rolltribe

Likely a ferry flight. Flight #'s 2500+ on UA mainline are usually charters/non-rev flights. Also - flight isn't showing up when searching DEN-IAD schedule for today. Not sure of the stop in Indiana, but the reasoning on shift from EWR to IAD might be the ops team decided the plane was needed in IAD instead of EWR after departing DEN.

nygiants242

Cool - thanks for the info! Very helpful.

sexykitten7

Since the Activity Log is in reverse chron order, I'd reckon the original flight was DEN-AID which was then diverted to EWR and finally to IAD. Initially I though that AID/IAD was a typo (this often happens during IRROPs) but the flight was actually headed to Indiana and that would make sense for charter ops.

StuckinITH

I think that the flight was supposed to go to EWR. The diversion to AID (MST 15:05) was a mistake that they corrected one minute later to a diversion to IAD (MST 15:06).

MSPeconomist

Mr.Nuke

No I'm fairly confident your initial typo hypothesis was correct. As rolltribe said this flight number is constant with charters or positioning flights. FlightAware has the filed flight plan and track log. The flight plan is a DEN-EWR flight plan. So they were re-positioning the plane. For whatever reason mid-flight they deemed the plane was needed in IAD more than EWR. Over Illinois the plane diverted to IAD to operate the OP's flight to PHX, but it was initially misfiled AID, the same three letters as IAD.
There is nothing in the track log to support this.

StuckinITH

If it was a charter it would have landed there and they would not have corrected the diversion in one minute. An operator mistyped the diversion: wrote AID instead of IAD.

The original flight was supposed to be EWR as the original gate of arrival was consistent with the numbering in Terminal C of EWR.

sexykitten7

Ah I see. So typo it is.

fumje

Digression related to typos: I had a flight that was going slightly faster than scheduled (good winds), so the estimated arrival times were updated accordingly, but someone typo'd the date one day into the future. That meant my itinerary got flagged as a misconnect and triggered the IRROPS 'free change' functionality, even though I was just fine with my connection. Fortunately the automation didn't offload me from my original connecting flight, and I didn't have to fix anything.

It's kind of fun to run into moments like this where the humans behind all the machines become apparent.

threeoh

I find flightstats better than flightaware for tracking down this kind of thing. The Event Timeline for this flight is pretty clear what happened:

https://www.flightstats.com/v2/fligh...htId=985481398 (scroll down)

Note that the "Record Created" is just a few hours before the flight, which is atypical for a scheduled flight but normal for last minute ferry / etc. And you can see the redirect to AID and then changed to IAD one minute later that was highlighted by another poster already.

I like how they assign baggage claim belts to ferry flights. Just in case, I guess?

UAPremierGuy

I noticed there is an ASE-COS scheduled for today. I've never seen this before, and it looks like only 2 seats are taken on the seat map. I assume this is irrops related given the weather here in Aspen, but just curious if somebody had some insight. Also, I tried to do a dummy booking for this flight, but was unable to find anywhere to book it. Haven't seen ASE-COS scheduled as a commercial flight since the old Western Pacific days.

rolltribe

Positioning flight. The two seats are default blocked seats on CR7 flights, even non-rev flights. Also, flight # is 1395 which isn't a UX flight #.

Aspen

Three weeks ago ASE-BNA.....

ASE usually has three UAL flights a day to and from ORD in the winter.
(01/30/19) UA5643 the 13:06 departure to ORD is cancelled but there is a flight UA 1361 ASE-BNA ( ferry flight) at 13:06 (I am guessing) to position an aeroplane in Nashville to allow a BNA to ORD flight tomorrow (1/31/19)

Lani1

MBS MillionMiler

You'll see a lot of that today (as has occurred all winter with the Chicago cluterfudge of weather all year).

What basically happens is the crew's schedule for that day is followed, but bypassing ORD. For example, today there's a Tulsa-Lansing, MI flight that just landed at LAN. The crew was probably supposed to work TUL-ORD-LAN-ORD. Since ORD is 'struggling', United cancels the TUL-ORD, and get the plane to LAN whereas at least one flight can operate.

This probably happens a few times a day in regular operations for one reason or another, but happens several times a day during IRROPS.

While I think of this as "nothing to see here"...I took that TUL-LAN flight and saw it was UA#3201. It's easy to figure out that UA32_ _ is the reserved flight numbers for ExpressJet's positioning flights. You'll see on the app:

Flight #, Routing
3200, Huntsville-Charleston
3201, Aforementioned TUL-LAN
3202, Knoxville-Rochester
3203, Knoxville-Sioux Falls
3204, Allentown-Cedar Rapids

This is just ExpressJet. Skywest uses 13_ _ and some of theirs today are:

1360, Greensboro-Asheville
1361, Flint-Ft Wayne
1362, South Bend-Salina, KS

I see these seemingly unusual flights operating from my home airport, MBS, all the time. Planes coming and going to other Skywest stations, invariably due to ORD issues.

I think mainline uses the low 1300's, but my random checking of the app doesn't show much. I'm sure more 'educated' FTers know how to find everything.