Swa strange happenings?

[hsmamato2]

twice this past week,swa in Baltimore connecting..... twice flight is delayed at gate for an hour or three waiting for passengers who (they said) weren't on plane...
Why? Both times it was at least 20 people,or more,could it have been a late connector,and they just didn't say? One person apparently was located sitting somewhere....I thought if you didn't show, the plane just took off as planned...is this common? I'm thinking BWI is a mess now, maybe new scheduling through there? I don't know... any ideas? The 2nd time was a delay from 10:45 pm to 1:45! That's late

 

[Carriemel]

Well my parents were to have been on a connector out of Baltimore on Wed night...their flight from PBI to BWI wouldn't have got them to BWI until an hour after that plane left. I hope they weren't waiting for them.

 

[greg9x]

BWI is my home airport and fly SWA usually. Last year going to MCO we were delayed 2+hours because the original plane got stuck in NJ with mechanical issue and we had to wait for a plane from San Juan which seemed bizarre. The delay was longer than the flight.
Think all airlines flying as close to capacity as they can and only as few planes in service as they need, that any delay causes a domino effect to all the flights after. Rarely is there another plane at the airport they can just put in service. When fly out west Denver is usually connecting airport and seems about 25% chance of having a delay there or missing a connection...don't think it's BWI only, just how airlines run these days trying to save money and the hub airports are more likely to have issues.

 

[hsmamato2]

well..... that was my hubbys experience a few days back.... here's mine.... on our way to our destination 10 days ago, we were delayed takeoff sitting on the runway by an hour. then my DH's above...the last night I flew home. first flight on time, I had already gotten early notice that connector (Baltimore again ugh) was delayed by an hour. so we're now at 10:30 pm takeoff time (let's all take a moment to relax and laugh at that estimate) reality? plane arrived around 10:30 or so, we boarded around 11.... this includes all the harried passengers on standby (at least 20 of them) who had been desperately waiting for a seat(all day some of them) then we sattttt for a long while..... long story short our less than an hour flight home...we arrived at 12:35 am.(booked flight suppposed to arrive at 10:35 pm) I wouldn;t think too much about a delay here and there,I'm an experienced flyer, but this feels like a pattern,and I am concerned. I always enjoyed SWA,could count on one hand the times we've been late or delayed with them. I used to avoid Chicago layovers with them,in favor of BWI. Now? BWI has been our worst transfer airport. It feels like a scheduling problem...I have no idea but it is happening too often to just be a random thing IMHO.

 

[Shelly F - Ohio]

If they have a plane that is late arriving they will usually hold the connecting flight especially if there are a number of people on that late arriving plane that need to be on that connecting flight. I have had it happen twice for me. My plane was late getting in and they held my connecting flight.

 

[LisaS]

We had that happen last month on a 10:30pm departure from Midway. There were supposed to be 90 passengers so the flight attendants were confused when only about 30 people boarded but they told us boarding was complete and the plane would be pushing back early. This was good news since we our scheduled arrival time was 1:40am.

However, we didn't push back and there was more discussion among the crew as we continued to sit at the gate. Eventually, a very boisterous group of 60 people began trickling in. Their flight into MDW was late and some of them were elderly so it took a bit of time for the entire group to reach our gate. They were having so much fun talking and laughing and wandering up and down the aisle, ignoring the flight attendant's pleas to sit down, that we ended up leaving an hour late. Instead of arriving at 1:40am, it was 2:40am.