Originally Posted by
mpiotrow
OK, maybe I have to dig deeper...maybe there's some more proof here that it wasn't weather related? The flight from SFO to ORD (flight 734) arrived at SFO at 5:03pm on June 25, so it had been on the ground roughly 12 hours before it was scheduled to depart for ORD. And, looking at the weather report for San Francisco (granted, it's not for the SFO airport specifically, but I can't imagine it would be all that different), here's what I found. It looks like it was relatively clear (10 mile vis) and only "passing clouds" at the scheduled 5:35am departure time.
Maybe there was weather somewhere else that stopped the crew from getting into SFO the night before?
Actually, anyone who ever attended -- or even watched -- a Giants game at Candlestick could tell you that the peninsula is a collection of microclimates that have little relation to one another.
It's entirely possible that SFO was a mess while the city itself was fine.
There was weather Sunday at Newark that potentially could have caused downline timeouts.
Ultimately, you're unlikely to be able to trace this back to its source without access to UA's systems.
Back on topic, I was on a flight this weekend that was delayed overnight due to Newark weather and then a crew timeout. The delay was initially coded as weather, but by the next morning, UA had changed it to "late inbound crew" and provided proactive compensation. I was stunned.