beware the "refueling stop"
 

Had a bad experience today on CO that I'd like to get opinions on. I was on flight 409 from EWR to DEN, which was scheduled to depart at 9:35am and land at 12:05pm. Once we had boarded and pushed back, we were informed that we would be making a stop at Chicago O'Hare to refuel, since the headwinds were so strong and the flight was full. To me, this seemed like the worst possible place to do it, with all the air congestion and bad weather at O'Hare. Why not just zip in to a regional airport somewhere along the way and get back out again quickly? We were told this would delay our arrival by one hour.

We were actually delayed by 2 1/2 hours. Once we got there, it took forever to refuel, then we had to sit in the penalty box. We sat there so long we accumulated ice and had to go back to the gate to be de-iced. The plane finally landed in Denver at 3:40, over 3 1/2 hours late.

Why, oh why, would we go to ORD of all places? Can anyone explain?

JNelson,

I can't say I've never experienced what you've gone through, you're right, why ORD, one of the most congested airports in the nation?

I've been taking flight 409 regularly the last couple of months, and fortunately on the flights I've been on we've never had a problem with headwinds.

In fact, I'm in Denver as we speak. I came here on Monday, but instead of 409 I took a connector through CLE, because it got into Denver a couple of hours ahead of 409 (had a meeting at 12pm I had to attend). I'm heading back home on 12/21. When are you heading back to EWR?

I dont know if this is germane to your particular flight, but most of the smaller airports are ill-equipped as to snow removal equipment, de-icing trucks or stations, etc. I for one have ALWAYS felt better in such trying times at the larger airports........ORD included. In nasty weather times, I always try to stock up on goodies such as water, pretzels, nuts or whatever in the P-Club or at the airport stores. It often nicely came in handy in the air or sitting on the tarmac. If not.....have a welcoming party in your hotel room.

MisterNice

You've got to be kidding. What type of aircraft was this? If a 737 can make it from coast to coast with enough fuel for holds, etc., I certainly don't understand this. I'm wondering if they had an extraordinarily large amount of cargo that was weighing this plane down. There's clearly more to this than what you were told.

Something's fishy, especially since you weren't told about this until after pushback. ORD isn't an airport ideal for this kind of thing on a summer day, much less during the type of weather we're having.

Are you going to pursue this with Customer Service? Likely they'll just blame it on the weather, but I certainly wouldn't let it go.

I'd also check the flight status of all flights between NYC and DEN around that time. See if UA or F9 had delayed arrivals into DEN.

I agree with Sheryl 100% and I would pursue it further. Checking the other flights before pursuing it is a great idea, because I am surrrrrre they will blame something out of their control, when maybe they were more concerned with the on-time departure instead of the proper fueling for weight load, head winds, etc.

Flight status says CO 409 arrived DEN at 2:36 p.m. today. Is that wrong? Just wanted to point this out in case you plan to write a letter, you could include that as well.

This is too strange. Gordon Bethune, the President of CO, has been quoted saying CO flights will leave the gate without catering, if necessary, to keep on schedule.

Now, leaving without food is one thing, but not enough fuel? Per the FAA, when a flight departs it HAS to have enough fuel to reach its intended destination, and on top of that, enough fuel to divert to an alternate airport should that need arise.

Their explanation sounds pretty bogus and I would press them on the matter.

Thanks for your replies. Glad to hear that I'm not the only one who found this strange. The plane was an MD-80 and I overheard a FA say that it was either stop to refuel or leave 30 passengers behind, since the plane was completely full.

I still think we could have stopped somewhere else. There was good weather to about Ohio, and then the de-icing would not have been necessary. We knowingly flew into a snowstorm at ORD.

I'm going to check other flight arrivals for DEN yesterday, and I'll report back.

P.S. The plane did land at around 2:40, not 3:40pm. Sorry, I wasn't thinking when I wrote that.

In Feb., I noticed a couple of UA 727's at O'Hare where the gate agents announced that the flights would be making fuel stops in either Denver OR Salt Lake City!

As to the fuel issue, remember that airlines generally try to put as little fuel in there as possible. It is possible that the plane had enough fuel to make it to DEN as long as there was no major delay. As to why ORD was picked, it is likely that CO has attractively-priced fueling arrangements there, so that the fuel stop wouldn't be as costly as, say, in Indianapolis.

My wife was flying CO from IAH to SJC about year ago. Her flight was diverted to PHX because of an "air conditioning problem." She said that they announced on the plane that they were going to stop and have the "compressor checked." As I sat waiting to pick her up at SJC, the gate agent said the flight was delayed and would arrive in about 2 hours. I called Continental from a payphone and an agent told me that the plane had been diverted to PHX because it was "leaking fuel" and wouldn't have enough fuel to make it to SJC.

According to my wife, the plane landed in PHX, no one boarded or disembarked. "Some mechanics worked on it," and the plane took off about 45 minutes later and flew on to SJC.

Weird, eh? I wouldn't imagine that the plane diverted to ORD simply because it was "low on fuel."

-levi

levi, I don't really think your wife's situation is similar to JNelson's. My read of JNelson's post is that this was announced before takeoff so it was planned, not a diversion similar to your wife's situation where a mechanical issue arose inflight.

Sheryl, the NYC area has some of the highest fuel taxes in the country. Airlines use complex formulas to fuel planes at the most ideal airports. They calculate the fuel cost vs added weight vs cost of flying with added weight. The capacity of a plane probably has very little to do with how much fuel a plane departs with. I consider it very likely a plane departs NYC airports with only the minimum fuel needed to get to its destination.


[This message has been edited by Aubie (edited 12-21-2000).]

Aubie, the extra fuel burned in adding a refueling stop is going to more than offset any tax difference, so I find it unbelievable that an airplane would depart with not enough fuel solely to stop enroute to get fuel at a lower tax rate. Note that in the reported case, the announcement of the technical stop was made even before takeoff, so it's not as if they loaded "just enough" fuel at EWR only to discover enroute that they were burning more than expected. As an aside, does anyone know to what extent, if any, local taxes are an issue with commercial aviation fuel?

I notice that they regularly run MD-80's between EWR and DEN - I wonder how often they have this problem?

A similar thing happened to me 3 or 4 years ago. I was flying from IAH to SEA, which at the time was usually run with an MD-80. There was an equipment problem, and they did a last-minute substitution with a DC-9, which has a shorter range. Plus, there was a strong headwind that day. They were originally going to have to deny boarding to 20-30 passengers to be able to depart with enough fuel, but got authorization for a technical stop in SLC. This was all explained to us while boarding was still in progress. Other than the trip seemingly taking forever (strong headwind, plus the technical stop in SLC), I thought they handled it fine. Considering that the original plane was broken, any other solution would have resulted in an even further delay.

I love to read these posts with the multitude of replies that make no logical sense to them. How did an agent know there was "leaking fuel" that cause the enroute stop? "Leaking fuel" has an explosive sound to it that would ground that plane until a full mechanical check was done to it. Not a 45 minute tinkering job.

Fuel taxes? Maybe I should check this out before I doubt it - but, is there a fuel tax levied on jet fuel used on interstate flights? Just sound a little weird. I do know fuel costs do vary by location and fuel is sometimes ferried when the price differential makes it feasible.

ORD was a mistake. Normally, an airline would make a flag stop where they already have operations. But please, ORD! They should avoid trouble and ORD has trouble written all over it.

Smaller airports don't have the snow removal equipment? I would think if you are located in the snow belt you'd have the necessary equipment to support your operational needs. Granted, Dallas would not have a full complement, but Des Moines and Omaha and Buffalo should have the full deal.

I really don't believe the airline would plan to inconvenience 150 pax, get the crew into a crewduty/crewrest situation, get the airframe offline for an additional 4 hours or so.

Just my opinion.