Run to the Gate to Catch an Earlier Flight? American Will Now Turn You Away | Hacker News Reader

Run to the Gate to Catch an Earlier Flight? American Will Now Turn You Away

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6 pointsjosephcsible5 comments

I never knew that was something you could do to begin with.

The utility also seems rather dubious - presumably you scheduled things like getting picked up from the airport and hotel stays based on the flights you were planning to take. If flights are frequent enough that your plane landing a few minutes early would allow you to catch an earlier flight, how much time are you really shaving off? Are you really going to throw your plans out the window for the chance at getting to your destination an hour earlier? I don't really travel that often, and when I do I like to minimize stress, so perhaps I'm just not the target audience here, but I don't think I'm going to be running across an airport to catch a flight I'm not supposed to be on.

I haven’t done it since covid, but in consulting it’s often fly out Monday, fly home Thursday. If you can get out of the office early or you have a connecting flight that lands early and you can get on an earlier flight it can get you home hours earlier after a very long week away from home.

Neither hotels nor taxis work like that, and even rental cars (which do have a scheduled pickup time) are generally flexible enough to accommodate this kind of thing.

I meant more like arranging for a friend or family member to pick you up from the airport.

As for hotels the concern is less checking in early but rather you have already payed for a room and now you aren't going to stay in it.

This is just dumb. The plane is about to leave with empty seats, using crew time and fuel, and they won’t fill those seats? If they did, it would make space for someone else on the next flight, who was possibly bumped because of another delay.

This is absolutely not a benefit that anyone would pay extra for (buying more miles, etc) to get status. I guess have to see how they market this, because that ad campaign is going to have to be incredible to sell this as a good thing.

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