PIT_Flyer

Hi All,

I am booked on a flight from LAX to DFW later today and seems like the flight is delayed by 45 minutes. Not a big deal in and of itself. However, looking at the flight schedule on United.com, seems like the flight never stood a change for an on-time departure to begin with - one of the earlier flights had a departure time before the arrival time of the inbound, which is leading to my flight being delayed.

I normally wouldn't care much to post about such delays, but I'm a bit miffed that I was sold a ticket on a flight that never stood a chance of departing on time.

(My flight)
UA 6296: LAX - DFW
Scheduled: 6:59PM - 11:50PM
Estimated: 7:45PM - 12:45AM

Inbound to LAX
UA 6248: COS - LAX
Scheduled: 4:27PM - 6:02PM
Actual: 6:00PM - 7:16PM

Inbound to COS
UA 5205: IAH - COS
Scheduled: 2:37PM - 3:57PM
Actual 3:42PM - 5:34PM

Inbound to IAH
UA 5163: SLC - IAH
Scheduled: 10:47AM - 2:43PM
Actual: 10:55AM - 3:01PM

highops

I love the "Where is this flight coming from?" feature on the mobile app. I've gone back two days sometimes when I've been bored at a gate.

WineCountryUA

If you are using "where did this fight come from" beware it is a bit buggy and during irrops does not get updated for reality, so you are very likely drawing the wrong conclusions based on faulty data. It would take further research using other sources to determine the real aircraft scheduling.

It is highly doubtful the planned scheduling of aircraft had the actual issues you are speculating. But due to irrops, aircraft scheduling has to adapt to actual operations.

Steve M

That's right. It's very unlikely that this was the plan when you bought the ticket. Even assuming that the "Where is this aircraft coming from?" display is correct, it's possible that there was an aircraft reassignment on the day of the flight due to irrops. That is, the aircraft originally planned to operate your flight probably wasn't the one that was going to fly UA 5205 IAH-COS. Maybe that aircraft had to be taken out of service, and the next best alternative was to re-assign the IAH-COS aircraft from wherever it was originally going to go to minimize the delay for the COS-LAX and LAX-DFW passengers. Every little thing that happens isn't always part of the Grand Conspiracy to screw the passenger.

cl.lurker

There could always be a tail change, esp. in a big airport such as LAX....

(but not in this case.....http://www.flightstats.com/go/Flight...ghtNumber=6296)

emcampbe

Had something similar happen over Labor Day last year. DEN-CVG at ~7:30p. Morning of, aircraft was changed to a different one, and all day showing coming in from IND. inbound arrived something like 3 minutes late - at ~8:00p. Delay, of course, announced at the gate at around 7:20. Maybe they were trying to do another aircraft swap during the day and couldn't, but didn't make any sense to me. Either figure out how to schedule the airplanes so they can have a chance at running on time, or in the worst case, if you know there is going to be a delay, call it.

Honestly, I don't complain nearly as much as many in here, but the scheduled express turn times at out stations need to be changed badly. They did this for the mainline aircraft last summer and I imagine this is part of the reason on time % has improved. At CVG, it's all ERJ, CRJ and CR7. On the 50 seaters, with the exception of aircraft that RON, I haven't seen one with a turn time of 30 minutes in more than a year. Usually, something like 23 - 28 minutes, which is sometimes ok if absolutely everything goes perfectly. But as we all know, this is the exception rather than the rule.

exerda

One of the redeyes SFO-IAD last night was showing a 1+ hour delay due to late inbound a/c ... which itself was nearly 4 hours late. For quite some time, they were showing us with an 11:33pm departure with the arriving a/c scheduled to come in at 12:15am.

I figured this meant they'd be doing a plane swap, but UA was quite poor about communicating that--around 9:30pm, when the original boarding was to scheduled to begin, I got a text saying we'd been delayed to 11:15pm "due to late inbound a/c," a new gate, and the new inbound showing as having been at SFO for ~5 hours. I was frankly a bit surprised they didn't just revert to the original departure time, and am further surprised that most people managed to get to the gate despite the lack of timely updates.

PV_Premier

in my experience, downline delays are generally updated when an upline flight on the same tail number hits some certain critical point of progress in its journey (pushes back from gate, becomes airborne, touches down, arrives at gate after taxi, etc).

when i am on a flight late in the day i always use the "wheres this a/c coming from" fxn to check for and monitor upline delays. more than once it has saved me from misconnecting and/or lengthy delays by getting myself proactively rerouted.

this entire thing is maddening however, especially when you are stuck at some remote outstation with limited options and you can't get the agents either on the phone or at the airport to reconcile the fact that there is no chance the flight will depart "as scheduled".

more discussion here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...e-bit-lie.html

i was terribly burned by this at ORD last week though it was due to crew and not equipment. i had a 3 hour layover at it was, at 15 minutes before boarding, they announced a 2 hour delay. the crew was coming from IAD, so when their departure time from IAD had come and gone with them not leaving, why wasn't it announced? anyways, by then all the connecting options through DEN/IAH/LAX/SFO were gone, so there i sat for another 2 hours.

this has got to improve. i'm not sure whether all these things should just continue to be sources of nastygrams to customer care, or what.

nova08

This happens way too frequently. It's clear the flight will be delayed unless there is a last minute aircraft change but UA waits until within an hour of the departure to finally post a delay.

The "Where is this aircraft coming from" is a great feature though as previously mentioned it is sometimes buggy. You have to pay attention to the tail # on the aircraft scheduled for your flight and the tail # on the aircraft of the inbound flight. I've had scenarios where they were different and thus the feature was useless.

OMAguy

yes - however many times UA will try and do an aircraft swap - at least at hubs. it is better if they dont show the flight delayed so people show up instead of showing it as delayed and then revising the time later.

case in point - i was on an EWR-TPA flight a few months back. tracking the a/c on the app i knew the flight would be at least 3hrs late. they kept showing it on time. then about two hours before departure they changed it to a lengthy delay. about 30 mins later they changed it back to on time, as they did an a/c swap and found a new crew. flight left on time (and arrived early in TPA) even though the inbound flight was still stuck in BOS.

it is a case of UA never being able to win - i know a lot of SBs cleared because confirmed pax did not show (due to the last minute revision). granted a/c swaps generally are only going to happen at hubs or other focus cities with significant operations where an a/c swap can happen (face it - it would be hard to do an a/c swap in BIS). and i am sure there were a lot of upset pax at EWR who claimed they never got the revised time, how could UA strand them, etc. again, UA never wins...

CO_Nonrev_elite

The last few flights of mine have been in a similar situation, but in every single occasion, they have aircraft swapped and I've gone out on-time or close to it

PV_Premier

IME, every time a delay is announced, the GA will say "while this flight is now delayed, we recommend passengers stay close to the gate in case the status changes, or there are further announcements about the flight". at that point, UA has dutifully informed pax of the status and the fact that it might change. however, it also gives savvy pax the option to look at other options that might get them where they want to go in an expedited fashion.

OMAguy

agreed about gate agent announcement - but in this case, the app showed the inbound flight delayed almost 4hrs. i considered not going to the airport until later, but changed my mind and went early. that was the purpose of my post - people delaying going to the airport.

(UA always says in delay emails get to the gate at the originally scheduled time as things may change, but people dont heed that warning way too often)

exerda

That was what was maddening yesterday--the delayed inbound hadn't even pushed back yet and was showing an estimated arrival time of after midnight into SFO, yet we were still posted for an 11:33pm departure. They didn't actually even update our delay once the delayed inbound finally pushed back (with its arrival time now around 12:15am), but I think by then they'd decided to try to use a different a/c and just hadn't made the changes to that effect yet.


Yes, that's the incredibly maddening aspect. Several pax got burned by it last night at SFO; they could have switched to the other redeye, or to connecting redeyes via other cities, but UA kept insisting until it was too late for people to switch that our departure time was going to be only slightly delayed.

CO_Nonrev_elite

Sadly almost all carriers do this now. Even when they know it's going to be a 3hr delay, you get told 20 min at a time until such a time as all alternative options expire, and then they cancel, or tell the truth.

This avoids them having to give up the flight revenue