, I of course am referring to the "foreign" end and not a US based hub.....

Zurick

The problem is that if the delay is "fixed" and they board, you loose and don't have status for the next flight

cre95

My point of view is that 90-minute before a scheduled domestic flight is nonsense. I target 60-minute which gives me time for a quick swing by the Skyclub to get a drink (coffee if early in the morning or a sparkling water or other drink if later in the day). Also, if the security line turns out to be slower, I can always skip the Skyclub and go straight to the gate.

cre95

So, is the moral of the story that going by the published delayed time all worked out fine? You didn't have to hang out the gate all the time and you made your flight totally fine

GMTmin8

After my original flight was delayed by 13 hours, I was able to transfer to an earlier flight that was also delayed.

Had I only looked at the BOARDS info on the app screen on phone #1 (A) - I would have missed my flight., I believed the DEPARTS time
Interestingly phone #2 (B) had a different boarding time for the same flight even after refreshing both.

Below are side by side screen shots from each phone at (nearly) the same time for my flight.

Different boarding time for same flight on different phones

This might not be the best thread to post, but was the first I found.