It's not Horseshoes... When Close was not enough

We were delayed departing out of Houston, first for maintenance that took 45 minutes, then we sat on the ramp waiting for the weather to clear.  Turns out the maintenance was an inspection of the aircraft since it had been hit by lightning while inbound to Houston!  Finally off the ground 90 minutes late, we were cutting it close for the connection at Dulles.  We landed at Dulles with 25 minutes before the connecting departure, ran off the aircraft with only 15 minutes left, raced down the concourse and made it to the gate 5 minutes before departure, only to find the door closed and locked! They had already decided to leave without us and were not changing their mind.  There were 7 passengers that we counted just like us.

So we got rebooked on a later flight to Frankfurt, connecting to Athens.  We will lose the free afternoon and some time to look around, but not a bad recovery.  What is really aggravating, though, is that we all could have made the flight and they would have only lost 5-10 minutes.  I would not have cared if the checked bag came later.  But the airlines and the crews today are incentivized to meet on time performance, and it is measured by the time they pushback from the gate.  No matter that they might sit on the tarmac for 20 minutes before departing.  No matter that over the 8 hour flight to Zurich they could have easily made up the small amount of lost time.  Meeting the pushback time was more important today to United than customer service or the customer experience.  Fortunately, we are using miles and flying business class so we were able to get help without standing in line, and have a decent place to wait in the United Club.