Originally Posted by
nygiants242
Happy New Year! Question for you guys:
UA flies one of the (what feels like) incredibly old 767-300 from EWR to GVA - e.g., tiny screens in Econony the size of coasters.
I'm flying tomorrow on Jan 2 from GVA to EWR and just checked the inbound aircraft. It's delayed by almost two hours for air craft maintenance even though it already landed at noon from its previous route and was scheduled to depart at 5:50 PM - nearly 6 hours wasn't enough?!
This seems to happen very frequently on this route. What gives? Does UA frequently have issues with these older planes? Thanks!
You can't assume that maintenance can start on a plane as soon as it's unloaded. If the problem is not a quick-fix, it may have to moved from the gate so other flights can use it. There must be somewhere for it to go. The qualified personnel and parts need to be lined up. They may need to ferry in parts from another airport. They may be working on other aircraft. Etc, etc, etc. Just counting minutes from an arrival is a very simplistic way of looking at things.
Yeah, 6 hours should be more than enough time to fix a broken seat. It may be just enough time to fix a major problem where a part that is not stocked because it rarely goes out needs to be sourced and installed by someone qualified to work on it.
Can you provide route/a/c type statistics to support your assertion or are you just guessing based on a very limited knowledge/sampling?