Delta’s aversion to holding flights
 

Mostly venting here. Tonight I was on a SkyWest flight that was 45 min late due to mechanical. I had an hour 2 min connection in Salt Lake. Ran to the second plane and watched the agent close the door at 11 minutes prior to scheduled departure. There were 15 of us with the same origin and destination stuck overnight. Agent wouldn’t help anyone, said to go to the help desk. I did and got a hotel voucher. Went out to the hotel shuttle area and the driver said hotel has no rooms for Delta refugees.

The second flight the 15 of us were on arrived 7 minutes early. If they had waited 7 minutes or even less, none of us would’ve been delayed overnight, needed hotel and meal vouchers, etc. The help desk agent said gate agents have no control and the ramp tower tells them to close early. She was sympathetic but said that’s how Delta does things.

It seems to me Delta has become obsessed with metrics to a level that defies common sense. If the flight plan has you arriving many minutes early, you don’t need to leave early. In my experience United is much better at “saving” connections, using an algorithm to determine if and when to hold flights based on many factors. At the very least they’ll tell you in the app if they are holding or not so you don’t sprint across the airport like an idiot for no reason.

Outrageous
 

There seems to be a particular problem in SLC. The station management there are buffoons. And if corporate in ATL condones this policy then they are buffoons too. Those 15 passengers should all sue DL for beach of contract. Let DL start paying to defend suits like that and see what comes of it.

If you arrive for a connection at the gate before the flight *should* (according to DL's T&Cs) close, try to take a photograph on your phone as proof (i.e., showing gate number and time) that you were there on time and then complain to DL and if necessary to the DOT. DL should not be cancelling reservations or closing the door early. BTW, for such situations, there's a difference between losing your seat assignment (earlier) and losing your confirmed reservation (later) for the flight, generally five minutes for domestic segments. DOT IDB compensation rules might apply, even though DL tries very hard to never do IDBs.

I believe the contract says all passengers must be on board 15 min prior to departure, even if Delta prevented you from being on board 15 minutes prior to departure. It’s a rigid policy that Delta worships, especially in SLC. They even love to post a 5 min early departure, which yields a 20 min prior door close.

gate arrival at 15 minutes prior to departure is the threshold for domestic flights. DOT IDB rules only apply to oversold situations.

If you mean the day-of change to show the departure time as 5 or 10 minutes earlier, the 15 minute rule still applies to the original departure time - they just start boarding earlier. It's just a way to encourage people to show up to the gate earlier and they are far more likely to actually close the door at exactly T-15. They may close earlier if all confirmed passengers are on the plane, but the only time I've seen close the door before T-15 they made an announcement saying all ticketed passengers were boarded and they were leaving early.

In my experience they do this for operational reasons (usually abnormally strong headwinds or because the had to make do swaps on planes at the destination with an earlier next departure time so they want to get the plane there as quickly as possible).

I was onboard the last flight of the night, they waited "just a few minutes" for a DM who was running to make the connection, this caused us to miss our take off slot and the crew timed out so 200 passengers had to be rebooked the next day.

No wonder airlines hate when elites do hidden-city ticketing.

I agree if there are tight connections flights shouldn't be leaving early.

Had exactly the same issue happen a few months ago in ATL. Had a 2.5 hr connection which gradually vanished due to mechanical issues. Got off the plane 20 mins before scheduled connection departure. Landed in B36 and ran to B2 and arrived at 13 mins before to find door closed and no agent…. Not saying that I’m a special but technology is there to call passenger before closing door which has happened to me before when I hadn’t boarded.

Side note - part of the problem here is that delta is over aggressive in rebooking. While I was on the first flight, I noticed that they already removed my connection reservation and booked me for next day. They should protect space on next flight but never remove the confirmed reservation. I know this is tricky when folks are flying standby but has to be a balance here.

All customers are required to be at the gate and ready to board 15 minutes before scheduled departure.
https://www.delta.com/us/en/check-in...estic-check-in

It’s not your fault but that’s what Delta’s policy is. And you can’t guarantee all 15 of you - or other passengers who did make the flight - wouldn’t have been stuck at SLC overnight. It’s possible the flight was oversold and your flight coming in late resolved the oversell situation. Or other operational factors could have been considered, such as pilot duty limits (maybe those pilots were reaching duty day limits and waiting for you would have been the difference in them possibly timing out) or weather or other operational considerations that drove the decision to have the flight depart early.

Please note I’m just trying to explain it, not justify it. I empathize because of course it sucks to be that close to making the flight and missing it, especially when it results in an unplanned overnight. Unfortunately airlines make decisions in the best interest of the overall system which often comes at the expense of some individuals’ situations.

Flip side to this story…

Years ago I lived in TPA and commuted to DCA. Sometimes the USAir price was outrageous and I’d fly AA via MIA. 100% of my MIA-TPA flights were late because they routinely held the flight for connecting Pax. Sometimes it was 15 min, but it could be an hour or more. It got real old… especially since the flight was already a late evening flight, arriving even later was a real drag.

Problem with all of this: when is the actual departure time? If you’ll hold the flight, then that’s not the departure time. What if someone has impaired mobility? What if they sprint? What if theyre in the back of the plane or have to go to the bathroom?

while i sympathize with you, you can never guarantee if you are going to arrive early until the plane touched down. twice in my life (once with jal and once with delta), my first flight was delayed, making it near impossible to connect. on both occasions, the check in agents and their supervisors rejected my request to change my 2nd flight because they expected to 1st flight to arrive earlier than scheduled. and that turned out to be false on both counts and i misconnected. so it might had been the right thing to do for delta across many many flights, but it just didnt turn out well for you

Send a complaint in to DL detailing the experience. They do this a lot... closing doors absurdly early and then the plane ends up just sitting there at the gate waiting to be pushed back anyway... or it leaves and arrives early just to sit at the next airport waiting for a gate for 20-30min.

The whole 15 min thing is a joke also, since they are still often boarding pax at T-15. GA knew there were a bunch of pax coming.
What happened with the hotel... did you end up getting a room somewhere? Meal vouchers? Make sure you turn in for reimbursement of any expenses due to DL's operational issues.

Since Salt Lake had no hotels with actual rooms I went to the ticket counter and asked if they could send me to an intermediary city with hotels. I suggested Portland which was on the way to my destination of Seattle. They agreed to that. I called the Diamond line and they sent me a voucher for the Sheraton at PDX. Much better than SLC sending me to a Comfort Inn with no rooms.