American Airlines Will Now Hold Tight Connections — And Tell You Exactly How Long Your Flight Will Wait For You

Back in the spring, American Airlines began testing a customer-friendly move to hold connecting flights for delayed passengers, when doing so won’t cause problems for the operation. This started at Dallas – Fort Worth airport, and has expanded.

American Airlines, Dallas – Fort Worth

The airline publishes some very short connection times. That is great for moving passengers quickly from their starting city to destination, and privileges display of choices (since that offers quicker itineraries) which helps sales. But it also means that small delays risk those connections.

American starts boarding most domestic flights 40 minutes prior to departure, but they publish conncetions as short as 25 minutes at both Charlotte and Phoenix – even when connections involve a change of concourse. And you can lose your seat if you’re not in the gate area 15 minutes prior to departure.

However they aren’t just holding flights for passengers, they’re telling passengers the flight will be held for them – and how long it will be held. So they can breathe a bit easier. Here’s what this notification looks like:

[CLT] interesting connection experience
byu/Meowcat1029 inamericanairlines

This is what American shared internally with employees about the program when it was introduced:

United Airlines runs something called ConnectionSaver that has been unique until now. They will delay flights for passengers to help them make connections. But they don’t do it all the time. Their computers take several things into account.

• Many flights are projected to arrive early. They’ll delay a flight where doing so means the flight will arrive on-time rather than early.

• Delaying the last flight of the day is more common, because the consequences of missed connections are greater (forced overnight) and because delaying the plane and other passengers has fewer consequences (they won’t be connecting and the plane may just be overnighting). A long delay could require crew to start late the next day to get minimum rest, but a short delay usually won’t have much effect.

American Airlines gate agents can’t hold a flight for connecting passengers on their own. The airline only lets them hold the door instead of closing it 10 minutes before departure when a customer is running up to the gate and in the agent’s direct line of site, or for the last flight of the day they’ve been allowed to wait until 5 minutes to departure for doors close.

Dallas – Fort Worth Gate A16

And agents don’t have to do this. In fact, they may be concerned about getting in trouble if they do because the airline has prioritized exact on-time departures (D0) even when they aren’t needed over over getting those last passengers on board.

In fact American will remove passengers from flights before they even miss them, simply because American’s computers project that they will miss the flight. This lets them give the seat to another passenger that wants to get on – and do it earlier, when it won’t delay the crucial last minutes prior to departure (they call this system ‘AURA’ or the AUtomated ReAccommodation Tool).

American Airlines

Generally speaking an airline is more likely to hold your flight if,

1. a lot of customers are trying to make the connection
   
2. there aren’t other options for getting this group to their destination
   
3. delaying the flight will have only a limited effect on the operation – further delays, crew timing out, other passengers misconnecting later

Even still, United’s ConnectionSaver has held planes for over 2,000 passengers in a day. It’ll be fascinating to watch American continue to tune their new system and see how many connections they’re able to save for customers.

American Airlines DFW Airport Gate D21

It does seem like American has started to make some effort paying more attention to customers and fixing pain points. They just need to articulate a more customer-centric vision so that employees understand the goal and customers internalize their efforts as part of a larger context – and not just as small, disconnected changes.