Not sure if anyone in here was on the PEK-SFO flight (UA 888) on August third, but it was a 747 whose landing gear failed to properly retract upon takeoff.

I was listening to Channel 9 at the time and heard the pilot mention this to the tower and asked to return back to PEK to make a semi-emergency landing, and after which the flight deck immediately cut channel 9 and announced that they were going to have to dump 200,000 pounds of fuel (~$140/barrel at the time) and return back to PEK. I happened to be sitting in E+ next to the wings on that flight and captured the pilot dumping fuel through the little pipes at the end of the wings, which I had never noticed before until then.

Luckily after about an hour of circling around dumping fuel over the beautiful chinese countryside, we landed safely (although it sounded like a tire blew in the process) and I spent the night in PEK on United's dime at a decent hotel and went back to SFO safely the next day.

The FA's said that there was the same kind of landing gear retraction problem the previous day with a 777. I wonder who UA has been outsourcing their maintenance to these days (have they recently started outsourcing or changed suppliers recently?), and how this could possibly happen two days in a row on two separate aircraft?! Who checks their planes outside of the US?

At the time I was completely incensed and to some extent, still am that something like that could happen two days back to back, yet at all. Has anyone heard of that before? I am especially worried flying on some of their exceptionally old aircraft such as this one (just look at the shape of the wings and then imagine the interior) - the entire innards of the plane were VERY worn and shaking around on taxi/takeoff which certainly did not inspire confidence. Hopefully this plane was one of the 6 744's that were retired - I certainly hope I never have an experience like this again, and UA ensures that their aircraft get the highest level of maintenance possible -- after all, frequent flyers (or flyers in general) aren't much good to airlines when their pax are dead.