DCP2016

I sympathize with the OP because it's always the customer's fault if they mess up, and it's the customer's fault if the airline messes up. It's a no win situation and you are punished for both. Airlines rightfully so hold no sympathy if something happens that wasn't their fault that made you late, such as traffic or you woke up late. Why they extend that no sympathy when it's their fault you landed late is nonsense.

narvik

It's stories like these in this thread, and my own experiences that I now:

1) never run or rush in airports. If I'm late, I'm late.
2) never book the super-tight connections ua.com sometimes offers.

emcampbe

Risk tolerance is going to be different for everyone. I've done 35 minute ORD connections, though typically I'll only do that when traveling alone, when it is to a destination that is served by multiple flights daily, and when I want to be there at the scheduled time, but don't need to be. If one needs to be at their daughter's dance recital, their wedding, or an important business meeting, the better option is to make sure you have a bigger buffer, and again, that will change from person to person. Peronally, I try to do at least an hour, if EWR is my connecting point, at least 2.

Let's also be clear on MCT - this isn't the suggested connection time....it's just the time the carrier is allowing where they will take responsibility if you misconnect. I don't have a problem in some cases doing a 35 minute connection in ORD because I know the airport and could practically navigate it with my eyes closed (not that I would). It's also the shortest time allowed there. I would not suggest it for someone who can't handle IRROPS, or who has never been to the terminal before.

Departure time is actually a great name, because it describes exactly what that time is - when the plane departs. I suppose you could lobby for them to also publish a 'doors closed' time, but they pretty much do, as they put 'boarding ends' right on the BP. At doors closed, they still need to send numbers in, etc. Let's not forget, if they were to allow a person on, say, a minute before departure time, and now need to re-run the numbers, that could take another, say, 5- 10 minutes. So now the other 50, 100, or however many passengers are delayed because of that. So is it better to have 100 people arriving late because 1 of them couldn't be bothered to get to the gate at the time they were supposed to be (as mentioned, which is right on the BP).

Believe it or not, pre-merger, in its customer committement, UA had a provision that they wouldn't rescind a delay if it was published. At least that's how it was on paper. My wife was very close to learning that the hard way when the 2 hour delay out of ORD (announced a few hours earlier) was completely rescinded back to an OTP when they must have found a new aircraft. We rushed from downtown, where we were spending a bit of extra time due to the delay. She was the last person to board, running down the jetway. Suffice it say, while we're a bit more lenient at smaller outstations where there isn't much ability to swap inbound planes, we are pretty much at the gate for an ontime departure - delay published or not.

I disagree this had much, if any, of an effect. Truth is, UA has been giving out bonuses to front line agents for OTP, back to pre-merger for sure and I believe was credited as one of the reasons UA went to number 1 in OTP of the major carriers back up until the merger.

cerealmarketer

While I agree the T-15 is T-15 so don't expect more than that...

Strange that all the LAX-SAN flights had a gate departure time 7 to 14 minutes before the scheduled time yesterday.

I can see a few, but all of them...

Someone got a memo / policy.

But I'm guessing whomever worked that gate for the OPs flight didn't look at the connecting passenger list.

Personally would have asked for a rebook onto Delta from LAS if the first leg was 45 minutes late, blowing a connection.

minnyfly

You have that backwards. It's the vast majority of passengers that are benefited by a focus on D:0. It's a select few that may end up drawing the short end of the stick. Overall it's highly customer-friendly. And yes, it's better for the airline too. Win-win.

mduell

UA does publish the door close time in the CoC.

username

I had this happen to me once. The flight into our spoke airport the night before was late so the departure was delayed due to crew rest (so, it is not a last minute thing). At ORD, there were about 10 of us connecting to the same flight and they closed the door on us early.

Agents don't have the authority to do this and they are rewarded for on-time departures. Part of this is really how the gate agent handles it. If they make the passenger feel it is the passenger's fault, it is bad.

Had a talk with the concourse supervisor and he said he should have held the flight but he was busy with another problem.

kale73

Given that a particular 'flight' is an abstract concept (aircraft, flight crew and ground personnel are more concrete), I am wondering exactly what 'penalty' the OP is proposing be imposed on those that depart early* when late-arriving pax are left behind?

* Agreed that the flight missed by the OP in this instance did not actually leave early.

gigglypug

I’ve learned about UA’s pretty stringent T-15 policy the hard way on my first outing after switching from DL....and I would add that gate checked baggage also plays a major role in make-or-break decisions.

long version: original routing STL-ORD-SNA. The Barbie jet that was supposed to take me to ORD aborts take-off roll because MEX. no problem, I call the 1K line and get rebooked STL-IAH-SNA, leaving
35 minutes out

problem was that no gate was available, so we’re holding on the tarmac. And hold. And hold. Finally get a gate, then we wait for carry-on bags to be off-loaded. And wait. And wait. By the time I get to the STL-IAH gate, they had JUST closed the boarding doors.

admit this took me by surprise: DL routinely holds flights, especially for elites in IRROPS...they can, their schedules are ridiculously padded. As a defecting DL diamond and freshly status challenging 1K, this was a change.

so they put me on another flight to ORD boarding immediately...the plan was that I would still catch my original connection. But no, first they reassign us to get into B instead of C (connection was out of C), then...once again...they take their sweet time getting gate checked bags unloaded. Had I known better, I would have headed straight to the United club...instead I run through the tunnel only to look at proverbial taillights again! After another failed attempt for stand-by for an LAX bound plane, I finally got confirmed on a relatively late flight into Lax...turning a STL-LAX trip into a 11 hour journey with another 1.5 hours on the SoCal freeways.

I’ve enjoyed my flights since and will keep trying to make UA my New home...but so far, IRROPS handling has definitely been a weakness. If the T-15 rule is so strict, why did the 1k folks keep sending me on these wild goose chases? Just tell me to go to the club and drink Prosecco...

chermorg

Is there any reason that they didn't fully check your bag in when they rerouted you back through ORD? Then the bag and you could've flown separately (even though they'd hopefully most likely make the connection), getting you home to your proper airport (even if without your bag)? It seems like that'd be standard for them to do and in fact when they gate check bags in an outstation I've more often than not seen them just offer to tag them to final destinations regardless of where that may be.

I'm also hopeful (but uncertain) that this may have been a miscommunication between the 1k and the gate agents - it's possible the 1k agent didn't phone the right people to hold that flight up, or it's possible that even with holding it as long as they could the gate tagged bags took so long that they couldn't hold it anymore. Regardless, if you had to gate check a bag, and they knew about it, they should've been able to do one of two things - let the new gate know to wait another 2-3 minutes, or tag it through so you didn't have to worry about it - both of those are within the 1k agent's purview.

ermintrude

Sorry but that's utterly untrue. It's not a parameter designed to enhance benefit to the consumer. I suggest you read the thread on D0

Kevin AA

I was with you until the part I bolded above. It is not my fault the incoming plane is late. I can run to the other gate, but I can't turn back the hands of time. UA could use some common sense and see that I'm five minutes away and it's T-15, so hold your horses.

Kevin AA

This is SOP for UA. Why would you leave Delta? Do you despise good customer service and prefer an authoritarian blame-the-victim environment?

minnyfly

I'm surprised it took you by surpise. I would expect gate holds the least on DL. DL has been stringent about D:0 for a long time, longer than I've known it to be a focus at UA, and pressure agents to get flights out ontime. I've been victim of when that pressure means a GA doesn't do their job and leaves people behind.

I know it is true. 100%. Explain how it's better for the majority of passengers to run a loose operation that wastes people's time, causes more delays, and creates more misconnects. What we have in the OP's case is a textbook example of how D:0 is customer-friendly for the majority and leaves just a select few with the short end of the stick from time-to-time.

jsloan

Simple. The customer doesn't care about D:0, at all. Barring some ridiculous scenario straight out of the movies -- "whoo, we departed; the corrupt foreign police can't touch us now" -- it matters to zero people on the plane whether or not they depart on time.

Now, A:0? That matters. And you can argue that D:0 impacts A:0 -- all other things being equal, the earlier you depart, the earlier you'll arrive. But sometimes other things aren't equal. In the OP's case, is it more customer friendly to get every passenger save one to SAN ten minutes ahead of schedule, or to get every passenger to SAN exactly on schedule? If UA were monitoring A:0 instead of D:0, they may be more willing to hold flights when there's no impact to A:0 than they are today.

Now, again, there are a lot of factors, and a 5 minute departure delay could easily turn into a 25 minute arrival delay, so I'm not arguing in favor of a blanket "always wait for nearby pax" rule. But it's plain to see that a focus on D:0 is not customer-centric; UA should focus on A:0 instead.