The PrivatAir 737 has 44 seats--close though :D

And ex-LIS, BCN and MAD (sometimes), however, UA63 was cancelled due to maintenance, so it didn't need to make a stop today.

I'm also wondering how they are picking the NATs for the 752s.

No room at the inn...
 

My guess is that it is primarily due to slot control. Think landing queues and gate availability.


SunLover

It seems that from UA65, they were taking a southern track via Santa Maria Oceanic and about 2/3 across the Atlantic and then switched destinations to BGR. This could be very well attributable to slot control as UA operations could send a message via CPDLC to get a re-clearance if they didn't have a place to put UA65 when it got to EWR.

http://i.imgur.com/JmkYRB8l.png

Crossing my fingers, I've not been on one of these diverted flights. If truly pre-planned, when do they inform the pax? At the gate before departure, upon takeoff during the normal pilot announcements, or later?

Arriving early has its kinks too:

I do not ever remember arriving early like in FRA and docking at a gate. Typically it's waiting after leaving then runway and eventually parking at an off-tarmac positions with climbing stairs planeside and bus rides. Inconvenient & time-consuming exercises in and itself, often pulverising the early arrival advantage, and worse - resulting in delays reaching terminals/connecting flights.

Geese? (and I don't mean the stranded pax) ;)

When I flew TXL-EWR last month, it was in the plane, prior to take-off. Too late to make other arrangements then, of course. :)

Has nothing to do with slot control.

Longer Europe/US flights are "re-dispatched" at an enroute point. You are planned to have X amount of fuel at a given point based on the forecasted winds prior to takeoff.

Once you get to that designated point if you have more than the required gas you continue to EWR, if not you stop for gas. You only know how much gas you'll have when you get there, thus the enroute diversion, like your example.

I've been flying these Atlantic 756 routes exclusively for almost 6 years now. Diverted 4 times for fuel.

Are you a United captain?

Not in this plane, was a B737 CA prior to merger.

Currently First Officer on 757/767.

alright ok so you are the one with the experience then.

Also - some airports have restrictions for landing times & slots for arrivals - so no point in being early... A few months ago our captain came on the PA and said we had to slow down coming in to FRA from ORD - and then were put in a holding pattern - as we were not allowed to land that early (this was the 5:45am arrival). We finally landed about 5:15am. I also believe that this is true for other airports in the UK as well...

1/5 ua0055 cdg > ewr
 

Diverted to BGR, delayed departure, crew timed out. Still there this morning. Today's flight is scheduled to be diverted to BGR, too.

What's odd is that the flight that went out this morning (2074) didn't use the plane that came in from CDG yesterday (3130) but rather 3140, which was ferried up empty from IAD late last night. I wondered if the original plane had an mx problem, which delayed departure too far for the pilots (the web site shows the canceled continuation originally scheduled for 2AM this morning), but then they couldn't fix it and needed a new plane. Not particularly confidence inspiring...

1/6 diversions that I found:

UA123 (LHR-IAD) to BGR (also 3 hours late out of LHR)
UA63 (MAD-EWR) to BGR (departed 45 mins late from MAD)
UA65 (LIS-EWR) to YQX (departed 2hr 20 mins late from LIS)

As mentioned above UA55 is also headed to BGR and left CDG around 50 mins late