hawata

I was originally very excited about the direct flight from Newark to Buenos Aires because i pretty much always had trouble going through IAD. I need to point out here, that i usually flew the CO route through IAH and never had any issues with the flight departing.

My wife is currently in Argentina and the her outbound flight was 4 hours delayed due to crew arriving late and some part missing which was not available in EWR. This week every other day the flight is canceled even though the plans are pretty full.

Is it the fact that they are flying old United planes to EZE that cause the issue, or the fact that crew for that flight is still located in IAD? No other route i know of is canceled so frequently, there the CO52 flight from IAH departs every night without issues.

Any thoughts????

channa

It's all of the above.

It's a UA flight flying out of a CO hub. So you mentioned they couldn't find a part at EWR. Not surprising, since it's not a UA base, and CO probably doesn't stock all the parts needed for UA. Then since it's a UA flight, they don't exactly have a spare UA plane lying around, whereas UA might have had better flexibility at ORD or IAD in that they either might have had an idle aircraft or could have cancelled a less significant flight on similar equipment.

Also what happens is the flight gets late and they run into crew timeout issues. It's a CO hub, so there's probably fewer available UA crew (though UA does have a JFK base, so not sure if they can pull from there).

Basically it's part of the fun of flying two airlines marketed as one.

hawata

So why not simply use a CO 767 with CO crew and all is fine... its the only plane at EWR with the old UA colors anyhow....

jmr50

<joke>They're too busy sharpening their teeth</joke>

fjfv19

This is some interesting information. I'll be taking this flight way out in November so we'll see if United can leave me pleasantly surprised and sort out this situation within the next 6 months.

As hawata pointed out, logic would govern that both the people to fly the aircraft and the parts to maintain the aircraft should be located in the same place, especially for a long-haul flight. I'll be cheering (hopefully not in vain) for logic to win out.

RJNYC

A few years ago (2005-2007), my family and I flew 846/847 somewhat regularly. Experienced a few cancellations and long delays due a whole assortment of reasons: maintenance, ATC outages in Brazil and Argentina, crew timing out (departing EZE quite late due to the crew's inbound flight being severely delayed).

Sounds like this flight is still a bit of a mess.

EWR764

To the best of my knowledge, EWR-EZE is now staffed by the s-UA JFK base, at least on the flight deck. There are now enough internationally-qualified B756 crews to operate the various 'cross-fleeting' flights (EWR-EZE/GVA/ZRH, soon IST). Note that there is no JFK 777 pilot base, yet.

ozstamps

We are on this EWR-EZE in F, at Xmas, burning miles.

Hope they keep the 2 class 767-3000 on the route and not the CO 767s!

We have flown this (paid - when I trusted UA to give them money!) a few times a year out of IAD and even then there were often issues.

Last year the plane had nearly landed at EZE when pilot turned back and we landed at MIA .. not a station UA has any It'l presence at.

Total chaos reined supreme on that, and totally messed up on onward flights of course.

Jan this year we sat on Tarmac for hours at EZE while the pilot tested the PA system.

F and C could hear him but coach could not, so at 3am he abandoned ship and had whole plane bussed downtown EZE - real fun. Another total shambles getting out of there and right back to SYD next day.

If it were not for the GS 800 line we'd have taken a week I think to get out of there.
.

mike_plat

There's a reason why the PMUA customers nicknamed these 767-300's the ghetto birds.

lapeter

On that routing 11-30 but going EWR_IAH_EZE. Booked Y and waitlisted to BF using miles and co-pay. Showing 22 available seats- I wonder what our (2) chances are to get upgraded??? We are currently both Gold.

hawata

I also hope that they will use new 767 300 by the end of the year with CO crew...

I am going in November and for Christmas back to EZE both on the 847 flight... But was seriously tempted to go through IAH, and not go direct, just for the peace of mind...

Cheers

are you on a Y fare or restricted?

channa

767-300 would be UA crew.

RobOnLI

I'm thinking you didn't "nearly land at EZE" and turn back to MIA. The plane does not carry enough extra fuel to make the flight back to MIA (which would be about 8 hours from EZE). Were you even at the South American coast before turning back?

-RM

Driving by DCA

Because the market has enough F traffic to justify a three-class product. If they put the sCO birds on it, they lose that premium.

No, the ghetto bird is the old 763 domestic config with it's narrower-than-normal-domestic F seats.

The PMUA 763s are just fine and were actually sought-after compared to the 777s for a while because they got IPTE reconfigs first.

The issue, as has been stated, is that there isn't the same maintenance/parts capability at EWR for these sUA birds. So anything that goes wrong is the same as having it go wrong at an outstation.

RJNYC

Was this a Brazilian or Argentine ATC issue, from time to time Brazil and/or Argentina's ATCs experience black outs grounding all US-Deep South America flights.