LawFlyer

Right you are, CO 1E. Of my 4 roundtrips on CO 757s between EWR and HAM or TXL, three of the westbound flights made a fuel stop. That is a full 75% of the EWR-bound flights. In each of the three instances, CO blamed it on weather and "unexpected" headwinds. ("Unexpected," my ...). Further, in each of the three flights, I suffered major accommodation problems at EWR getting re-booked for onward flights to either DFW or IAH. I even had to overnight on one occasion, even flying full-fare J (because I could not be accommodated on other CO flights that day).

In fact, CO absolutely refused to book me on a nearly empty AA flight from EWR to DFW (my final ticketed destination on the CO itinerary) because "weather" and "headwinds" had caused the fuel stop inbound from TXL. All remaining CO flights from EWR-DFW and EWR-IAH-DFW were booked, and CO flat-out refused to put me on the empty AA nonstop.

Frankly, even though I have been a CO loyalist from many, many years, those three fuel stops (3 out of four, remember!) -- coupled with CO's subsequent refusal to help accommodate pax inconvenienced by CO's using the wrong equipment for the job -- have had merely one effect on me:

I will never, ever buy a CO ticket on a 757 trans-A service again. Never. They have lost my business completely on those routes until they schedule the proper quipment for the job.

Now YES, I understand that some of you will argue that CO is, in fact, scheduling the right equipment for the job. But what those flyers are REALLY arguing is that CO is doing "whatever it can" to hold on to those routes by flying a place-holder airplane on that service so that CO won't lose the authority to fly it. That is, better to fly it with the wrong quipment and retain the route than to abandon the service for lack of proper lift and then lose the route authority as a result. That is CLEARLY the MO here.

To that I say, "fine," but let's not pretend that a commercial aircraft that makes a stop even 20% of the time (to quote Yellow77's statistic above -- I'm not vetting that research nugget) is actually getting the job done on a route marketed as "nonstop service." If CO 10 from IAH - CDG or CO 4 from IAH - LGW had to make a "mechanical diversion" or "fuel stop" more than once per week (or imagine 3 days out of 4, as my experience was on the ex-Germany routes!), it would be an outrage and we all know that.

Only twice in the past decade of my trans-A flying on CO 10/11 and CO 4/5 have I experienced a weather-related diversion over the Atlantic; both occured with DC-10 equipment which was on its last legs, anyway. So to say that the 757's record of "weather-related" diversions on trans-A runs is acceptable (whereas it almost NEVER happens on a dispatched 777 or 767) is, in my opinion, dishonest apologia. It's as if some supporters of these runs claim that it's an acceptable price to pay for "nonstop" (ha ha) service to HAM and TXL. I would much rather connect with a scheduled flight in FRA or CDG than pretend that my ex-TXL flight will actually make it to EWR in mid-January, which in turn will cause me many connecting problems chalked up to "weather" and "headwinds."

This is absurd in the extreme. The headwinds over the North Atlantic, particularly in mid-winder, are NOT UNEXPECTED. They are NOT "sudden." And they certainly should not be a reason for CO to skate off the hook in re-booking its pax on other carriers when the inevitable misconnects occur. CO knows full well that the westbound 757 flights ex-Germany can handle the job only in the best of circumstances. Too many fat pax? Too many miscalculated cargo pallets? Fuel burn not exactly as expected? Engines not running at 100% efficiency? Oops -- gotta refuel, and blame it ON THE WEATHER?? Um. . .no, thanks.

I think it is highly unfair to the standard passenger who has NOT had the benefit that many of us have had in our greater flying experience that CO markets these routes as nonstop just as they do 777/767 nonstops. Most pax actually think it's the same transaction. But it is NOT. Consider:

CO markets and sells tickets on its 764 flight from IAH - GRU/GIG as a "nonstop" flight: even in very bad weather over the Amazon (which I've personally experienced) requiring massive re-routing in the air, adding more than 90 minutes at full cruise, coupled with bad weather at GRU, causing an hour of circling: this 10-hour flight topped 12 hours (!) and guess what? It was still a nonstop flight. Thus, CO markets this with the implication that, even in bad-weather circumstances, this is ALMOST CERTAIN to be a nonstop flight.

However, the ex-TXL and ex-HAM flights should only be marketed as "nonstop in perfect conditions." Sure, I realize that I got burned on three of four ex-Germany 757 flights -- but I'm not the only one. And for CO to have the gall to say say, "Sorry -- it was the weather" is such a load of crap. No, my friends, it was the equipment, not the weather. After all: When my ex-TXL flight failed to make it to EWR but the KLM narrowbody "all-business" flight from AMS - IAH (a much longer flight!) made it in on time ON THE SAME DAY, I have a BIG problem with CO saying "Unexpected headwinds over the North Atlantic caused our 757 to divert going to EWR, but KLM's narrowbody from AMS made it to IAH just fine, even though it followed nearly the same track, flew through the same headwinds, and went a further 1500 miles." Any clear-thinking individual would realize this is NOT a weather diversion. It's a false-marketing diversion.

Again, as Craz says above, "It would be nice if CO warned the people before they purchased the ticket on a 757" that this flight may very will make a fuel stop. And if it DOES make a fuel stop, the pax are S.O.L. because CO will blame it on the weather. I mean, come on -- if CO's equipment can just barely make the run under the best of circumstances, why are we penalized when CO's gamble doesn't pay off?

The straw broke the back of my applicable camel when CO refused to put me on the AA nonstop to DFW from EWR when my ex-TXL flight arrived 3 hours late due to our Stupidly-Employed-Equipment Diversion. Yes, I knew when I booked the ticket that it was a 757, but I also (wrongly) assumed that CO would take care of me should the short-legged 757 got thirsty over Greenland and cause a mis-connect. But no: CO says, "It's the weather, not our choice of equipment, and you must overnight here in EWR even though we could get you home on time -- as we promised -- if we put you on the AA flight down the hall. But we won't. Instead, here is your voucher to the crappy hotel, and your shuttle bus is waiting about a mile's walk down that corridor. Thank you very much for flying full-fare J over the Atlantic on a 757. Buh-bye."

Buh-bye, indeed, to trans-A on the CO 757. Ever since, Lufthansa has had ALL my Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, and Dusseldorf business out of Houston, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue to CO J they otherwise would have had IF they had put me on that ONE domestic flight from EWR to DFW on AA -- but once the camel's back breaks, that's it. And guess what Lufthansa's service record is for getting me ex-IAH or ex-DFW to Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Berlin, and Frankfurt on time?

100%.

Thanks for letting me vent!
LF