Three months after announcing ‘Connection Saver,’ a software modification that lets the airline hold a departing plan for connecting customers as long as it can still arrive on time, United Airlines says it’s saved 40,000 connections.
The airline was so pleased with the results of its test at Denver and Chicago, and then it’s experience at all its hubs, that it’s now rolling it out throughout United’s network.
The concept is that since airline schedules are padded to increase chances of on-time arrival, there’s enough slack that if several passengers are arriving late on one flight to leave on another, it’s cheaper to hold the onward flight for a few minutes than to rebook and possibly compensate the passengers who would have missed the flight.
