goalie

i was doing a same day m/r oak-iad-lax with my outbound on ua281.

met (and gave a tootise-pop to) work2fly at oak as he was doing oak-den-iad and we planned to meet up at iad at upon arrival.

settled in to my seat (2b) signed my copy of hemi's, and tootise-popped the crew (big hit with the purser). i was offerred my pre-departure drink and to have my coat hung up (more below) and took the former and declined the latter.

had breakfast and dozed in and out of sleep on what i thought would be a rather uneventflul flight.

god-bless channel 9!

"center, united 281, it appears we might have a slight problem with our pressurization system"
"are you delcaring an emergency?" (that woke me up right quick)
"negative-it appears that we may have a faulty guage but request permission to randomly change altitudes to see if the guage moves"

center rattles off some instructions and the captain plays a bit of porpiose

"center, united 281. it appears that the guage won't move and we've notified the company that we'd like to divert to chicago" (one audible "oh, sh*t" from "mid-village").

"untied 281, center. roger that stand by for new routing and please say souls on board (not sure why the center asked about souls as we did not declare an emergency).

the captain comes onthe p/a and 'splains everything and the a/c is safe but he wants to err on the side of caution and that we will be diverting to ord. now this is where it gets good....he says that if all goes according to plan, we should arrive at gate c-9 and ther should be a replacement a/c waiting at gate c-11 so all we have to do is move to that a/c and just wait for the luggage to be moved over.

ok, so we land at ord and i have to tell you, as soon as it was wheels stop, the baggage folks hit the plane like flies on sh*t. we wall walk over to c-11 and the agent said that as soon as the crew does their safety inspection we will board and just a soon as the bags are moved we will depart.

same flight deck and cabin crews board and in less than 10 minutes we're boarding (same seats as we got a 319 for a 319 tho there was one self u/grader to f who thought it was gonna be open seating ) and 31 minutes from wheels stop, we pushed back and arrived iad only an hour and 10 minutes late (plenty of time for my m/r turn).

now, i have to tell you-there was not one pi$$ed off, anrgy or otherwise upset pax over this as united moved mountains to get us ina and out asap ^.

i also want to comment about a top notch purser and the other 2 f/a's. they were they on top of everything and anything in terms of pax requests. (and for those over in the coat thread, not only did she offer to hang up coats on the first part of the outbound but even with the time constraint on the new flight, she offered there as well ^ (in a addtion to offering a pre-departure beverage ^). i had already given a getm cert to the purser prior to the divert becasue she was great but now there is one big old letter going off to united about how well united handled it and how great the entire crew was.

two other niceites:

the new flight had an open bar after the divert and i've never seen so much booze flying out of the f/c galley on it's way back to the vilage. the other was that everyone got a cs25 for their trouble (un-dated and unsigned) but iirc, these are no longer valid-am i right cuz if that's the case, i call and have a new pmo/dollar cert maled.


one bummer tho-work2fly and i never met up at iad as he arrived later than i did and got hung up in the rcc ticketing but i did have the pleasure of him being added to the tootsie-op roll call list. so i just a couple of smokes and had fun watching the fam's board my flight to lax
anyway, just thought i'd share that ua scored a big one ^^^^
====
Origin Airport: OAK
Destination Airport: ORD
Type of Aircraft: 319
Scheduled Departure Time: 06:10
Adjusted Departure Time: 06:03
Scheduled Arrival Time: 12:14
Adjusted Arrival Time: DVRT
Reason for delay: OPERATIONS

Origin Airport: ORD
Destination Airport: IAD
Type of Aircraft: 319
Scheduled Departure Time: 12:46
Adjusted Departure Time: DVRT
Scheduled Arrival Time: 14:15
Adjusted Arrival Time: 15:27
Reason for delay: OPERATIONS

Phoenician Aviator

Great story - thanks for sharing! ^

dcmike

Wow, they were really proactive about this, sounds like UA really did a great job! ^

Thanks for sharing!

Buster CT1K

What is this "village" thing? What is "mid-village?"

goalie

the "village" is someplace BJ does not go . sorry, i couldn't resist...the "village" is a term of endearment that some f/a's will use when refering to the coach cabin so "mid-village" would be the middle of the coach cabin. now "galley springs" on the other hand........

wxguy

From the context I'd guess mid-village = steerage.

sinoflyer

Good story! As a perpetual peasant, I'm glad to hear everyone is safe and sound.

SFOTRAVELER

Handled very well, so kudos to the crew. Please tell us how the self upgrader was handled!

Bluehen1

That's great to hear goalie.. Hopefully my run to SBA from PHL will go off like clockwork this saturday... it will be the run to put me over 1K for the year (after this week's PHL-PHX.. had to bag a previous one due to a change at work)

ORD4R

^ Thanks for posting this story. It is nice to hear good news for a change.

flythewing

Would like to mention a few fine employees involved in the ORD turn. Gerry, the C9 Ramp Lead, Dennis the Gate Controller (provided a LOT of liason to enable a quick turn), John at C11, Becky and Sue in CS. Lots of attaboys for these folks effort..................

goalie

any chance you work for united? if so, and if possible, could you pm me full names and "file numbers" so i can include them in my letter becasue it truly was something. i figured well, here goes my first shot at using "S*UAL/INVOLUNTARY REROUTE-AMENITY" but noooooo, united had to prove me wrong in good way ^.

i'm also gonna throw out another name..."rocco" was the name used by the g/a (or supe?) who coordinated us geese from c9 to c11 and loved the tootsie-pop ^.

now, can anyone else share some insight on the cs25's they gave out. as i mentioned in my opening post, it's un-dated but iirc, i thought these were not valid anymore >

goalie

as it turns out mr. 2c had to go potty and was one of the last to board but he pegged it as he turned into the cabin from the door as he said something to the f/a (i knew right away as soon as yuppie-scum-ish self u/grade sat down and tried to play it cool ). the real mr. 2c walked past his seat to row 6 and stopped where the f/a came down to mr. s/e in 2c and asked "are you mr. 2c?" ballsy s.o.b. said yes without hesitation but was busted when asked for his bp. had first not been full, he probably would have gotten away with it......or until i told the f/a-but i would have waited until after the double ding at 18,000 feet just to make the s/e think he pulled it off . not too mean am i?

HBAlameda

Thank you for that story, goalie. Semi-freaky, as I flew OAK-BDL on the same early morning, and when I was booking it I tried to finagle the itinerary to IAD (for the express purpose of avoiding ORD). In any case, the IAD route would have cost too much time and money and Saturday's trip through ORD went as smoothly as could be. I wonder if they gave you our 319 -- they pulled it away from our gate after we deplaned at ORD and I thought it odd it wasn't scheduled to take a connecting flight then and there.

goalie

grrrrrr-i missed another tootsie-pop victim . don't forget to post your itins on flight connect. now as to the 319, could be but that's a tough one to figure out. what time did you arrive at ord as when we pulled in to our gate, our new 319 was already waiting right next door.