Originally Posted by
USHPNWDLUA
Not arguing, just asking- do they really have such a bad dispatch rate, recently?
I thought the fleet was moved to SFO because that's where UA had its 747 maintenance program based? Maybe some of the work was done in China? But at costs in Shanghai and Beijing these days (don't even consider HKG!
) maintenance in China would have been expensive.
When I first came back to UA a couple of years ago, the 747 were MX all the time. But until this last segment I had was delayed by MX on the return, I hadn't had a 747 flight affected by MX in over 30 segments (~15 months).
My info is a few years old but at one time most Heavy maintenance on this fleet was performed at AMECO in Beijing. Whether this shift resulted in more MX delay/cancellations is an open question. I tend to believe that it is/was more deferred maintenance once the machines returned to service (ie, if there is a primary and a backup and we can fly with one, fly and don't replace the backup at the first available opportunity, setting the stage for a cancellation when the primary fails).