seenitall

While it is always fun to speculate how you would run a business better than the people actually running the business, it is my experience that people who are not in my business (telecommunications, not airlines), really don't know about my business relative to what I know. Given that no one on this board really knows what the particular circumstances and possibilities were for UA at this particular point in time on January 19-20, All speculations should be taken with a grain of salt.

HkCaGu

It's a Saturday afternoon/evening/night. It's one period of time plenty of short-haul planes sit for hours at many hub airports, specifically many planes arriving Saturday afternoon don't fly anywhere until Sunday morning or even afternoon.

rufflesinc

You've always get your bags at final destination during irrops?

transportprof

I agree that there are many unknown (by me) variables about the logistics of running two 737s versus one 777 up to YYR. But speculation is the name of the game on many FT threads, and I would be happy to read more educated guessing about the tradeoffs and the challenges of finding one 777 versus two 737s on the rescue flight.

I'll bet if you had asked pax whether they'd prefer another 8 hours on the ground in YYR versus having their bags show up a couple of days late (when the 777 eventually made it back to EWR), a majority would have opted to get the heck out of Goose Bay without their checked luggage. As for stroopwaffels instead of an in flight meal versus 8 more hours in YYR, I know which option I'd have preferred!

MSPeconomist

narvik

I refuse to believe that the best possible option after a medical emergency and/or MX is to leave passengers on a plane for 24+ hours, and thus speculate what might be done instead.

IAHMCI

IAHMCI

KRSW

I've been working for one of the Alaska air carriers since last summer and can assure you, cold weather is miserable to work in and engines are sometimes ornery to start in cold weather, BUT the aircraft still operate as expected. MX/AOG happens. BUT it can be prevented with proper preventative maintenance. This costs money. Even easier (and cheaper) is having a practical IRROPs plan and being willing to pull the trigger on it, knowing that it will cost more. It probably costs less to properly maintain your aircraft than dispatch rescue flights, but no one ever said bean counters were smart or practical.

The temperatures experienced at Goose Bay are the norm for much of Alaska, where air transport is often the ONLY form of transport in many areas, and even more villages in the winter when the land & sea routes are closed off. If we don't fly, mail, medicine, even supplies needed to treat the villages' water supplies aren't getting to their destination. I use Alaska Airlines as an example since they're flying Boeing jets, like UA is in this case. BUT I'd be remiss to not mention all of the smaller air carriers which fly a motley crew of aircraft in this weather, some much, much older and crusty. Everts Cargo is still flying multiple 60-65 year old DC-6s daily in such weather.

threeoh

I think people on this thread are conflating "this temperature will always cause this malfunction 100% of the time" with "there was a malfunction and it was related to or caused by the weather".

Not every 737-900 skids off the runway when it's snowy at O'Hare, but it is not false or misleading to say the plane that skidded off the runway at ORD this weekend wasn "caused by" the weather and snowy runway conditions. Even though the pilots could probably have prevented the incident by going at a slower speed or the airport authority could have prevented it by using more deicing fluid. But we're fine saying "the plane skidded off the runway because of snowy conditions" or "the storm caused a plane to skid off the runway"

It is possible that many flights -- including ones operated by UA -- operate in -30 C temps on the ground without incident, and that this door malfunction was related to the weather. No contradiction.

LarryJ

In the 737 fleet, we have a switch which overrides the "below 10,000' cutoff" on the internet. We flip it to override at pushback and leave it there until arrival at the destination gate. The Airbus does not have such an override. I don't know about the 777.

Our (737) internet is only in the CONUS so we don't get involved with any other country's regulations. That also could have been a restriction in YYR.

Our weather apps on our iPads get their data through the aircraft's wifi so the pilots would certainly have wanted the internet to work if it could.

HNLbasedFlyer

I suspect senior people were involved at UA while this transpired - and we'll never know what communication was happening in the background, such as, maybe they thought the plane would get fixed. I'm sure, in retrospect, UA knows they should've done something differently.

With that said, Goose Bay gets a lot of flight diversions in general, not just UA. In addition to UA, I also put the blame on the Goose Bay operations for not having a contingency/emergency plan in these instances. They couldn't find a sterile area in the airport? Couldn't wake up a customs person?

prestonh

it took ~12 hrs. from when the diverted flight landed for the rescue flight to get airborne. That had nothing to do with customs. UA doesn't have a very good diversion recovery plan. Stranded pax are not a priority for them, revenue pax are.

uastarflyer

prestonh

at that point it is a diverted flight and they refunded them. so by definition, they are nonrev. at least that's how UA ops treated them and lest we forget the crew as well.