star_world

Or at the checkin counter when they were proactively rebooked onto another connecting flight, or in the day preceding the flight when they were called by UA with a proactive rebooking on another connecting flight. An announcement is generally made on the ground before departure anyway so those passengers not connecting are aware before departing.

All of these things happen. I'm sure there are flights where the passengers aren't told in advance either. I'm just pointing out the inaccuracy of the quote I posted where the poster plucked random numbers out of the air in terms of the number of passengers affected by missed connections.

Mr.Nuke

What are you talking about? United isn't dropping off passengers in Goose Bay, Bangor, Halifax, Gander, etc. for a night. You land late morning, spend about an hour on the ground still on the plane, and you are on your way again.

CALMSP

you were on a -200, as Condor was the first operator of the -300 around 1998/99

SeaRaptor

I agree.

The statistics were noteworthy to me because I have read previous criticism on these boards that this particular aircraft shouldn't be operating TATL at all. I don't believe the diversion rates justify such a conclusion. The issue of widebody versus narrowbody is one of personal preference.

halls120

Everything you stated above is correct. One thing that PMUA was excellent at is IROPS recovery, and I'm sure the connecting passengers are taken care of. And yes, this only impacts these routes and this aircraft during the winter. But if I'm scheduling a trip to CDG or AMS through IAD next winter, and UA is still using an aircraft on these routes that 1/3 of the time has to make a fuel stop to make it across the pond, I'm going to start looking elsewhere. This can't be a long term solution.

mduell

Could be worse, we could be flying the dAArkside.
Westbound TATL diversions since SOC for scheduled carriers:

Air Houston

Have any of you booked one of these flights HOPING for a diversion and then asked for and received compensation?

fastair

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...o&mod=yahoo_hs

Not really good PR when the mainstream press picks up on it.

TravellingMan

Now to start watching for diversion rates for the 737s and RJs that CO specializes in flying for extra long distances. I still have nightmares about the CRJ50 that CO flies from IAH to YYZ for close to 3+ hrs.

Maybe soon we will have RJ services from DEN - IAD/EWR as UA "right sizes" the planes flying on these routes. And then maybe start a 737 service from DEN to FRA via Goose Bay, Reykjavik. That will be the day, I will finally be able to relate to stories from my parents about the days they flew with plenty of stops for refueling. I hope that day comes soon SMI/J please make it happen!

star_world

Agreed - and it's a particularly badly written article, as you generally see on any aviation-focused piece in a mainstream publication.

It is interesting though that they confirm the weather patterns are the worst they've been in about 10 years, which goes a long way towards justifying the use of these aircraft on these routes. You can't run an airline with a schedule protected against 10 year events - you just pay the compensation instead.

star_world

That's a United contracted aircraft I believe - just a small point not sure where CO comes into it.

And incidentally, does it fly for close to 3 hours? Three plus hours? Close to three plus? Does that mean under 3? and is this anywhere near its typical endurance? And what is a CRJ50 anyway?

channa

Some people aren't interested in compensation; they're interested in getting to where they need to be.

Like the couple in the article with an IAD-LAX connection, and the fuel stop caused them a misconnect, costing them two (2) additional days.

While I thought we'd already established that people on this flight don't connect, I guess somebody didn't get the message.

But to your point, if this is truly an exception, the airline still could put measures in place to mitigate the damage, such as reducing capacity, authorizations, VDBing to offload pax, and reducing cargo.

star_world

You're actually missing the point a bit - if you already have bookings (pax / cargo) that take you above a certain threshold , and over the course of a couple of weeks a highly unusual weather event develops whereby you're now unable to make the trip non-stop on some days, compensation or proactive re-routing of pax are really the only options. To put it bluntly, it doesn't matter if people want the compensation or not. To my point above - do you think an airline should be operating with built-in protections from highly unusual, once in a decade weather events - like only flying 767s or 777s "just in case"?

The comment about being stuck for 2 days is a complete red herring based on the loads I saw domestically on that exact date - do you agree?

fivesixseven

Wouldn't a $150 voucher be more cheap for them?

ric_wx

That sounds at least a little suspect to me. That's a hub-hub flight on a Wednesday no less. There are so many ways to get 2 people from IAD-LAX.

You think maybe the easy update just automatically rebooked them 2 days out where it saw inventory and they never thought to challenge it with a live agent? Or, for whatever reason didn't want to play the standby lottery the next day, where they were likely to catch on somewhere?