bchandler02

Exactly. Unnecessary drama.

OP had a late flight that missed the last flight of the night, and had to go through the rebooking process and got a flight the next morning. End of story, happens all the time. Happened to me a few months back.

halls120

If I had bought a first class ticket and it was clear that the airline knew there was a distinct probability that I was going to miss my connection, and instead of proactively booking me on a later flight they made me stand in a late night rebooking line, I'd be pretty angry. Especially when I knew that the airline had the IT capability to offer me alternatives in advance, like they had done for me many times in the past.

Kacee

OP should get some comp from UA for the forced overnight. Be sure to submit hotel and meal expenses as well.

If you fly enough, you know the pilot is just making things up, that they probably won't hold your connecting flight, and you can adjust expectations accordingly. But I can see how the pilot's soft-sell could make a mildly unfortunate situation worse.

One final bit of advice - NEVER stand in a long rebooking line. Call UA. Or use one of the video kiosks.

TXJeepGuy

To give you a counterpoint on "proactive" rebooking, I had this happen to me about 10 years ago on Frontier.

Was flying IAH to PDX for a friend's wedding (I was in the wedding party) with a stop in DEN. IAH to DEN was late and my connection was very tight. Ran through the terminal and just made my flight (boarding pass scanned in no problem).

A few days later, about an hour before the wedding ceremony, I go to check in for my return flight and it is GONE. Call Frontier, and they ask me how I go to PDX. Told them on their plane as reserved.

Apparently some agent was so sure I'd miss the flight that they rebooked me on a later one proactively. When I didn't show up for that flight because I made my original flight, my return was cancelled.

Proactive is great, but if its not managed right it can create additional headaches when someone actually makes that tight connection.

stupidhead

Sounds like IT incompetence on Frontier's end. How do Frontier's computers let you board a flight you didn't have a ticket for (since they rebooked you and supposedly kicked you off your original flight)?

TXJeepGuy

Potentially, but seems like just doing things out of order could have let me get through before they cancelled the original ticket.

My point was its potentially less hassle/less likely things like that happen if they wait until they know for sure you're not making that connection.

nexus7556

It sure is. Back on January 6 I was on UA552 from SFO to LAX, it was held nearly 45 minutes to wait for ~20 people who were arriving on a delayed flight. People who were on time were quite upset as they just wanted to get home on time or were worried about connections out of LAX. I was disappointed as it meant less time in the *A First lounge in LAX before continuing on to FRA.

VegasGambler

Why did you stay in the airport and not use the hotel voucher? Which hotel was it? In any case, send UA receipts for any meals.

The rest of it is annoying but it happens. Once that door is closed you aren't getting on. Is also possible that they gave your seats away once you were offloaded (and they can't remove those pax from the plane according to DOT rules)

In the future, I strongly suggest searching for your own flights and going to the UA agents with flight numbers. Not that the agents not being able to find alternatives is your fault by any stretch... but it's still a good idea, even if it shouldn't be your responsibility. Any time a connection is getting tight, make a backup plan. It can make a huge difference.

ezefllying

I understand why the OP is angry. I probably would have been fuming too. But United didn't abandon you; they actually gave you a hotel, as they should, and rebooked you on another carrier.

The biggest problem seems to be miscommunication and poor expectations management. The flight crew made the usual "They'll hold the plane!" announcement, as if this is 1980 and flight traffic is one-tenth today's volume. The GA in SFO sounds needlessly officious--though, I note, a reasonably polite comment from a GA can sound mean when you're stressed and angry.

I don't doubt that the late-night customer-service team at SFO was inefficient. And standing for 45 minutes at midnight is miserable. But they did get you on a new flight, at some cost to United, and got you a voucher.

Complain to UA and ask for a flight credit (how much? $200?). But I would make sure to omit as much of the dramatic rendering as possible, because (a) the beleaguered employee who reads it will not care and (b) that employee will know this story is small beans in the grand scheme of things.

Polar Bear

I think it is all about expectations. As long as you are not expecting anything from United then you should be fine. The United is not caring about customers anymore. The employees will not or not allow to go extra miles to help customer. It is all based on behind the scene computer algorithm to maximize profit. Strand 15 passages overnight at SFO is much less cost to hold the airplane at gate and then cause bigger issues down the road. The OP should submit a complaint to United and request some travel credit for the inconvenience. Travel delay happens everyday. I feel frustrations that OP had and I wish OP best luck in the future travel.

Polar Bear

docbert

Presumable this was UA643 last Friday?

According to FlightAware, this flight had a 34 minute taxi time, which is pretty insane at SFO especially as they landed on the 28 runways (looks like 28R which can be a little longer taxi than 28L, but not by much).

Clearly that's going to be a gate issue (as the OP stated), but even so that's a pretty long wait for a flight that's already over an hour late and has probably a reasonable number of connecting passengers. It is a widebody (777) which clearly limits the number of available gates, but even so.

LarryJ

ConnectionSaver (CS) is alive and well. There is a CS note in the flight feed for every flight which is visible to all of the employees working the flight from the dispatcher to the zone controller to the flight attendants to the pilots.

CS is software that monitors many different data points and makes a recommendation on for how long a flight can be held for connections without causes other problems downline such as crew timeouts, gate availability conflicts, airport curfews, if there's another flight that's already landed waiting for the gate, etc. It also considers the number of affected passengers and the rebooking options available for any passengers that don't make the connection. i.e. it'll recommend longer holds on the last flight of the night than one with a good backup with minimal delay.

On most flights, the CS entry says something like, " Flight 1234 to LAX No Connection Hold". On flights where a delay is recommended, it will say, "Flight 1234 to LAX Connection Hold 08:51(L) for 1 Connection(s) from 1432 PIT".

The time listed is when the gate agent is to close the gate's boarding door. This gives connecting passengers extra time to make it to their flight but the flight will still leave without them if they don't make it by that time. Flights are not held until the passenger arrives, they are held until the time CS calculated they can wait without causing other disruptions.

After the gate's boarding door is closed, the agent brings the reconciliation reports to the pursue and Captain and closes the aircraft door when the cabin is prepared then, with the held of ramp personnel, back the jetbridge away from the aircraft. At that point the F/As finish securing the cabin for pushback and notify the Captain that it is secured, closing the cockpit door. If the ground crew is ready, the pilots can then do the BEFORE PUSHBACK checklist and request push clearance from the ramp controller. All of those steps can take some time, even after the gate's boarding door is closed. If another passenger is to be boarded, all of those steps must be reversed then repeated. This is why the airplane is still at the gate for some time after the point at which passengers will no longer be boarded.

ConnectionSaver can not save every tight connection but it does save many of them.

artvandalay

Twice in the last 12 months, once at IAD, other IAH, I've raced to a gate that has an agent asking if I'm artvandalay. In both cases, I was the last person to board, taking the last seat on the plane, and the door was closed as soon as I boarded. I am very grateful for CS.

LarryJ

I'm glad to hear that it's work for you.

The real benefit is that CS collects the data to make an intelligent recommendation. Without CS, it is difficult to make the decision on if, and how long, to hold a flight because the information is spread across so many sources and departments. CS brings that all together to help the operations agents make better decisions.

I should also say that CS helped by daughter get home on December 23 last year. She was coming home from visiting friends in L.A. She non-revved out but I knew better than to have her try to non-rev home on Dec 23rd, even before I knew that there's be a major weather event going on, so I bought her a ticket. Her LAX-IAH red-eye flight was delayed, because the airplane was running late on the 22nd due to the weather, which put her connection in jeopardy. I was home monitoring her progress and her IAH-BNA flight had a CS hold for 5 passengers, including her, from the LAX flight.

sparker72

You were an hour late out of Kona, had a 2 hour connection and still missed the flight to Newark? That sounds odd. Also, why didn't you retrieve your luggage instead of expecting United to check it onto American for the following day?