United actually held the plane!

I've seen a bunch of marketing hype from United about how they'll intentionally delay a departure so connecting customers on delayed flights won't miss their plane. I figured it was mostly just hot air and didn't give it much thought. Until Sunday. 

Rain delayed the Newark-SFO leg of Tim's trip back to Sydney. His connection was tight to begin with, and once the delay hit 45 minutes, he was certain he'd misconnect. He asks a United agent in the lounge if he could just switch to the next day but she said "we're expecting storms tomorrow too, so that likely won't fix anything." 

He decides to just wait it out, and they end up taking off at 8:12 instead of 6:30. He's 99% certain he's going to miss his connection to Sydney, but then he checks his United app as they're about to land in SFO and it has a banner at the top saying "We're about to save the day for a few customers with a tight connection. Thanks for standing by while they head to the gate from another flight." He also notices that his Plus Points upgrade to Polaris cleared while he was en route to SFO, so it was a double-whammy of good news on an otherwise-sad "goodbye for 6 weeks" day. 

Interesting side-note: someone on Reddit actually flew this exact itinerary the following day and the agent was right: storms severely delayed the departure and the original poster on the thread had a much crappier day than Tim did.