Originally Posted by
physioprof
UA2641 EWR-LAX this evening is canceled "because of an unexpected operational issue". Is this because of the combination of persistent EWR issues with weather?
Potentially however the cookie crumbs I'm seeing point more at aircraft availability, possibly the two combined together.
Per
flightstats.com ship N773UA was to operate that flight.
Per
flightaware.com N773UA last night departed from HNL as UA1169 originally bound for LAX but diverted to HNL, the two subsequent flights (LAX-EWR-LAX) have canceled and the next scheduled flight for that frame is UA3019 (expect that this is a ferry flight) in a bit over 17 hours from the time I'm typing this.
This suggests that there was a maintenance issue however the flight status on UA.com for 1169 sounds absurd: "
Your flight is canceled because of issues with the airport's security checkpoints. We're sorry for the inconvenience." -- but per this thread on Reddit it appears there was an onboard security incident/passenger threat issue that prompted the return to gate.
Edited to add: Per ACARS appears to support that there was a bomb threat:
