cruiser9999

I am utterly disgusted with what I am hearing in the media re passengers being disgruntled with their makeshift accommodations and meals. Be thankful that there was a landing site and that you had a roof overhead! Look at how passengers in a somewhat similar situation re a forced landing in Goose Bay (9/11) reacted. They were grateful instead of whining about accommodation and meal service. Yes your barracks may have been cold (although believe it or not, 14 degrees centigrade is quite liveable in Canada) but you had a bed. Maybe a geography lesson would be useful here - Canada is a vast country, largely uninhabited and when there are airline emergencies, the landings are at times in much less hospitable sites than you had i.e. tundra in the middle of blizzards with casualties.

physioprof

The comparison to 9/11 is invalid. On 9/11 the entire worldwide commercial air travel system was completely shut down for several days. In this situation, it was a single broken plane that UA lacked the operational resilience to effectively deal with. Yes, it's definitely fantastic that the plane didn't crash. But when assessing how airlines deal with IRROPS, and diversions to Goose Bay are a common one, "plane didn't crash, so shut up", is an irrelevant response.

Mollyann500

^United failed, as usual, to keep these passengers informed and updated on what was happening but these passenger need to be grateful they were safe on the ground. There could have been so much worse of an outcome.

NewportGuy

Read post 266, and how a real captain handles such incidents. THAT is the issue, regardless of how the media is slanting it. Most of what I heard from passengers was extremely complimentary toward the people in Goose Bay, and the military. That all said those good folks stepped up and made the passengers really feel welcome.

The issue is that it wasn't their responsibility. It was United's, and the crew's responsibility, and they went into deep hiding. THAT is the issue everyone is addressing, with the conditions simply being an interesting tangent to the real story.

nautical

look, i was there. believe the media or not, but very few passengers were complaining about the accommodations. yes, we compared notes in the morning about being cold with no blankets, but every single one of us knew there were likely no hotel options.

the real issue was nobody from United said a word to us until we re-boarded a plane nearly a day later. the poor (and very nice) employees at Goose Bay were left to do the dirty work. when one girl came into the barracks to say we were (again) delayed until 4:30, you could see nerves in her face because she knew none of us had heard a word since landing the night prior. we assured her it was fine and we were made at United and not her.
meanwhile, even the MP line didn't have accurate data. they continued telling us we were going straight to LHR until around 3pm. had i known we would do YYR->EWR->LHR earlier, i'm sure i would have looked at alternate routes and carriers. but a direct to LHR remained the quickest way to get us to london.

channa

Worldwide? No, just USA.

goalie

TOPIC CHECK

This thread is about UA958 diverting to YYR. Discussions about different flights and different subjects are for other threads

goalie
UA Forum Co-Moderator

FlyWorld

Posts of this nature are missing the main points.

1. Yes, everyone should be grateful for the captain who safely landed a broken aircraft.

2. Yes, everyone should be grateful to the Canadians on the ground who by all accounts went above and beyond the call of duty to be helpful and hospitable.

However:

1. United Continental should have communicated with and cared for the passengers instead of ignoring them or feeding occasional false information, and

2. United Continental should have put a working aircraft into that area more quickly and got the passengers to LHR either on their own metal or partner metal, and

3. This mx issue combined with the large number of other mx issues being discussed this week combined with recent reports of heightened FAA oversight of safety operations combined with the $2 billion in cost cuts to increase executive bonus payments combined with recent warnings about aircraft safety from airline pilot groups is making me horrified of flying on a United Continental aircraft because I see all these things together as a potentially related cluster of red flags that raise serious alarms for me about the quality of overall safety and maintenance operations under Smisek control. I'd like to know the root cause of this rudder failure. Was it a normal mx that happens routinely or was it the result of intentional deferred maintenance or cost cutting measures? And, if the latter, how many more similar emergencies await future flyers? And, if the latter, will all future flyers be as lucky as this group in landing alive?

So there can be both gratitude and disappointment within the same experience and Canadians should understand the disappointment is directed towards Smisek and his band of incompetent and greedy <self censoring - insert word here>, not at the Canadians who did everything they could to be helpful.

This incident raises very legitimate reasons to be angry and concerned. The press has created a frame that it's all about "staff gets comfy hotel" while passengers get thrown into cold military barracks with no food, but that's just sensationalism to pull at emotions and sell advertising. The real issues are what I've articulated above. And, United Continental's disdain for customers, shown by the treatment and communication around this, is of secondary importance.

Incidentally, on TripAdvisor, I see only 2 hotels in Goose Bay, and neither of them are Four Seasons. While the treatment of pax by United Continental and the crew appears to be abhorrent based on reported facts, I don't think the crew was eating foie gras at a 5-star restaurant, sipping fine champagne, and enjoying spa services during their overnight in Goose Bay. Perhaps the pax were even better served, as I'd expect the military to offer a hearty and nourishing meal compared to the coffee and biscuits one would get in a typical hotel of this class.

What I read into the crew's behavior is a sense of utter capitulation and carelessness. This is something I've seen a lot of since 3/12 across the board. I imagine they've been through this mess so many times, and they know "there's nothing they can do" to fix it and they are just bloody worn out of Smisek and his war against everything and everyone, other than his wallet. Their behavior, ultimately, reads to me like a mirror of the attitude conveyed in the executive suites.

And, here's a question for everyone who thinks the captain should have stayed with the pax in the barracks. If you were on an aircraft suffering a serious failure condition requiring an emergency landing, would you want the situation managed by a pilot who didn't sleep all night because she was sharing space and sleeping on a hard cot in a cold barracks with no heat or by a pilot who was well rested and clear thinking?

Kacee

Exactly. It's quite disheartening really that UA did such a poor job handling this incident, from communications to the passengers, to delayed rescue, to near-complete radio silence from management. The "we don't care" message is pretty hard to miss.

luckypierre

That is a remarkable footnote to the A380 story. I have paid close attention to most details of the flight itself-the rolls manufacturing error that led to engine failure, the wing damage, the conflicting error codes that the flight control computer was rendering about the plane's condition, the presence of the senior captains in the cabin who entered the flight deck to help sort out the situation, de Crespigny's extraordinarily calm and professional return to SIN, but never any details on what happened once they arrived safely and everyone was off the aircraft.

True leadership. He genuinely viewed those passengers as his responsibility, in the air or on the ground.

Think of how differently the folks stranded in the barracks would have felt if the Captain had set aside an hour of his rest time, hopped a bus over to base, and tried his best to convey the airline's plans for the next day.

JBEagle1000G

Ohh I'm sure they could. But that might've removed a plane from revenue operation. And lord knows they cannot interrupt that!

Will Dearborn

Well said.

Responding to customer service and recovery failures with "It wasn't that bad, you could have blown up" is a lousy response.

FiveMileFinal

Don't know if people actually saw this, but it was *cold* when they arrived, and it remained cold throughout the length of their stay. Temperatures never peaked over 47 F the following day.

It's always funny to see how United unabashedly continues to treat their passengers as little more than self-loading freight, and how it's getting worse, not better. In a bygone era, I would have been a passenger on Flight 958 and I would have had to be subject to this misery. Thankfully I woke up and made the effort to search for less crappy airlines to get me where I need to go. I know it's a race to the bottom, but this is one race where you don't want to be on the leading horse. I just got into it today with some friends who were staunchly defending their right to be cheap, totally missing the point that you get what you pay for.

Stay thirsty!

Indelaware

Actually someone did:

United has some 15 frame types and six hubs. Simple math. One of each type at each hub = 15 * 6 = 90.

SJC ORD LDR

15*6 = 90. No airline is expected to have 90 spares, or even 50 spares, or even more than a handful of spares. However, they could have flown a part in from SFO or even a plane from SFO and gotten these passengers moving in less than 20 hours. You can fly a 737 from YYR to LHR, it's within range.

While the barracks weren't exactly the Ritz or Four Seasons, they are tolerable. It's the lack of information from UA and the time it took them to respond is what I find to be unacceptable.