cfischer

also from yesterday

UA1015 CUN-IAH 739 cancelled due to aircraft maintenance

goodeats21

I really hope you are being sarcastic...

Pretty amazing lack of response from GS.

ilovewestins

I did hear from GS. Gave me 25K compensation miles which was nice, but not what I was looking for. I explained that this is systemic issue if you just look at the the March 18th cancels and delays. When a connection is involved, I now have zero confidence in United getting me there. With the times of United flights to NRT and HKG from EWR, if you are late +2 hours, chances are not many options to redirect, let alone a business seat available. I would really like to speak with the CEO or President, but of course was promised my note would be passed up the chain.

cfischer

This is precisely why I don't make GS because I fly LH and LX when I need to get to a destination on time ... UA is just not reliable enough ... still ... they are improving but the maintenance issues are just amazing.

adambrau

I stick with UA, make GS status, and generally get to where I need to get to on time. I am good at monitoring operations. Upthread I posted that UA has less airline-specific delays which includes mechanicals, catering, and other airline-owned delays not taking into account weather or ATC, compared to DL and AA. While LX and LH may provide better amenities, with regards to less airline mechanical and related delays, I cannot say. UA's maintenance performance is on par amongst the US3. I am not claiming that UA is perfect, but they are a whole lot better as a GS member than 1K. Financial loyalty goes along way to get 'friendly', whether that is right or wrong is a personal decision.

WineCountryUA

Hmmm

Feb 2018 data
A14 On-time Completion
UA 80.27% 97.72%
LH 74.60% 97.64%
LX 75.50% 98.64%

of course, data changes month to month but looking over the past 6 months, the order of the three bounces around but no clear better or worse performer

kirkwoodj

UA7 IAH-NRT today, original dep 11:30am, 3:30pm arrival:
"Status: We're sorry for the delay. We were able to find you a new plane as the original plane had an issue involving the emergency exit slide. Your new plane will arrive from London. We are expecting an estimated departure of 3:00pm out of gate E7. Your arrival time into Tokyo Narita is now 6:51pm."

restlessinRNO

Rather unusual to see such a full explanation, isn't it? Refreshing though.

kirkwoodj

Second time this week for this flight, other one they ferried an empty plane from SFO and it departed just after noon (per the explanation like today's)

threeoh

It's a new pilot program to have a human write a multi-sentence explanation, rather than just "weather", "operational delay", etc. There was a thread on this a few months back but can't find it...

goalie

Yes it is refreshing ^ and United has been "playing with this" for a while

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unit...initially.html

cfischer

long-haul flight cancellation and serious delays? A14 is nice, but what really counts is completion factor and I honestly count a 12 hour delay which you often see on UA as a cancellation. For business travel that is. While not statistical, for some of the local leadership at my company location ... 3 GS and I'll include myself as a 1K ... there is zero disagreement that we won't take UA if we must arrive at our destination on/near time. Zero issues on LH//LX over the last several years (make that hundreds of flights) and at least 5 major disruptions on UA last year alone. Prior years were worse. Of course YMMV, but with hundreds on long-haul flights you are getting into statistical significance. For the 4 of us UA probably lost close to $200k last year alone because they can't get their long-haul operations under control.

WineCountryUA

That is the nature of anecdotal data. You can flip a coin 5 times and get heads, but that does not change the large incident statistics.
We all make our individual choice, based on individual experiences, but again that does not change the stats.

The data for UA included 125K flights, LH 40K, LX 10K in one month -- 10's flights in a month is not a sufficient sample size.
Unfortunately don't have access to a TATL only data set.

cfischer

absolutely agreed if you flip it 5 times. When you flip it 100+ times things are different though I realize perhaps the 4 us are lucky with 100+ TATL flights on LH/LX never disrupted by operations (Maintenance, catering, crew and other nonsense) ... that is however is contrast to dozens of examples of UA in the same timeframe.

You statistics are not meaningful as you point out ... if LH cancels FRA-MUC/HAM/XXX that's a re-book on a train and mostly inconsequential. What is the primary concern of this thread is the international long-haul cancellations and major delays. I find it difficult to get unbiased statistics on that, unfortunately.

o.k. where are we tonight

UA960 EWR-FRA 773 2 hrs late due to aircraft preparation plane arrived from SFO with plenty of time but was also 1 hr late to operational issues
UA921 LHR-EWR 773 6 hrs late due to aircraft maintenance (aircraft swap from 764 --> 773)

adambrau

Except if you flip it around and say LH EWR-FRA cancels there goes your train option to Hamburg!