Flights leaving early with delayed connecting passengers should be penalized
 

Seriously United does themselves no favours when flights depart early and they know they have connecting passangers who are late due to late arrival of a United aircraft.

Now admittedly my delay/cancellation rate is 50%, and I understand about delays and endeavour to be patient with the folks I am dealing with but this afternoon I lost it at LAX.

My flight LAS-LAX was delayed 48 minutes and I had allowed a 45 minute connection. Pilot makes up significant time in the air (about 20 minutes). They switch us from arriving at Terminal 8 to Terminal 7. My flight LAX-SAN is leaving from Terminal 8. I hustle across there and get there 5 minutes before flight is supposed to depart to see it has already pushed back.

Seriously poor customer service on the part of United, especially since the flight was due to arrive early in SAN and they knew there was a connecting passanger. I was in seat 1A and an a 1K member - obviously United do not care for my business. I had really thought UA was improving in the area of customer service and my recent experiences had cofirmed this but this was a dreadful lapse by them.

I had switched to United for my flights to LAS as nearly every WN flight to/from LAS was delayed and decided if there were going to be delays would rather have that be with the airline where i have status. Going back to WN for LAS flights.

I certainly understand the crew are being rewarded for on-time departures but early departures with connecting passangers from United delayed flights should be penalized!

For clarity, did you arrive at T-5 or 5 minutes before the T-10 door closure?

Unfortunately, you're supposed to be available for boarding 15 minutes prior to departure. Sometimes they hold (especially if it's a bunch of connecting passengers or if it's last flight of day), sometimes they don't. The doors actually closes very frequently 5-10 minutes before departure and push-back often occurs before scheduled departure time - I guess you've never paid attention. Once the door closes, it's rare they'll re-open it for various operational reasons. This is hardly unusual.

One late-connecting 1K isn't a "stop everything!" moment for UA - seriously :). Maybe there were 10 GSs with tight connections waiting on a plane for your gate after also arriving late.

Hopefully, you were able to get a later flight on same day. I was left behind at EWR after seeing my once-daily Lima, Peru plane with the jetway still pushed against it and the door closed. That was pretty annoying, but I travel w/ a "stuff happens" attitude and it keeps my blood pressure in check.

I was there at 12.15pm. Flight was scheduled to leave at 12.22pm.

I arrived at the gate as it was pushing back. I actually thought about running down the ramp. The GA came up the ramp and said go to CS. No sorry we closed the gate early, nothing.

I only had hand luggage, no checked luggage.

The GAs can offload you at T-15. It sucks in these circumstances, but it's the rule.

The decision whether to hold a flight for delayed connecting pax is made by UA OPs, not the GAs. I've been on both sides of that one.

I hate WN, but it's pretty hard to justify an unreliable one-stop via LAX versus the WN nonstops LAS-SAN.

I certainly understand I am only a lowly 1K. I get that. Just reinforces 1K members are not important to them. I will never be GS, but I certainly have always tried to be understanding when United delays and cancels flights.

I do think the new measurement of when the door closes has changed behaviour at United.

So FT members tells me this is the norm for United so next time I will not husthe to the gate if there is less than 15 minutes to get there.

I'm always on the wrong side of that one. If I'm in the airport 4 hours before my flight, flight will wait for late passengers. If I'm running because my connecting flight arrived late, flight closed doors 5 minutes ahead of schedule. Happens even when there are 10 passengers running for the same flight.

The only flight they held religiously that i knew of was the HKG-SIN

It was rare that flight was on time as it had 3 (2 really) flights feeding it and if United didn't wait they would have a ton of expenditures either rebooking people or on hotels/meals or both.

Would love to have been there 15 minutes before hand if United had not delayed my original flight.

Oh that sucks about the Lima flight.

One isn't, but a herd of them counts. I do think UA does recognize the relative importance of 1Ks as a whole (hence - GPUs, RPUs, free food/drink in coach, fee abatements, 1K voice/line, etc), it's just that they are not normally going disrupt operations for a single 1K.

I have seen them wait till the last minute and push back on time or a few minutes late. The GA would need confidence that connecting pax can make it ... gate is close etc. If you are running over from another terminal ... 99% would not do that so the GA looked at the arriving flight and determined there was no chance. I have had some luck telling the GA at the arriving gate to call the departing gate that I was making a dash over ... that has helped in the past.

They won't necessarily hold a flight for a GS either. There are many considerations that go into the decision, including whether the flight might lose its takeoff slot, the number of pax affected, and the alternatives for pax who are left behind . You shouldn't take it personally. You fly enough, it's going to happen.

Actually from my experience I don't see evidence that status is considered at all in determination of whether or not to hold a flight. It seems like it's just number of passengers.

OP, I can definitely feel your frustration although as others have mentioned, it's truly dependent on a lot of circumstances. Just last week on a flight home, the GA wanted to close 15-20 minutes early (flight was maybe ~20% full) and I could overhear the captain asking her how many connecting passengers we were waiting for. Sounded like there were at least 3-4 and captain said no dice, leave the door open. After 3 of them showed up and we were nearing ~5 minutes until scheduled departure, the captain let her close the door. Knowing there was another flight an hour later that was practically empty, I'd say that's fair.

As cfischer mentioned, I've had luck twice in the last year or so asking/begging the GA to call the other gate and let them know I was running and would be there in time.

Pretty much the same thing happened to me on a delayed LAS-LAX flight. We landed at T7 and my connection to ORD was in T7 too. Ran to the gate. The agent was coming out of the jetway and sees me. "You must be Mr. iluv" he said. Yes. Sorry, had to push back. I rebooked you on the redeye back to Chicago. (Five hours later.) He did call the GFL and said that they would let me wait there. (Minor consolation.) So he knew I was coming and didn't wait.

And I'm a GS. So don't go uber-dramatic that you are a 1K and they don't value your business. It is what it is. Get over it.