Hi @ll, I'de like to understand some reason behind airline's procedure when it comes to dispatch pax from their own delayed connection flight.


We were booked from ZRH to PTY via MAD with the same airline. The flight from ZRH to MAD was over two hours delayed, so we called the airline's hotline to ask if the connecting flight would wait for us. From now on, the operations should have known that there are pax worrying about their connecting flight. We also asked the crew inflight. We were said to not to worry, all will turn out fine.

There was no assistance waiting for us in MAD. We rushed through that airport on our own and arrived at the gate 15 minutes after the scheduled departure time. The plane was still there, but boarding was closed. The staff already knew about us and handed us new tickets for another flight, which departed seven hours later via LIM to PTY. Over 20 pax were affected. In the end, we arrived at our destination 15 hours later than planned, without luggage.

In the aftermath we learned that our original flight from MAD to PTY only departed 90 minutes after we arrived at the gate.


Question: What could be the reason from the airline's point of view that the operations acted like this? Why could/would they not use the circumstance of the anyway delayed connecting flight to reopen boarding for us in MAD? Consider, that MAD is their main hub, where they have own staff at the terminals.

My guess would be that they gave away your seats, and weren't going to offload 20 standby passengers.

Could be, but very unlikely. Where should they get 20 standby passengers for a long-haul flight on such short notice? However, I wanted to close this thread prior to your answer because it is in the wrong forum - don't know how to do it :-/. This discussion goes on here: What reason does an airline have to not dispatch delayed pax properly?