Today in flight 2329, for what seems like the 12th time this year so far for me, after landing we were asked to stay in our seats so those with tight connections could get out.
2/3rds of the plane then proceeds to shove their way out and claim "my flights doors close in 20 minutes".
If we were significantly late in arriving, it would be extremely understandable, but we were literally 4 minutes late arriving.
This was also a common route for UA, going from DEN to ORD. And because I keep my eye on the seat map, I know that this flight was almost full by the end of last week, so this wasn't a case of a bunch of passengers getting pushed from an earlier flight to a later one. In fact, there were plenty of open seats on earlier flights, I looked this morning. These passengers were entirely capable of giving themselves adequate transfer time, most of them likely just didn't want to wake up earlier to get the flight.
The problem is two fold, UA letting passengers book tight connections in the worst hub (ORD) for taxi delays, and passengers for not having a little foresight to book a flight with a healthy buffer when traveling through ORD.
We have all had a tight connection after a significant delay, and I have no problem helping those who are at risk if we are running an hour late getting in somewhere, life happens.
What I am done with is bailing out those with a lack of ability to adequately plan for transfers on common routes. So from now on, on these hub to hubs that are running roughly on time, I will be standing and disembarking as normal no matter what the flight attendants and other passengers want.
A lack of planning on their part does not constitute an inconvenience on mine.
And if people want to book tight connections, thats fine. They can do so and risk missing their flight. I will continue to book myself connections with two hours of transfer time, and look for alternate routing if that is not available.
I will absolutely still stay seated when a flight is running late, or a small group that got pushed to a later flight needs a hand. But I am done with having most of a flight push their way out because they think their time is so much more valuable than everyone elses and they cant stand doing a layover of more than 30 minutes.
If enough of us do this, it might up the number of people who miss flights and have to rebook. And UA keeps track of that metric, and if it skyrockets maybe they'll stop letting people book ridiculously tight connections that require the subservience of every other passenger for someone to make.
Or more people might book first class so they can be one of the first people off, instead of rushing from row 34 on a 737 all the way to the front.
Either way, I'm done helping stupidity, and I hope you are too.