Originally Posted by
IMRU
Crew timed out yesterday on UA 4821 SAF to DEN. The inbound had only a 50 minute delay. That’s certainly not enough time to turn the plane and fly back. Wonder why UA didn’t cancel it earlier. Cancelling it 30 mins after arrival really limited alternatives - particularly from ABQ since no one could make the last flight to IAH.
50 minutes isn't enough time to turn the plane and fly back, but it's more than enough time to turn the plane. The crew has to be legal for the planned length of the flight as of the time that they go wheels-up. So it's entirely possible that the crew would have been legal if the inbound had been on time, but went illegal due to the delay. It's also possible that something in the flight path changed and they were going to have to take a much longer path than normal to get to Denver, or they found that they were going to need to delay the flight another hour, which would have made the crew illegal, so they were proactive.
In other words, there's not nearly enough information available to judge whether or not UA's actions made sense or could have been meaningfully improved.