Wondering if anyone else has had this happen. I was on CO flight 152 IAH - EWR yesterday (8/17). The plane backed away from the gate on time (app 11:45am) headed for the runway and then stopped, after a few minutes the pilot announced that they had left a catering cart and were contacting the company to see if they had to go back to the gate. Some more time passed and the pilot announced that they were going back to the gate to pick up the catering cart. This whole process took an hour to accomplish, we then took off and headed for Newark. An hour from landing at Newark (near Washington, DC) the plane started to go into a holding pattern and soon after it was announced that we would be diverting to Cleveland. I believe had we taken off on time and not gone back for the catering cart, we would have landed before the weather hit Newark and not had to divert to Cleveland.

Turning around a fully loaded 767 and delaying the flight an hour for one catering cart, has to be one of the oddest calls I have ever seen by an airline. I am trying to rationalize why Continental felt that having a full compliment of catering carts on a plane was more import than getting 170 plus passengers to their destination on time. The flight crew was very good at parroting the company line that this was a "weather related" delay to passengers who were asking about their connecting flights (luckily not me). In my opinion this was not a weather related delay, it was a catering cart delay, CO and the CO employee who made this decision is solely responsible for inconvenience that was caused to the passengers on board. We luckily didn�t get stuck in Cleveland overnight and arrived at the gate in Newark just before 9pm.

Believe it or not, the galley carts and the smaller silver carriers (the square boxes) are 'no-go' items. I have been told a few different reasons for why (weight and balance, that sort of thing), and am not sure what is actually correct...but technically the plane isn't 'legal' to fly without the full compliment of carts. I have been told that it must be all carts or no carts, or it is no go.

Thanks for the info on the regulation, looks like they did what they had to do in order to be legal.

I actually think the reasoning behind needing all the carts is that if they aren't all in place then the others could slide around and possibly come loose and attack a FA or passenger.

Coming to a theater near you, double feature, Snakes on a Plane and Carts on a Plane.

This sounds right. They can skip catering altogether, but they can't miss a cart.

They don't recater on short trips sometimes (e.g., EWR-DFW-IAH, they won't restock in DFW for the short hop).

I have heard attacks of hunger pangs, but an all-out airborne assault on FA's and/or pax??!! This is absurd!!! *lol*

That's pretty accurate. If you really want to know, many of the carts are placed in pairs. There is a very thin metal divider tab that, on its own, might not hold a single cart from flopping around. With the second cart in place, it's secure. I don't think this applies to the metal carriers or single place carts.

There is actually a placard that states "all or no carts must be installed". That instantly makes it an FAA rule; although I believe it applies as described above.

Catering carts are indeed a component of weight and balance computations and are required to be on the aircraft in order to 'be legal'.

Returning to the gate for such an innocuous item seems rather silly, but for the crew, possible loss of license due to FAA action is a strong motivator.....

But back to one of the OP's points, the fact that the cart was not on the plane is what led to the initial delay, and then arguably the diversion (although no one could no for sure - not even the airline, or they would not have flown to EWR at all). So why should CO get away with calling this weather related?