Flight delays are annoying. Rolling delays are even worse. Sometimes an airline genuinely doesn’t know what’s going to happen. First, an inbound aircraft is delayed. And another flight delays where your crew are coming off. But then as boarding approaches they discover a mechanical problem – and what at first seems like a simple issue reveals something more time consuming, like a part that’s going to take longer to get.
That’s all understandable. What is more frustrating is when an airline clearly knows that a departure time is impossible but doesn’t update it until the last minute. You’re standing at the gate 15 minutes to scheduled departure and boarding hasn’t started yet because the plane isn’t there yet the flight still shows as departing on-time. You could have gotten something to eat, or stayed in the club longer.
Equally frustrating to late departures – or maybe even more problematic – is departing early. It’s the Goldie Locks problem. You plan on the basis of the airline’s schedule, and departing early means you have less time than you though to make it to the airport and through security. You may miss your flight!
Post by @svatikirstenView on Threads
I especially hate when airlines publish delays – give new departure times – and then move flights back to their original departure time (or something in between). Departure times are something you should be able to rely on. Things happen to delay a flight, but except in the most extreme emergencies an airline shouldn’t move a flight earlier. If there’s a four hour delay, I’m not leaving home to head to the airport at the originally-planned time. Move a flight back, and I’m not there to board.
Gates usually close 10 minutes prior to departure, and passengers need to be in the gate area 15 minutes prior, but times are relative to the published reference point. If that reference time changes, customers lose out. In this example it’s a Delta flight leaving just 5 minutes early. Delta seems to do this more than other airlines.
While it’s ‘only’ 5 minutes, it means that they’re effectively changing the contract of carriage to 15 and 20 minutes, respectively, and that’s highly problematic. You may have decided to get a Starbucks with 5 minutes and your latte means you’re too late to fly.
Am I the only one to realize that getting to destination early is not necessarily good. A pilot stating they are landing earlier than scheduled is nothing to cheer about. Too often, for domestic flights to a hub airport, there is a tarmac delay because to the planned gate is occupied with another aircraft readying for its on-time departure. The result is arrival really happens just as late as the schedule indicated. Pilots should just stay quiet on supposed “early” arrivals.
For me, arriving early is good or at worst a push. For those with tight connections, it can be the thing that makes it happen. An airplane on the ground probably is safer than one in the air. I’ve been on a lot of airplanes that have arrived early, usually due to a jet stream assist.
I must say that all summer long with all sorts of challenges I find Delta Air Lines to be a diamond — they WILL hold a flight or keep pushing departures back to facilitate connections, particularly at ATL. It has been a super stressful year with operational interuptions of all sorts. Delta can be counted on… whereas with American Airlines – no … they will leave you stranded in a hot minute to the point of departing early as you describe here by 7,8,10 minutes. American is disgusting. Fly Delta.
I’ve never heard of “published” early departures. Is this something new? There have been plenty of times that an aircraft has pushed off the gate early because all passengers were on board and ready to go. A 5-minute early departure shouldn’t be too terribly problematic. You’re still supposed to be at the gate at least 15 minutes prior to SCHEDULED departure time, which means you would be at the gate at least 10 minutes prior to actual departure if they moved it forward by 5 minutes.
This may be nothing more than a tempest in a teacup or unnecessary content creation.
You seem to be asserting that they leave 5 minutes early and then push the 10 minutes all aboard up as well. I don’t believe that is what happens. The 10 minute stays static. So no one is inconvenienced by a flight with departure at 10:10 that actually departs at 10:05 because you ALWAYS had to be onboard at 10:00. They didn’t move up the all aboard to 9:55