cruisr

This is my son's friend's story. He was supposed to leave last night at 6:30 on UA 2015. Inbound late due to ATC hold and didn't arrive until 9:30. Then the fun started. i took screen shots of the UA flight status page and it kept saying delayed for "operational reasons". The friend says they kept saying it was a Crew issue. Then they said they didn't have a pilot. All the time they kept a rolling delay. My son is texting me as his friend is texting him. I told him to tell him to bail and that flight was not going anywhere as it was now 1:00am. They xld the flight at 1:45

The kid slept on the floor in the airport as there were no hotel rooms available.
UA offered him 5k Miles or 100.00 cert

So, he's set to leave this am. He's on flight 2719. He left at 8:33 and then the flight had a fuel issue and had to Return to the gate. He just got in the air again and is now scheduled to land at 11:57. He must want to see his GF really badly. I would have bailed on the whole trip yesterday.

He could have driven out and been there before he is going to be there now.
Im going to help him write his complaint letter when he gets back as his trip sounds like a number of mine I have had on UA. Sad, it was a once great airline.

sbm12

The weather yesterday screwed a whole bunch of flights.

I agree that bailing earlier would've been smarter, but the storms were no joke and there were a couple bands that blew through.

See also http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...-what-now.html for a similar discussion.

cruisr

Yes, absolutely but after 9:30 pm (when the inbound got there) there were no mentions of ATC holds, weather, etc as the reason for the delay. It clearly said Operational Delay. The flights scheduled before and after had no issue. They told the waiting pax it was a Crew issue. The 8:20 and 9:30 departure from EWR to ORD both flew albeit with 1 hour delays. The flight he was on was not xld for weather, it was xld due to Crew issues.

764toHI

The weather caused downline crew operating aircraft to be delayed as well (they have to come from somewhere). Crew timing out in the late evening is troublesome given availability of replacement crew. The fuel issue this morning is just a series of unfortunate events.

mduell

The crew were likely unavailable because of the impacts of weather and ATC on other flights.

It's not unusual for an earlier flight to cancel while later flights operate. They don't try to operate the flights in strict order.

NH_Clark

The perils of flying during the summer. <shrugs> happens to the best of us

keloutwest

I'm sorry but there has to be a limit to when weather in a different city hours earlier still counts as "weather" and not "operational". This sounds operational to me. OP's son's friend is entitled to far more than offered, IMHO.

mahasamatman

The limit is when the airplane gets back on schedule. This could take a day or two in some cases.

TomMM

Add winter and the window of non-perilous flights shrink

mahasamatman

Time to spare? Go by air!

wrp96

At least in this case, the bad weather was actually at the point of origin, so it's not like UA is claiming that bad weather at EWR caused his flight from LAX not to operate.

keloutwest

If you don't think United should have to recover from a weather issue 24-48 hours later, you've obviously not experienced Delta's service levels. There needs to be sufficiently flexible and dispersed crew, and a certain buffer on aircraft availability to recover from inevitable weather issues. If United can't figure out a flight should be canceled because the crew isn't going to make it, that's not weather, that's operational.

Weather IRROPS are for bad weather affecting the direct inbound aircraft or outbound flight.

laxmillenial

This kind of Delta service level?
http://www.ajc.com/news/local/delta-...eSNtNPvQi13jI/

Storms on Wednesday. Flights still cancelled Sunday. 4. days. later.
United only delayed this flight for 15 hours? Not too bad...imo.

Or did you have a different example of service level that you were trying to showcase?

transportprof

Isn't Fall hurricane season? And don't forget Spring flooding!

oldmonster

I understand delay/cancellation as an inherent risk for any frequent flyer. However, what I hate is UA's practice of rolling delays. You never know the expected departure time with any delay.