NewportGuy

922 went out about 2 hours late again today. But of course once a plane departs United removes from their site all mention of WHY the flight is late.

Interesting...

riphamilton

looks like 8 sep UA56 B772ER CDG-EWR diverted to YHZ. now enroute YHZ-EWR.

NewportGuy

Looks like they have everything inbound to ORD, including 894 from HKG, holding for a small line of storms passing through. Must be pleasant, flying 14+ hours only to be stuck circling farmland in eastern Iowa! Aaaaagggghhhh!!!

transportprof

The reason usually shows up again after the plane has landed, although it is sometimes different from the reason given for the departure delay.

jjmoore

That gives UA about 9 hours to perfect an "indisputable" reason why weather was the root cause of the delay.

I hate how this happens when I am seeing a delay of my inbound aircraft, and have no reason why it is delayed until I fight with the phone agents. This happened on an int'l inbound earlier this year.

JDT1955

851 (ORD-PEK) is (like 9/5) delayed 4+ hours as they have to again wait for 882 to get in from NRT. I wonder if UA is down a 747 or two so that someone has to periodically take a hit from a missing inbound plane. I'm on this flight tomorrow, so hopefully better behavior. On an off-topic note, it seems loads on this flight have been quite light recently. 850 coming in from PEK only had 20 in J after all possible upgrades. Tomorrow's 851 has only 2 in F and J says full, but has 19 open seats. A couple of days ago, they said that 18 seats were blocked for some reason. Thoughts on why so many J seats would be blocked?

So...finally pushed five hours late and took a scenic two hour tour of O'Hare and now have returned to the gate. Hopefully on better behavior tomorrow!

kluau88

Showing estimated departure now at 1956 with arrival into PEK at 2145. Wondering if the crew timed out hence we are getting the "operational difficulties" delay.

JDT1955

The rolling delays continue, now posting 2050 but it's already 2105. Drum-roll to cancellation?

Update: Mirabile dictu! It's off and expected into Beijing a mere 7:43 late, taking a rare easterly track over Greenland out of ORD.

kluau88

Looks like N107UA is ferrying back to SFO.

9/9 UA 2200 HKG-SFO 1400 - 1120. Originally scheduled for 1300 but delayed due to ATC.

As of this posting looks like it will work back on 9/9 UA 869 SFO-HKG.

rolltribe

Also got a great tour of the taxiways at ORD tonight. Took an hour after landing to get into a gate. Pilot said ATC released a bunch of flights at once and clogged up the taxiways. Basically just became a traffic jam with the diagonal runways. Taxiway MM was moving about the speed of the Kennedy at rush hour.

NewportGuy

AGAIN 839 LAX-SYD delayed over an hour. "Operational difficulties once again (but I thought he resigned today!). Again not curfew, as VA and Delta are both out almost an hour now.

JDT1955

And yet again, 851 on 9/9 is delayed 5+ hours awaiting the landing of 850. It's personal this time, as I'm on it!

When I checked in, the GS agent confirmed that ORD is indeed down a 747 ("There's one in the hanger that will be there a while..."), so every day, one of the Asia flights has to wait on an inbound 747 that day. 851 drew the short straw today (actually 3 of the past 5 days). Why they're waiting on 850 to arrive rather than 882, which gets in an hour+ earlier, is a mystery, as well as why they've suddenly unblocked the 18 blocked J seats that were blocked yesterday. It's an upgrader's dream, 24 open J seats and 11 F and no one on the wait list!

l etoile

I have removed some off-topic posts. A reminder that this thread is for posting about delayed and canceled international flights. The poster need not be taking those flights or know someone on them.

Thanks
l'etoile
UA moderator

NYRunner2

I was on this flight and while standing by the lav I chatted with one of the pilots about the delay as I had seen the early QF flight rolling down the runway while we were at the gate and thought the curfew excuse seemed off. He said that even though we were leaving more than an hour late we would land basically on time because of the flight path and the wind. He was right, I think we were 9 minutes late and that was after an additional MX delay for a cargo door. Without that we probably would have been early. It's annoying to sit around the airport for an extra hour that late at night but if we arrive on time it's hard to complain.

NewportGuy

Looks like UA938 ORD-LHR is pulling a u-turn over northern Michigan right now (9:15pm PDT Wed. night, 12:15am EDT). It already departed late as it had to return to the gate once. Possibly the problem wasn't fixed?

Edit: Yup, it's going home. A 767 on mx apparently.