txflyer77

ORD-HKG holds my personal record for most delayed. 6 hour MX delay. Earned a wonderful $100 coupon.

787fan

Even if ORD-HKG is worse, at least it's the 2nd leg, so you just spend more time at ORD terminal

with DCA-EWR being the first leg, if that's delayed, you're really stuck at EWR, since it's probably too late in the day to connect to most Asian services out of EWR.

787fan

another potentially safer choice is IAD-NRT-HKG on either UA or NH

eleeut

Tower Oaks lodge is literally a 10 min walk from my ofc. one of my favorite places around here but as of recent i only slide over there when bringing my remote staff to home base. much better than all FBO at EWR, ORD, and SFO. =)

@kacee
as for the SFO routing, i'm never seeing it when i've checked, but i'll start tracking that one to get the 744 UD.

as for EWR, has the CX redeye noticeably cut into the bookings?

i've done the IAD - NRT - HKG routing, but i wish UA kept operating NRT / HKG. i often times see IAD/NRT R space available. the return routing is a bit of a nail biter though because of the tight transit time. i'd love routing through NRT just to go to the ANA lounge for the on demand curry rice, kitsune udon and yamasaki single malt.

TWA Guy

IAD-NRT is R9 that day but would prefer not to connect to a 5 hour flight on Air Japan in coach and get in so late...

bocastephen

Definitely the EWR PMCO flight - but I can't emphasize enough the need for a LOOOOONG layover to EWR...in fact, if the trip is important, I would do DCA-EWR the day before and overnight in NYC, but at the very least, plan for the first DCA-EWR flight in the morning, and if it goes on time, you'll have a few hours to roam around Manhattan and not worry about missing the connection.

TWA Guy

I can't go the night before so the options are basically 3.5 hours or 6 hours at EWR...could also just amtrak to EWR if the weather looks iffy.

bocastephen

I would do the 6hrs layover for sure...3.5hr might be fine at IAH, but it won't cut it at EWR. IIRC the HKG flight leaves in the afternoon, so you could take a 7am to EWR and at least have a few hours in the city before the flight - 6hr isn't enough for that, and it's a long time to sit in the club munching on cheese.

UA-NYC

Could head over to B and spend some quality time at the LH SEN lounge too

PV_Premier

at that point, OP might as well just book EWR-HKG and take Amtrak to EWR in the morning on the same day.

better yet, book EWR-HKG on CX

mduell

Back in reality-land, the numbers are virtually identical. The 744s (antiques!) out of SFO (teh fogz!) perform about the same.

UA on time arrivals for flights to HKG in 2014 using the DOT 14 minute standard for arrivals; late time is the average lateness of flights over 14 minutes late:

Kacee

While they're very close in terms of percentage of flights delayed (all three suck!), ORD's average lateness is 27% higher than EWR and 46% higher than SFO. So when ORD goes bad, it goes materially worse than the other two.

mduell

You're looking at differences in differences to get those percentages and I don't think they're meaningful in this context.

They all have a lot of variation and a lousy and similar number of late flights.

edit: You want to see differences? Look at DL's SEA flight or AA's DFW flight (both of which only operated about half the year):

Kacee

I don't follow.

Average lateness of SFO is 48:13.
Average lateness of EWR is 55:07
Average lateness of ORD is 1:10:03

Each flight is once per day, so total number of flights for each route should be virtually identical. And the frequency of flights delayed is very close (32 to 35%). But among those flights that are delayed, ORD tends to have materially longer delays.

But I am not a stats person so perhaps this is all wrong.

ORDnHKG

Get in so late is true, but you can get the bulkhead or exit row on the 763 ahead of time, just like I had a trip the coming February, both NRT-HKG and HKG-NRT I had already called in and assigned exit window 18K both ways.