Im pretty sure its 50 50.

As a meteorologist, I can state there is nothing particularly unusual about the weather this winter.

Perhaps you and/or your employer was spoiled by the mild, dry weather last winter but this one is nothing out of the ordinary.

There has been nothing particularly unusual about the weather but the operation is not running the way it has previously.

Prior to March, United Express and Continental Express flights were operated solely by their respective hub-based crews. EWR crews would only run CoEx, ORD only UAX.. things were much more separated. A winter storm affecting EWR would not affect our UAX operation at all. Now that is not the case. In four days I can touch every hub we fly through. This greatly reduces the margin for error. Snow in EWR can throw a whole trip off kilter making us late in DEN two days later.

The other thing is that our mainline partner is not pre-cancelling the way they previously had. I don't know why this year is different, but prior to this year even the threat of snow would cancel a lot of flights. Yeah, they precanceled with Sandy but not with anything else. When "Draco" swept through, they didn't touch the operation. And while I know a lot of places weren't terribly affected by it, there were definitely areas of operation that were. I myself sat in Kansas City for hours waiting to depart on a flight that, in previous years, would have simply cancelled. We never used to run 8 hours late due to weather. Now they don't hesitate.

Expressjet takes the brunt of the craziness thanks to this because we are the only carrier (that I'm aware of, I'll absolutely take correction if I'm wrong) that operates in a big way out of every united hub short of LAX and SFO. The last breakdown I saw (which was admittedly awhile ago) showed us with nearly 200 departures daily from ORD, ~175 from EWR, a similar number in IAH, ~80 in DEN, ~40 in IAD, ~65 in CLE. That is a lot of flights and a lot of room for impact throughout the system. Other carriers like republic, skywest, and the CRJ side of our operation don't see that many flights nor transit through as many hubs. Combine that with a less than stellar scheduling department and things get crazy in a big way, very fast when weather gets involved. While there hasn't been a significant snowstorm, there have been enough minor weather events to really throw things out of whack. Our schedules nowadays don't have many overnights that can absorb crew rest issues, and many of our days are maxed out at 12-13 hours of duty, not giving us much room to work with when the delays start occurring.

My flight today was delayed for 45 minutes thanks to "crew issues" (and this was an 8:20am flight from IAD), causing me to miss my connection in IAH and arrive home four hours later than scheduled.

Let me also add that many EJ flights out of the dreaded gate B-84 in Houston were also delayed this afternoon (at least for the few hours that I sat there).

I don't think anyone is suggesting that two separate workforces is a good thing. Simply pointing out that even if legacy UA and CO were to completely consolidate workforces, it wouldn't solve the problem being described by the OP - that this is a UX issue.

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts.

Actually, while it appeared to be an ExpressJet issue, I wasn't sure if it was in fact limited to ExpressJet. Though, from the replies, it sounds like it may be.

I especially appreciate the insights from Hachiko... although from your description, it sounds to me like the mess is indeed a strategy problem and not really a weather issue (which makes sense given that, in my friend's situation, it appeared the airline was taking responsibility and offering vouchers, etc., which it wouldn't normally do for weather). Winter weather is inevitable. But, if the Express fleet is being routed across hubs rather than being hub-centric (as has increasingly become the trend with Delta Connection carriers), that's likely the bulk of the problem. I'm surprised they'd move in that direction, given the obvious liability this model presents (as we're experiencing now). It sounds to me like there just isn't enough slack in UA's system to absorb IROPS well at all. I realize it's not necessarily ExpressJet's fault, given how much I am sure UA squeezes regional carriers.

It does seem to me, however, that UA (the brand as a whole) is struggling with these reliability issues a lot more than other carriers in recent weeks... which could become a real issue for UA going forward. It'd be another thing if every carrier was as easily set back by routine winter weather.

That's an impressive extrapolation of a completely unrelated point. I'm saying (very clearly) that it's nothing to do with any of UA's workforces, regardless of how many they have :)

Whose workforce is it then?

ExpressJet's workforce. All UAX carriers are independent airlines flying under contract. It is unrelated but sCO has some issues out of DEN I believe because it is operated by the crew base at IAH.

It seems like the problem is ongoing, and I really can't seem to grasp why. In the past four days I've been reassigned multiple times, I'm sure leaving other flights to sit waiting for crew. As far as I'm aware we aren't understaffed (they granted voluntary leave of absences for the first time in years) but maybe that's the real issue. I don't really get it and nothing the company is saying really indicates what is going on either.

There were a lot of delays this week out of IAH.. I know ours were specifically due to strong headwinds but I can't see that as being something that would throw our operation into such a mess.

I'm sorry guys. I really don't know what's going on here all of a sudden.

If an airline is not properly staffed crew issues will always come up at the end of the month, and even more so at the end of the year due to the number of hours the crew may fly in a month and year. It appears ExpressJet ran into these issues which can cascade throughout the year with work hours.

Interesting -- this would explain all of the tired/angry faces I saw hanging around the RJ gates at DEN upon arrival on 1/1. I thought it was just a lot of New Years Eve partying!
Glad my ExpressJet flight wasn't one of the affected ones...

My early morning E145 EWR-DCA was delayed 75 minutes on 2 January because our FO was deadheading down from BDL and that flight had a return-to-gate delay. You think you're safer booking the first flight of the day (635a departure) but not when you're at the mercy of crew movements which in turn are at the mercy of irrops. Why not more flexibility at EWR dispatch when something like this happens? We would have taken any FO on site and available.

I flew BKK-NRT on 2 JAN and after departure, the lead FA announced that there were only 11 FAs on board compared to the "normally required" 15 (that was their term). As a result, there were only 4 FAs for a 100% full Y cabin of a 747. Don't know how that happened, but that's pretty poor.