- Flight at 11AM, boarding at 10:20.
- Show up at 10:25, boarding doors are closed.
- "Didn't boarding start 5 minutes ago"
- "Yeah we close the doors once 95% of people show up, sorry, you should show up when boarding starts"
- "Yeah but didn't boarding start 5 minutes ago, how was I to know"
- "You should have known, sorry"
So they are essentially scamming 5% of passengers out of their tickets?
There's a bit of a checklist of things that need to be completed after the door gets closed and the gate pulls away. They're often incentivized to try and speed things up, so if there's nobody at the gate anymore to board they might assume those passengers decided not to go on the flight. Especially with people now checking into flights the day before, the airline may not even know if the passenger is even at the airport and would realistically show up to the gate anytime soon as checking in means pretty much nothing these days.
They're not scamming anyone. Your ticket said you were supposed to be at the gate to board at a certain time. You weren't there, so you missed the flight.
If the door closed at flight time then the plane wouldn't be leaving at flight time, it would be leaving at flight time + the time it takes to go from boarding to getting in the air. Flight time is the time the plane is scheduled to take off, which means the flight time would diverge from the boarding time, and then you'd once again be asking why the boarding time is different from the flight time and why they don't let you board until the flight time, rinse and repeat.
They can still go early if all of the passengers have boarded.
I got to Dublin airport once at the time that the gates were supposed to close and they said they would wait for us if we were fast... Got to the concourse and it was the furthest gate possible - the sign said to allow a 15 minute walk! Had to run all the way but we made it.
And there's a time in the US as well, that's called the boarding time. Those there at the boarding time get on the plane, those aren't there at the boarding time missed their flight. Banking on getting on 5-10 minutes after boarding time is gambling that they're running behind schedule.
> All Passengers must be present at the loading gate for boarding at least 15 minutes prior to scheduled departure.
The OP was clearly involuntarily denied boarding even if it was an international flight, and is eligible for that compensation.
https://www.united.com/en/us/fly/contract-of-carriage.html#r...
Once they started boarding and the queue is empty, they will continue with the procedures for the flight, they have an incentive to keep their on-time stats. It’s not like a train where you can simply step in a minute before it leaves.
Some airlines print a boarding time for their flights onto their boarding passes, or show it in their app. This is often a fake number simply computed by deducting 30 or 40 minutes from your flight's departure time; it's certainly not adhered to very closely or involved in most contract of carriages.
One reason for this is that an airline is usually not involved in issuing all of its boarding passes, and so many boarding passes simply do not have a "boarding time" on them. Air India is perfectly capable of issuing boarding passes for United, but are unlikely to have easy access a "boarding time" from United (since it's not very important).
United makes passenger obligations clear -- arrive 15/30 minutes before a domestic/international departure. Otherwise, it's an IDB.
What the parent quoted seems to be United's actual policy, i.e. that they'll accept any (domestic) passengers who arrive 15+ minutes before departure.
UA's team has access to exactly when the door closed and if it was greater than 15 minutes before the scheduled departure time, they owe the OP.