Originally Posted by
jtet
Perhaps I'm missing something and a quick Google provided relatively old results, e.g. a
FAA doc from 2012, and a
2004 a.net thread. Unless something has changed (and seemingly "lifeguard" is an outdated term so perhaps I did miss something), why would becoming a "lifeguard" flight cause an apparent 14 minute
increase in flight time? That seems to be quite the opposite of the intent; the precious cargo would have arrived earlier had they not been designated for expedited ATC handling.
You are absolutely correct, the call sign is "MEDEVAC" aligns the FAA with ICAO protocols, that did change quite some time ago. However internally the carriage of urgent medical shipments within United Airlines Cargo is still referred to as "LifeGuard." Apologize for the confusion.
Could they have been transporting harvested organs to a more centralized location then a possible recipient presented itself elsewhere causing an urgent change of destination for time-critical cargo....of which was then canceled? Did a new organ recipient present itself locally and it just took time to work its way up the system? Who knows? We can speculate for days on exactly what happened and by whom.
Point is, there was holding issued just after departure which is very unusual especially during that time of the night and the drastically reduced air traffic from the pandemic; I would venture to guess that present position hold was requested from operations or dispatch not by ATC to allow time for the communication channels to process (again, total speculation.) The odd Flight Status posted also indicates a possible destination change (SFO)/return to original destination (IAH) was entered into the system by the FAA. Finally, the declaration of the LifeGuard cargo on board enroute would suggest the situation was quite dynamic and there was a quite a bit going on behind the scenes by multiple entities.