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So I board my flight today from Denver to my designation with a tight layover in Houston (Hobby). Plane arrives early, I was in the A boarding group, we board quickly....I was like yes the stars aligned for me today. Everyone takes there seat and we hear the captain state we are waiting on 12 passengers on another delayed flight. Those passengers all jump aboard and we are only 10 minutes past takeoff. Pilot speaks again...telling us he will make up the time in flight. Cool...I'll still have plenty of time to get to my next flight. A few minutes ago by and the pilot again speaks...we are just waiting on their luggage.....35 more minutes pass before the luggage is loaded. We start backing up...I'm now sweating since we are 45 minutes late leaving. Then we abruptly stop and the pilot says oops it's been so long our flight plan has expired. Then 10 minutes later he comes back on with an oops our flight plan is still good to go. We are now 55 minutes late taking off. So I ended up missing my connection by 5 minutes. I was the only one in line for a missed connection ( at least nobody was behind me in line at the service desk). Super friendly staff member apologized and SW had already rebooked my flight for the morning. She gave me a voucher for a hotel and said there was a $150 voucher waiting for me. I looked at her and she looked back and said let's make that $250. Im on the trip home so it's not a huge deal...but what hurts is not that they held the plane for 10 minutes for other passengers (that's actually cool they did that) it's that they held the plane for another 45 minutes for their luggage at the expense of me, a human passenger. They certainly didn't hold my flight for 10 minutes so I could board! Has this happened to anyone else????
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Ugh, that would be a very frustrating experience. I'm impressed by how you handled it and how Southwest handled it. I don't know if there is a clear policy on what flights get held and what don't. I've certainly been on both ends of it so it's great when it saves you, but a pain when it hurts you.
--TheMiddleSeat
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I guess it might get down to
Does SW inconvenience 12 people who get to their destinations sans luggage or not?
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sad thats way i don't do tight connections anymore. mom sad in chicago
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My speculation is that they held the flight for the connections because they were still loading luggage, although that may differ from what they had told you originally. Generally, they like to push the planes on-time and if it's delayed, to not increase the delay. If it's a large party that is connecting, they may hold the plane to accommodate those passengers, but if it's only a single individual, they'll try their best to accommodate that passenger on the next departure, with compensation, of course. Apologies that it happened to you!
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@keven11 wrote:
So I board my flight today from Denver to my designation with a tight layover in Houston (Hobby). Plane arrives early, I was in the A boarding group, we board quickly....I was like yes the stars aligned for me today. Everyone takes there seat and we hear the captain state we are waiting on 12 passengers on another delayed flight. Those passengers all jump aboard and we are only 10 minutes past takeoff. Pilot speaks again...telling us he will make up the time in flight. Cool...I'll still have plenty of time to get to my next flight. A few minutes ago by and the pilot again speaks...we are just waiting on their luggage.....35 more minutes pass before the luggage is loaded. We start backing up...I'm now sweating since we are 45 minutes late leaving. Then we abruptly stop and the pilot says oops it's been so long our flight plan has expired. Then 10 minutes later he comes back on with an oops our flight plan is still good to go. We are now 55 minutes late taking off. So I ended up missing my connection by 5 minutes. I was the only one in line for a missed connection ( at least nobody was behind me in line at the service desk). Super friendly staff member apologized and SW had already rebooked my flight for the morning. She gave me a voucher for a hotel and said there was a $150 voucher waiting for me. I looked at her and she looked back and said let's make that $250. Im on the trip home so it's not a huge deal...but what hurts is not that they held the plane for 10 minutes for other passengers (that's actually cool they did that) it's that they held the plane for another 45 minutes for their luggage at the expense of me, a human passenger. They certainly didn't hold my flight for 10 minutes so I could board! Has this happened to anyone else????
I think ability to reschedule could also be a factor - someone missing a once or twice a day destination might be worse than missing a flight with frequent service. In this case they didn't catch you and it sounds like you had an overnight though so my usual theory wouldn't work.
12 people on a flight that might have also been delayed a little bit - that one makes sense to hold.
Maybe they needed that plane somewhere really badly and just couldn't balance it against a single passenger to miss a connection. Others might also have missed, but been at different gates, or had backup flight options booked automatically.