Deferred sensors with soft_fail=True lack parity skip on non-timeout failures #71255

Under which category would you file this issue?

Airflow Core

Apache Airflow version

2.11.2

What happened and how to reproduce it?

When running sensors with deferred=False, mode reschedule or poke, and soft_fail=True, unexpected errors will actually fail, instead of skip, but timeout errors will skip.

When doing the same, but with soft_fail=True, and deferred=True, unexpected errors will cause the task to skip. This means we cannot distinguish and alert if the sensor is misconfigured vs. timeout.

What you think should happen instead?

Deferred sensors should have parity with non-deferred sensors, and if soft_fail=True, only skip on timeout-ish related errors

Operating System

linux

Deployment

Other Docker-based deployment

Apache Airflow Provider(s)

No response

Versions of Apache Airflow Providers

n/a, issue is in main/master

Official Helm Chart version

Not Applicable

Kubernetes Version

n/z

Helm Chart configuration

n/a

Docker Image customizations

n/a

Anything else?

n/a

Are you willing to submit PR?

• Yes I am willing to submit a PR!

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct