Originally Posted by dmurphynj

Not trying to be a Pollyanna but....

None of us are route planners. I'm sure UA was in touch with LHR and would've continued direct if it made sense ... Or not.

Honestly, were that me, I'd have preferred the return to EWR before continuing to LHR. With my travel patterns, if I were a day or so late getting to LHR, it's likely be a trip in vain, so I'd rather just go home.

Now, in an ideal world, they would've polled the passengers, asked 'who wants to continue and who wants to go back?' and flew two planes in - one to EWR and one to LHR. Might've been able to sub a pair of 752's instead of a 763 this way.

We know LHR has among the most restrictive set of landing slots and rules, so I'm sure that plays into this somehow as well.

Lots of armchair route planning possible - some of which will be right, some of which won't.

But the simple fact is that none of us are armed with all the info the ops center people had; things are ALWAYS a lot more complex than they seem.