Consolidated cancelled/delayed domestic flights [2016]
 

It is time to have a new thread for 2016.

UA4064, ORF-IAD, on Jan. 2, was delayed due to aircraft refueling difficulties and arrived gate 1 hr late. Most of the pax on this CRJ7 missed connection at IAD, including my son. Fortunately, I made a check-in agent to protect him to a later flight. Unfortunately, he has to wait at IAD for 4 hours for the next flight.

The 2015 thread is here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...ts-2015-a.html

03Jan15 UA532 ORD-BOS, scheduled 1054 departure. FO found the nose cone askew during his walk-around. Rolling delays in 30-minute increments while maintenance pondered what to do. Finally the decision was made to take the bird out of service, and a new A320 was found with a scheduled 1345 departure.

Crew stuck in Customs...
 

UA1948 IAH-PHX Jan 3rd.

Delayed at least 30 Minutes due to crew stuck in Customs/Immigration in an earlier flight. Presumably, this earlier flight was also delayed.

This highlights the operational problems in this airline. Really, why do you have pilots with such a short turnaround time between flights? Really, this gap should be in hours, not minutes.

Really disgusting.

Exactly how it disgusting a crew is stuck in customs? :rolleyes:

;)Here's a picture of the bad bird. Note the slight gap on the upper side of the radome.

Unsure why the image attached sideways - it's fine on my computer! I guess the plane wouldn't fly too well this way

70 hour itinerary from PTY-SEA due to IRR mishandling. Recourse?
 

This is a repost since the prior post was the last on the 2015 list.

My child and grandchildren (twins 7) flight was canceled on the last leg of their return to SEA from Panama (I was told no crew due to weather in midwest; they were told "trouble with the plane") along with 180 others early Tuesday morning. Their 9 hour trip turned into 70 because a UA agent at IAH didn't properly endorse one of the twins' tickets over to AS, so he couldn't be seated, and then a second one at LAX must have ignored or repeated the mistake to DL.
All but one of the family disappeared from the originally combined reservation in the MP account at the time this happened, all of their ticket numbers changed, and a Premier agent giving me the new ticket numbers assured me that all was in order (however, the tickets still had 016 prefix though supposedly AS which should have been 023).
This was an award ticket.
Is this a compensible event? Kids were nearly dead with exhaustion, grands missed two days of a subsequent ski vacation with their mother. Thanks for any advice.

Here's an update. Supposedly Premier MP was "sorry for our disappointment" (not for the unconscionable treatment of our family) but maintained that UA did in fact get them to their destination (2.5 days after their scheduled arrival). The last straw was that a 7 yr old was told at the gate that he was not confirmed and would be put on standby.
As a "special courtesy" they rebated about 1/4 of the original mileage expended for the tickets. No explanation, no apology (except for the fact that we were disappointed!) no consideration for the lost paid days of ski vacation.

Your would think that a carrier that has as many irrops as UA would at least be good at service recovery, but as UA really isn't in the service business to begin with, this isn't possible.

EWR-BOS, UA1946 and BOS-EWR UA216 cancelled due to MX on January 12.

Bad air speed indicator? Bad news.
 

UA 594 DEN-PHX January 10th. Original departure time 6:20. Airplane taken offline due to bad air speed indicator. Customers had to deplane, re-enter the DEN waiting area, then wait 2 hours in the terminal for replacement aircraft. Replacement plane arrives, and then we reboard. Original arrival time was 8:15; actual arrival time was 10:40.

To their credit, the FAs on the flight comped up the DirecTV service. That at least was a nice touch. But the flight was packed with Alabama and Clemson fans who were arriving for the football game last night. Those folks are not professional travelers, and they were really unhappy that they were arriving later for their vacation. Some of them were really POed.

Was delayed about three hours last night getting out of ORD on UA 3350 to ROC after my flight from Tokyo - deicing operations were a mess - we had to return for deicing twice after timing out - and we weren't the only ones - there wasn't a lot of snow but ORD didn't seem prepared to deal with if for some reason...

UA768 SFO-BOS 753 7 hrs late due to aircraft maintenance

quite an ordeal ... first pilot iPADs broken, then 3L broken w/ slide issue ... then maintenance ... then a/c swap. Typical UA garbage.

UA 1865 KDEN-KIAH - Back To Gate - Why? Any FTers on Board?
 

Sitting at United Club West and saw the (rare) sight of 2 787s parked next to each other at B32 and B36 (scheduling wise, this doesn't happen, really).

Ship #N26910 (788) operating UA139 KDEN-NRT next to Ship #N26960 (789) operating UA1865 KDEN-KIAH.

Clearly, one of these birds was really early or late to get it this way, and it appears UA1865 had a 1.5 hr tech delay (unknown to me what specifically was the issue). Watched her push back, she sat on the apron after pushback for a good 10-15 mins and pulled back to the gate and ground crew opened the port rear cargo door and milled about it for a while (wondering if this is perhaps unrelated to the delay and this was just to tend to pets/animals on-board in preparation for a longer delay).

APU appears to be running, neither engine spinning.

Any idea what's up? Just curious. Any FTers on board?

20 minutes later (from return to the gate), she still sits there, looking sadder (and lighter) by the minute.

Update: Hotdamn, UA 138 (NRT-KDEN) arrived just as UA139 (KDEN-NRT) was pushing back - big day at KDEN which is usually just a glorified party of RJs, 73s, and A319/20s! At best between LH, Speedbird, and UA maybe a pax wide body or two will be on the ground between the North A and South B concourses, but today 2 UA 788s and 1 UA 789 today all within 150 ft of each other or so at one moment (e.g. 138 taxiing in to gate, 139 pushing back, and 1865 just being sad.

Lol. I'm also pretty sure B32 is the only gate with a double door suitable for a quick de-plane on a 788? I love the West club when those babies are sitting right next door too!

Going for the 788 or 763 route DEN-IAH is always dangerous if it goes Mx, there's nothing else in DEN that can handle all the pax!

Both B36 and B32 have a & b bridges, on the A concourse (int'l arrivals) I think it is A31 that has doubles. These are the only doubles I know of at KDEN.

I have never seen them used truly to expedite boarding at KDEN, though, the "a" bridge is usually just First & Crew and isn't used for Y at all (even after F boarding), so it's usefulness in speeding up the process probably isn't too noticeable. But I don't have any data, just my observations

The 772 to/from HNL sits at one of these gates, usually, too, I think. Yeah, if one of these things goes mx, it's a mess at KDEN, it's a UA "hub" but I don't think parts/mx capabilities at this station are that great (lived here for 14 years, and now live up in the mountains, so I fly through KDEN on any trip although it's not technically my origin/home airport, but I'm here and experience it just as much in transit...). I don't know of an UA route operating the 763 out of here in a while (doesn't mean it doesn't exist but I'm here a lot and haven't seen a 763 in years save for an IRROP event or two).

Any idea why outbound 1182 (EWR-LAX) was delayed more than 2 hours? Have to ride this bird (same flight #) back from LAX, and it already shows delay of 1 hour.