UA 179 (EWR-HKG) 19 Jan 2019 diverted YYR , passengers stuck on board for 13 hours
#121
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My guess is $200 eMCO and possibly a one time pass to the UC for use in EWR. Hopefully there was a FTer on the flight who will post this to the compensation thread. The big inconvenience is arriving there at least a day after original scheduled arrival and thats assuming when they land in EWR they dont have to clear immigration re-check bags and await a new flight to get them to HKG.
-James
Last edited by WineCountryUA; Jan 21, 2019 at 5:58 pm Reason: merging consecutive posts by same member
#123
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It looks like they fixed the door and N76010 flew back to EWR this afternoon.
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/a...76010#1f3f98b8
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/a...76010#1f3f98b8
#124
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this was not an emergency situation. The emergency was the medical emergency. Was it annoying? I’m sure. But not an emergency.
they were on a plane with food and facilities for that number of people for 16+ hours. The airport was not set up for that many people.
reports on the plane was it wasn’t freezing, bathrooms worked, food was available...
it got handled. They will comp everyone which will be cheaper than putting facilities at the airport forever waiting another 5yrs for this to happen again.
i fly this route 7-8 times a year. 16 hours is how long the flight is. I’ve had 3 hour ground delays in hkg before on top of that.
dont think uA did anything wrong here
#125
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UGH, as a Canadian why did we bother with "customs" just let the people off the plane! I guess there was probably a lack of transport to hotels and probably no hotels to go to. However why did we need customs, nobody was going to run away in -30. And even if some passenger did want to stay in Canada at -30 they would change their mind in a hurry
#126
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I am not sure of the exact timing of all of this, but wasn't EWR in a winter storm / severe weather waiver situation over the weekend around when all of this was happening? If so, that could definitely have impacted the availability and coordination of aircraft and crew to deal with this.
#127
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That cant be the issue. YYR is a 2 hour flight from EWR. EWR is awash with aircraft, pilots and flight attendants. In a emergency which a aircraft on the ground in minus 30 temps certainly is you simply cancel a revenue flight or two depending on what is available and dispatch those aircraft to YYR. Sounds like someone at UAL made a decision not to disrupt revenue flights. That would be a very poor choice.
#128
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I'm surprised no one has mentioned the similar occurrence back in 2015. United Strands Hundreds in Remote Goose Bay for 20+ Hours That time, they did offload the pax into unheated barracks. But it took UA an inexplicably long time to come and get them that time, too.
#129
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I'm surprised no one has mentioned the similar occurrence back in 2015. United Strands Hundreds in Remote Goose Bay for 20+ Hours That time, they did offload the pax into unheated barracks. But it took UA an inexplicably long time to come and get them that time, too.
#130
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Don't know how trans-Pacific flights entered the discussion. The route of the plane in question did not include the Pacific Ocean.
#131
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For a long-call assignment you BEGIN your 10hr rest AFTER you have been assigned the trip. You have 11:30 hours to report for a Global flight but that ensures that you are starting fresh with a full duty period available. That lead time won't work for a rescue flight so long-calls weren't available in this case.
Short-call has a report time of 2:30 then time to flight plan and preflight. The duty time limits are more complicated, though, since you're already on the hook for a phone call from the beginning of the short-call period which counts against your ultimate duty-day limit (though not 1:1). So, you may have pilots on short-call reserve who could report quickly but wouldn't have available duty time to make the round trip. You need to use short-calls who have only just started their short-call availability period. That's would be why pilots could time out while waiting for F/As.
Field standy is on-duty at the airport but also have the duty day limitations and they are staged to cover specific ultra long-haul flights where the a relatively short delay can cause the original crews to time out (such as EWR-HKG) so, by the time the need for the recovery was known the field standby's were either gone or didn't have enough duty time available for the round trip.
It wasn't just the pilots and F/As that were needed. They sent mechanics to fix the airplane, ramp workers to handle the passengers and ground ops, blankets, hot beverages, and food. That all had to be collected and loaded.
None of this starts happening until you know that you need a recovery flight. Initially, you think you'll fuel and go. Then you have a maintenance problem and call out the contract mechanics. If it's not business hours the contract mechanics may have to come from home which takes time. Then the mechanics evaluate the problem and attempt to fix in. In this case, the initial problem was not the door being frozen shut. That happened while they were working on the initial problem.
Immigration must approve passenger deplaning and will monitor to ensure that uncleared passengers don't enter the country. From news reports, that didn't occur until the next morning and, at that time, passengers were allowed to deplane in groups of about 20 passengers at a time.
Contract maintenance would be the first mechanics to look at the problem. If it is something that they can't handle then the airline will send company mechanics, tools, and parts.
#132
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#134
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Due to the length of the flight the crew would have timed out very quickly once the door could not be closed. Just the divert alone on flights of those lengths will often time out the pilots. The flight became critical the moment the door would not close and plans for a rescue flight should have began at that point.
Shouldn't a flight of this length have a double crew?
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