Anywhere on the road

I was travelling from DEN - BWI with a stop (no plane change) in Indy this past Saturday. At the start of the flight, the crew stated 'welcome to SWA flight 3190 Denver to Indy and then continuing on to BWI' and a bunch of similar stuff.

About 15 minutes out from Indy, they announced that us BWI passengers would have to deplane. That the plane was now going to go from Indy to Fort Lauderdale. No biggie. We all deplane, walk two gates and load a different plane to BWI. Fortunately, they let the throughs board prior to the locals. This was after our crew made their way from the DEN flight to the BWI flight.

I ultimately made it home and still had a choice of a great seat. This is not a complaint, Just an observation, really. Both planes were 737-700's, the crew came was the same. I wonder if it was simply to get a different piece of equipment to a locale for maintenance?

LegalTender

Better to say the plane is being ""re-routed to FLL" than it has a minor mechanical.

fiuchris

Unscheduled swaps happen hundreds of times per day for so many reasons. Could be, as mentioned, it needing to end up in a maintenance station. Sometimes it's an ETOPS aircraft that needs to get back to the west coast. Sometimes it's a change of gauge to get a 700 or 800 back on its original a/c line after IROPS. It's a hassle for thrus and crews, but just another piece of the complexity of the network. It's more noticeable at SWA because of thru flights, whereas at other airlines the swap is basically invisible to passengers who have no idea if the tail they are on was the scheduled one.

LegalTender

Untold contingencies. Still going with "FLL re-routing" improvisation to cover minor mechanical.

PAX62

Equipment swaps happen all the time for a variety of reasons. Have had your exact scenario more than once.

djp98374

I’ve had this happen a few times where we did a pilot escort to a new plane.

one time I was flying a multi stop plane. I think it was a XC 3 stop plane. Last stop in DEN. Because of delays I missed my connection where they did a plane/ crew switch at denver and I was force to take a later connection. They gave me an A1-15 connection.

Allan38103

I really don’t see the point of this thread.

Jaimito Cartero

An interesting plane swap would be to a 747 or 777…

NoStressHere

Well... to us layman... it does not make much sense. You fly into a city where you are only supposed to do a stop, but then instead you move to another plane - even though it is the same model.

Anywhere on the road

Thanks Allan. Next time I will consider your opinion prior to making a post.

joshua362

Its human nature to want to know the why and whom to blame but at the end of the day swaps are going to be done to impact the least amount of people and their fares, therefore its operational money driven, but no one likes to hear that.

Once coming home from an MCI business trip, I thought it was wise to go through the hassle of working a late day, switching to an airport hotel for a 6am departure to BWI for a short connection & hop to be at my house by 11am to have an almost full Friday. Well at BWI, "my" plane was taken for another route that included a large boy scout troop headed west. Our "new" plane was now coming in from Jamaica to a different terminal, had to security swept and towed over to the A gates before boarding. It was a four hour delay. Hearing all these detailed explanations did not help the mood of the handful of us waiting for a 40 minute flight home...

Yellowjj

Likely scenario, plane was ETOPS with rafts and needed for a Intl flight out of FLL.

fiuchris

Just a point of clarification that Hawai‘i <> Mainland are the only SWA routes that currently require ETOPS airplanes.

Some 700s have rafts and those a/c may be used for more direct overwater routing to the Caribbean, but ETOPS-180 is specific for flights 180 minutes from a suitable diversion airport.