why don't delayed flights get priority in leaving?
 

So I was flying BOS-PHL on US the other day and made one of the worst decisions in my flying career. We were booked on the 4:30 and are sitting at the gate around 3:50 getting ready to board. On comes the P/A system and says that our flight is oversold and they need 5 people to go on on the delayed 2:30 flight that was leaving at 4pm. I asked the gate agent what the delay was for and they said weather and the flight would be leaving before the one I was booked on.

Fine, so we "volunteer" to go on the earlier flight (I didn't ask for compensation as this "bump" was supposedly going to help me). We get on the plane and the pilot says that there is a ground hold and our release time isn't for another hour. Imagine my surprise when I see the other plane (right next to us) taxi out! We would later learn that our original flight landed 3 hours earlier than we did (and we had a really fun time sitting on the tarmac for 3 hours).

Now, what do you think went on here? Does US decide what flight leaves? Both were RJ's. Maybe it was a positioning thing. Or maybe the 2:30 was already delayed so it was a lost cause and they wanted to get the 4pm out to make it "on time"? More international pax connecting?

I would think that air traffic control wold make it so the delayed flight goes out before later ones, but I guess not. Any insight here? Thanks!

From what I have seen, it appears to go like this: each departing plane gets a "slot" - a 5 minute window in which to pull back from the gate and get into the takeoff queue. If a plane misses its "slot" - even by only a minute or two, it gets dumped to the back of the queue. (And at IAH, gets shuffled to the most remote runway.) The plane then has to wait for all the other planes who made their "slot" to takeoff before being allowed to proceed. I am not sure what other factors would keep pushing the plane further back in the queue (flight path congestion?), and I have no idea how weather-related delays impact the "slots" (except that they seem to screw the slots up).

I would think that late departures go to the bottom of the departure list as they may throw other flights off schedule if you try to stick them among on time flights

Of course, I am sure that the queueing (sp?) strategy is rather complicated, but at some point, a general principle might be: "allow one plane to be very late rather than delay others unnecessarily".

Because after a certain amount of delay, it makes no more difference to the passengers (in theory) to have another 15 minutes -- versus causing a whole load of other planes (new passengers) to also be delayed.

but this is just generalities -- like the FAA program to spread the pain of weather delays, it lies in the scheduling computer details I'm sure.

You should be suspended from FT for a week for this. :D

Agreed. Randy needs to buy a stupidity van for those of us who don't deserve to be on FT anymore. :)

If both planes were going to the same place, wouldn't weather have impacted both of them? I suppose it makes some sense to attempt to take a flight that is just delayed by bad weather than a flight that is oversold AND to be affected by bad weather, but I've found that GAs sometimes say "weather delay" when they mean any of the following: "there actually is bad weather," "mechanical problem," "the crew isn't here yet," "I don't know," "I don't care," or more than one of those. :D Thus I'm wary of supposed weather delays.

Precisely what I was thinking. And, I figured (mistakingly) that the delayed one would be let loose first because it was so delayed. That was my major mistake. Both flights ended up being delayed, but mine left 2 hours after the other one.

In my defense, they weren't going to offer compensation as there were about 20 people that wanted to go on the earlier flight. I wasn't the only stoopid one on that particular day :).

As an FTer, it was your responsibility to inform them. That's how you become an Evangelist. You're not getting off easy. :D

It's obviously a curse. It just never goes away. ;)

::: SIGH ::::

It pains me to think of the rules violated.... Never let a sure thing go.. without compensation. (I.E. Flight leaving within 30 min of a delayed flight... stay with the flight on time).

Never change flights unless you flight is now cancelled or severely delayed, the early flight is leaving on time, you are getting compensated for it :)

But these painful lessons do teach you! :)

Ground hold usually means there is some kind of delay at the destination airport.

You may still find it worthwhile to write a letter and ask for compensation if you feel the crew deceived you into volunteering to switch planes. It would be reasonable for the airline to explain that the delay to your plane was unforeseen at the moment the crew asked anybody to switch.

Travel tips:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/travel.htm

I might write a note. The gate agent literally said, "You need to run because the plane is leaving right now." Sigh.