glx

It regularly leaves an hour late; 7 day moving average is 15 minutes but that seems low.

Between the "extra" security screening (after the two it already took me to get to the gate), the lack of any respect of priority in that screening, and the fact that no matter what it seems that boarding passes always need to be reprinted, it's mayhem. FRA-SFO should not be this hard.

Given that this is a daily flight I'd think that they'd get the hang of this by now, but apparently not - it's been this way as long as I can remember.

bubbashow

She's a few minutes ahead of schedule today.


City: Frankfurt, Germany (FRA)
Gate: Z15
Check-in Terminal:
Scheduled Time: 2:00 p.m.
Scheduled Date: Mon., Aug. 13, 2012
Actual Time: 1:57 p.m.
Actual Date: Mon., Aug. 13, 2012
City: San Francisco, CA (SFO)
Gate: 98
Terminal: international terminal concourse g
Scheduled Time: 4:13 p.m.
Scheduled Date: Mon., Aug. 13, 2012
Estimated Time: 4:09 p.m.
Estimated Date: Mon., Aug. 13, 2012

PlateMan

Real disaster? Flightaware shows it more than 30 mins late ONCE in the last 15 days. Chill out. It may leave late, but arrives ontime and that's what matters.

JFKSFOLAX_friend

That's some disaster.

glx

Have you witnessed the chaos that is the boarding area?

We're not talking about Zone 6 jumping in front of Zone 2.

Yes, because they pad the flight time to deal with the chaos.

It's left more than 30 minutes late TEN times in the past 15 days.

It's left more than 50 minutes late FIVE times in the past 15 days.

So it's OK to pad flight times in order to compensate for crap process now? It never has a hope of leaving on time.

blueman2

Your title is 100% correct. UA901 is always a disaster.
- I tend to travel in F. No F lounge in FRA for UA. You cannot call the Tower lounge F, and it is always very over crowded. I just sit in the terminal
- yes, security is the most confusing I have seen anywhere. You get checked 2 to 3 times in a typical transit. Granted, I tend to like to try different lounges to find one that is not over crowded and that causes an extra security check or 2.
- yes, they always have to re-issue my boarding pass (coming from BLR). Why is that?
- boarding process is a MESS!!! Enough said on that one.
- While not UA901, I have to chime in on the fact that UA900 ALWAYS gets a bus gate, meaning you have to walk down the stairs and onto a bus for a long ride to the terminal, and then wait in a long line for the ONLY escalator up to the departure level, where of course you have to go through security screening once again.

But your point of saying UA901 is always late, well I take that flight 5-6 times a year, and not a single delay in 2-3 years. Had a 1 hour delay on UA900 once, and a 24 hour delay for UA901 about 6 years ago, but otherwise quite on time!

FlyWorld

This padding nonsense has been going on for a long time. Nothing new here. Perhaps worse now, but the concept is well established.

bubbashow

Indeed. Look at ANY flight out of the NYC metro area.

glx

Agreed, but an hour+ is a bit much.

FlyWorld

Not really. It allows them to make a cheerful announcement that they are landing 30 minutes early. In other words, manufactured good news. It seems the only good news to come out of UA these days is news that they manufacture.

chrisdeaner

This is 100% accurate. Flew this flight last month coming home with my wife from a little eurocation and we were shocked by how poorly handled the boarding process was. I can't really complain about the multiple security checkpoints...if that's how they have to do it, that's how they have to do it. I didn't like the fact that every single person was getting wanded coming through the metal detector, regardless of if they set it off or not but I digress. The boarding area was a complete disaster. The Mrs and I were flying F so we posted up somewhat near the gate but towards the back wall to avoid getting in the way until BG1 was called. The GAs announced that boarding would begin "shortly" about 15min before it actually began which resulted in a hoard of people swarming the area, regardless of their BG. No further direction about boarding groups was given besides one agent walking around quietly telling people that economy would board from the left, F/C from the right but neglecting to add that elites in any class would board from the right, resulting in some people crossing back and forth. We literally had to push our way through a mass of non-BG1s aimlessly standing in front of the gate once they had called for 1 and pretty much everyone started to board with ~60% getting denied for a lower group and getting sent back out. Complete mess and really detracted from the whole experience.

shortkidd

The bigger issue is that all airlines added 30 minutes to their flight times so they now have extra padding for their inability to do their jobs.

FlyWorld

It's only an issue if you plan incorrectly. What's 30 minutes against a 10+ hour flight? Anyone who expects that kind of precision, from any airline, is being silly. Weather/winds/ATC/other airport conditions can all add 30 minutes w/o any fault of airline, and this can happen all the time, with all airlines.

Let's stay focused on what really matters - extreme delays and cancellations.

aCavalierInCoach

^

GBadger

Having just flown this route, I don't see the padding as an issue. As others have mentioned, changes to seasonal wind patterns, delays at SFO due to weather, etc. can all EASILY add 30-60 minutes to flight time. Who cares if the flight leaves 45 minutes late, as long as it arrives at or before the correct time? If the flight routinely arrived 30-60 minutes late -- that would be a disaster.