FA: "They are holding your connections" = LIE
Mar 17, 2008, 7:47 am
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: MSP
Programs: DL DM, Hilton Diamond, Avis First
Posts: 89
FA: "They are holding your connections" = LIE
Don't ever believe the cabin crew or the FA when they say "From the flightdeck, uhhhhhh , don't worry folks, uuuuuh, they are holding your outbound connections until we get a gate and can unload."
Landed on time at MKE, sat in the "penalty box" for 25-30 minutes while they found us a gate, and were told the above lie while all on board looked at the watches and phones in panic.
Why doesn't an on-time & scheduled flight have a gate ready when the plane arrives?
Why does the flight crew feed you a line of crap, knowing full well, that the plane that is freeing up a gate for them, is leaving some of us behind.
Landed on time at MKE, sat in the "penalty box" for 25-30 minutes while they found us a gate, and were told the above lie while all on board looked at the watches and phones in panic.
Why doesn't an on-time & scheduled flight have a gate ready when the plane arrives?
Why does the flight crew feed you a line of crap, knowing full well, that the plane that is freeing up a gate for them, is leaving some of us behind.
Mar 17, 2008, 10:46 am
#2
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Exclusively OMNI/PR, for Reasons
Posts: 4,188
Don't ever believe the cabin crew or the FA when they say "From the flightdeck, uhhhhhh , don't worry folks, uuuuuh, they are holding your outbound connections until we get a gate and can unload."
Landed on time at MKE, sat in the "penalty box" for 25-30 minutes while they found us a gate, and were told the above lie while all on board looked at the watches and phones in panic.
Why doesn't an on-time & scheduled flight have a gate ready when the plane arrives?
Why does the flight crew feed you a line of crap, knowing full well, that the plane that is freeing up a gate for them, is leaving some of us behind.
Landed on time at MKE, sat in the "penalty box" for 25-30 minutes while they found us a gate, and were told the above lie while all on board looked at the watches and phones in panic.
Why doesn't an on-time & scheduled flight have a gate ready when the plane arrives?
Why does the flight crew feed you a line of crap, knowing full well, that the plane that is freeing up a gate for them, is leaving some of us behind.
Mar 24, 2008, 7:43 pm
#3
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 142
When you arrive and your gate is occupied or isn't available for whatever reason, it isn't as simple as just sending the airplane to another gate. The gates are set up a certain way each day based on where the airplane goes next and several factors dictate where stuff parks. Sometimes the gates can be moved around a little, others times they can't depending on why your original gate isn't open.
Mar 24, 2008, 9:44 pm
#4
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Bay Area, CA
Programs: United Mileage Plus
Posts: 1,159
It is extremely likely that the flight crew believed that connections would be held awaiting arriving passengers. More than any other airline, I've seen YX delay flights due to the late arrival of an inbound flight with connecting passengers. I believe your experience was atypical. That of course doesn't make it any more pleasant for you, but this is not normally a problem on YX.
Mar 26, 2008, 9:15 am
#6
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Chicago
Posts: 1,800
It's not unreasonable to think that the flight attendant was told prior to landing that connections would be held for the late arriving passengers. For whatever reason, that didn't happen.
Mar 26, 2008, 3:48 pm
#7
Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 2,653
For anyone interested, here's more than you really want to know about holding flights and how it sometimes breaks down. This is not offered as an excuse or justification, but simply as explaination of how it sometimes goes wrong. I can't address what failed in your particular circumstance, of course, but hopefully this illustrates how it should work and what can go wrong.
Let’s take a hypothetical flight scheduled to arrive Milwaukee at 7:00am which is now estimated in at 7:20am. A passenger asks the flight attendant if their connecting flight to Nashville at 7:25 will hold for them.
1. F/A calls the cockpit to ask about this.
2. Pilot radios to MKE operations “We’ve got some connecting passengers onboard, are we holding?”
3. MKE operations calls the operations coordination center (sometimes called SOC) to ask if connections will be held for flight X.
4. The SOC decides what will hold or not hold and responds to operations.
5. The SOC sends a bulletin to the gates to advise of what to hold for.
6. Operations radios back to the pilot with the information.
7. Pilot calls the F/A with the information.
8. F/A makes the announcement over the PA that “connections are holding”.
Plenty of things can potentially go wrong with this, including:
a. Imprecise communication is possible at every step.
b. Holds are almost never indefinite. In this example, the 7:25 flight is probably instructed to hold up to ten additional minutes. With last-flight-of-the-day holds there is more tendency to extend holds and hunt repeatedly for missing connections, but it is not infinite.
c. If something unexpectedly further delays a flight’s arrival (like the plane that was supposed to vacate the gate has a last-minute mechanical delay) the hold order for a connection may expire before the inbound even deplanes.
d. Connection passengers sometimes assume “your flight is holding” means “they won’t leave until you personally show up no matter how long you take.” In ideal circumstances the gate agent will check to see if they got all their expected held-for passengers and page repeatedly to find strays, but if they hold for longer than authorized, then *they* are blamed for the delay.
Here’s a relatively common scenario. Let’s go back to that flight which was scheduled in at 7:00am but is instead estimated in at 7:20am. Here are the departing flights of passengers making connections from that flight:
7:25am Nashville
7:30am Orlando
7:40am Boston
8:10am Atlanta
Based on that ETA of 7:20, the operations coordination center issued a hold notice to Nashville and Orlando to wait for passengers form this delayed flight. The Boston and Atlanta connections should be okay. Word is sent to the aircraft that connections will hold.
Then, for whatever reason, that plane does not arrive until 7:30. May be that Air Traffic Control put the plane on a longer final approach due to area storms or declining visibility. May be that no gate was open upon landing because the earlier flight took a delay. May be that the ramp or gate agents to serve the plane were caught elsewhere and the parking or jetway functions were delayed. The Nashville and Orlando connections were probably still good since they were instructed to hold, and the agent working those flights can even inquire to see that the flight they are holding for just came in later than anticipated at 7:30. But Boston did not expect any late connections. If one was seated in the back of the plane, one stopped to fiddle with a carryon or quickly use the bathroom, the Boston flight likely left without the connecting passenger. The agent paged their name while they were still on the inbound aircraft, and not seeing anyone, the plane left. Minutes later, standing at the gate where Boston did not hold, the passenger feels lied to.
Ideally, someone in Operations or the Operations Coordination Center/SOC sees that the ETA for this inbound flight has slipped ten minutes, inquires to see if any additional connections are endangered, and contacts each gate for a last-minute advisory. The problem is that this simplified example is often multiplied many times over. In fact this single flight may have connections to a multitude of flights departing in the 7:30-7:45 range in various danger of misconnect. And there may be several other flights in very similar circumstance all at the same time.
Delays are tracked and blame assigned with sometimes-excruciating detail at virtually all airlines. The decision to hold or not hold is not arrived at lightly, and a hold decision that makes sense for a ten-minute delay turns ugly when in fact the delay becomes 25 minutes. Department heads are held accountable for every single delay, and delays are reviewed in great detail at regular meetings.
All of this, however, is detail lost on customers who feel lied to when they miss a connection. It’s a difficult problem, and the solution some airlines have is simply never holding for connections. The downside of that is that it creates a lot more misconnects, antagonizes a lot more customers, and increases costs because misconnects are costly to process.
Let’s take a hypothetical flight scheduled to arrive Milwaukee at 7:00am which is now estimated in at 7:20am. A passenger asks the flight attendant if their connecting flight to Nashville at 7:25 will hold for them.
1. F/A calls the cockpit to ask about this.
2. Pilot radios to MKE operations “We’ve got some connecting passengers onboard, are we holding?”
3. MKE operations calls the operations coordination center (sometimes called SOC) to ask if connections will be held for flight X.
4. The SOC decides what will hold or not hold and responds to operations.
5. The SOC sends a bulletin to the gates to advise of what to hold for.
6. Operations radios back to the pilot with the information.
7. Pilot calls the F/A with the information.
8. F/A makes the announcement over the PA that “connections are holding”.
Plenty of things can potentially go wrong with this, including:
a. Imprecise communication is possible at every step.
b. Holds are almost never indefinite. In this example, the 7:25 flight is probably instructed to hold up to ten additional minutes. With last-flight-of-the-day holds there is more tendency to extend holds and hunt repeatedly for missing connections, but it is not infinite.
c. If something unexpectedly further delays a flight’s arrival (like the plane that was supposed to vacate the gate has a last-minute mechanical delay) the hold order for a connection may expire before the inbound even deplanes.
d. Connection passengers sometimes assume “your flight is holding” means “they won’t leave until you personally show up no matter how long you take.” In ideal circumstances the gate agent will check to see if they got all their expected held-for passengers and page repeatedly to find strays, but if they hold for longer than authorized, then *they* are blamed for the delay.
Here’s a relatively common scenario. Let’s go back to that flight which was scheduled in at 7:00am but is instead estimated in at 7:20am. Here are the departing flights of passengers making connections from that flight:
7:25am Nashville
7:30am Orlando
7:40am Boston
8:10am Atlanta
Based on that ETA of 7:20, the operations coordination center issued a hold notice to Nashville and Orlando to wait for passengers form this delayed flight. The Boston and Atlanta connections should be okay. Word is sent to the aircraft that connections will hold.
Then, for whatever reason, that plane does not arrive until 7:30. May be that Air Traffic Control put the plane on a longer final approach due to area storms or declining visibility. May be that no gate was open upon landing because the earlier flight took a delay. May be that the ramp or gate agents to serve the plane were caught elsewhere and the parking or jetway functions were delayed. The Nashville and Orlando connections were probably still good since they were instructed to hold, and the agent working those flights can even inquire to see that the flight they are holding for just came in later than anticipated at 7:30. But Boston did not expect any late connections. If one was seated in the back of the plane, one stopped to fiddle with a carryon or quickly use the bathroom, the Boston flight likely left without the connecting passenger. The agent paged their name while they were still on the inbound aircraft, and not seeing anyone, the plane left. Minutes later, standing at the gate where Boston did not hold, the passenger feels lied to.
Ideally, someone in Operations or the Operations Coordination Center/SOC sees that the ETA for this inbound flight has slipped ten minutes, inquires to see if any additional connections are endangered, and contacts each gate for a last-minute advisory. The problem is that this simplified example is often multiplied many times over. In fact this single flight may have connections to a multitude of flights departing in the 7:30-7:45 range in various danger of misconnect. And there may be several other flights in very similar circumstance all at the same time.
Delays are tracked and blame assigned with sometimes-excruciating detail at virtually all airlines. The decision to hold or not hold is not arrived at lightly, and a hold decision that makes sense for a ten-minute delay turns ugly when in fact the delay becomes 25 minutes. Department heads are held accountable for every single delay, and delays are reviewed in great detail at regular meetings.
All of this, however, is detail lost on customers who feel lied to when they miss a connection. It’s a difficult problem, and the solution some airlines have is simply never holding for connections. The downside of that is that it creates a lot more misconnects, antagonizes a lot more customers, and increases costs because misconnects are costly to process.
Mar 26, 2008, 8:11 pm
#8
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: DAL
Programs: DL Silver, HH diamond, Midwest Miles (RIP), NWA WP (RIP)
Posts: 530
Midwest will usually hold a plane for connecting passengers, especially if it's the last flight of the day. They tend to do this a lot more than other airlines.
It's not unreasonable to think that the flight attendant was told prior to landing that connections would be held for the late arriving passengers. For whatever reason, that didn't happen.
It's not unreasonable to think that the flight attendant was told prior to landing that connections would be held for the late arriving passengers. For whatever reason, that didn't happen.
I had the opposite problem on UA...they closed the aircraft door early when had a tight on-time connection, fortunately they reopened it for us, but we almost missed the last ORD-MKE of the night (which is an easy thing to fix, but a hassle!).
As for not having a gate ready, when hasn't this happened to all of us? I can think of a number of reasons...weather somewhere, unexpected mx, crew issues, passenger issues...delay a flight so it's taking a gate at a time it normally doesn't. Ground control at MKE can't move a plane that's otherwise ready to go for a number of reasons. YX ground crew isn't ready b/c they had more arrivals at one time (d/t irreg ops) than expected.
Mar 26, 2008, 8:31 pm
#9
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Chicago
Posts: 1,800
Tell me about it. In my experience, the late night flights to OMA, MSP, and MCI always seem to be delayed because YX holds for connecting passengers. After being delayed an hour or more on a Sunday night it becomes more than slightly annoying. However, I can't get too upset as YX has held flights in MCI for me when the inbound MKE flights were delayed. Sometimes I was the only person connecting to SNA and I certainly appreciated that.
Mar 27, 2008, 10:32 am
#10
Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 2,653
They made good strides in the past year or so to to improve reliability in that late bank, and part of it was moving the last LGA and EWR inbounds late so they'd have only local MKE passengers onboard. East coast inbound connections for this bank are all flights scheduled to arrive between about 7pm and 8:30pm, so a routine summer hour ATC delay doesn't ruin the outbound connection. (The exception is PHL which arrives at 8:50pm...not without ATC risk.)
Midwest Connect still causes delays in that late block. They still have several flights scheduled to arrive in the range of 9:00-9:15pm, and a routine sluggish delay of, say, 20 minutes can lead to those late MCI, MSP and OMA flight taking a 10 minute delay waiting for connections. With the new SkyWest era of Midwest Connect, we'll see if they are able to run closer to on-time and not be the cause of delays in the 9:45pm block.