Originally Posted by
justhere
What proof do you have that there were other viable options that would impact less customers? I readily admit I might have missed it so if you have it, by all means point me in that direction. If UA could have put the crew on another carrier's flight, then they could also have put their passengers on that flight. Has it been confirmed that other airlines' flights had seats available?
There are all kinds of options for the deadhead crew.
If you have lived in an UX station you would know that crew scheduling delays happen all. the. time. It is probably worse now with the hour rules for crew. What OO used to do is swap crews from later flights to their earlier departing ones (sometimes taking a delay for crew rest requirements) in hope that they can get another crew in for the later flight. Sometimes that meant a delay of a few hours for the later departing flight. It really depends when the first flight arrives in the morning and where the crew is coming from. Whether that would have worked in this scenario depends on equipment/carrier, etc. In the grand scheme a rolling delay would hardly be a loss considering how mainline does this with international irrops with deadheading crews to the outstations on 24hr+ delays all the time.