theboss7593

theboss7593

UAflyer93

VegasGambler

FWIW (not UA related, but it's the same storm) I was flying AS JFK-SFO. After sitting on the tarmac for a while, our takeoff corridor was closed, reopened, and re-closed. We went back to the gate to for more fuel (planning a longer flight path, I think) and while parked at the gate, a BA plane was pushing back and clipped our wing.

Flight cancelled, and I'm also back in Manhattan for the night. Checked back into the same hotel I had just checked out of, had some very spicy sichuan food in Chinatown, and currently smoking a cigar a Hudson Bar & Books There are worse places to be stuck for the night, I suppose. It would be nice if those BA pilots would watch where they are going, though. Cost me a F upgrade...

aCavalierInCoach

UA1163 now delayed 13hours to tomorrow morning for crew rest. For everything that was going on, this was a total footfault on United's part and completely avoidable. Of course, no hotels left in the Boston area.

buckeyefanflyer

PsiFighter37

goodeats21

True enough. I didn't get any damage, though some colleagues' homes were hit. No injuries though, for which everyone is thankful.
13 tornadoes in total on Monday in Dayton area, including 3 that were EF3s. Crazy.

Fingers crossed and safe travels to everyone trying again today....

LIH

Crew didn't make a specific reference to fuel but it was my assumption that this is why we diverted to IAD after holding over EWR for that long. I am at least appreciative that they took us to IAD where I could exit stage left instead of BDL or SYR which the captain referenced as the other options. There was a bit of friction getting the FAs and IAD GAs to let me disembark despite being already re-booked out of DCA for today. Flight deck and cabin crew dealt with the bad situation as well as could be expected. Lots of onward INTL connections out of EWR from that 772 I would guess, was due to get in at 3:50PM which is probably a good connection for the TATL overnight bank of flights.

02BNFR

I was supposed to fly Tuesday night from EWR to DCA in First on an Embraer scheduled at 8:30. Then delayed to 9:45, then delayed to 10:30; then delayed to 11:30, then 11:50, then 11:59 and then it actually boarded! Alas, once we were boarded, the captain informed us that DCA was now closed and the flight was cancelled. Fortunately, Hyatt found me a room nearby so I actually had a decent night's sleep.

1K desk rebooked me on a 10AM flight Wednesday morning from EWR to IAD on a 737. When I arrived for that flight, however, it turned out that they were using a 767 with lie-flat seats, which I enjoyed greatly for all 39 minutes of the flight. Surprisingly the flight was full. Must have been other cancelled flights on smaller planes all lumped together.

EWAarghhh

I scored a CPU on UA1750 to ATL, now debating if I should go to newark earlier try to catch 568

threeoh

Agree.

Disagree.

Definitely United's fault!

aCavalierInCoach

Would you care to elaborate on why you disagree that the situation was entirely avoidable

As for the hotels, if someone at United had said "hey, for whatever reason, we can't get this plane into a gate for another 45 minutes, and then we aren't going to be able to turn it for an hour because of (whatever), and so there is obviously a 100% chance half our cabin crew is going to time out", I would have been able to secure a hotel last night rather than in Terminal B. That is a fact. Maybe I could've even gotten out if they had stated looking for reserves at before 1:00AM, but I doubt it.

threeoh

Big picture, thunderstorms and tornadoes shut down a huge swath of air space in the northeast, including one of their biggest hubs. No airline can handle that without delays and cancellations.

Small picture, they may have thought they could get it blocked in in way less than 45 minutes; they may have had reason to believe they could turn it before the crew went illegal; they may have had other crew lined up that didn't materialize for whatever reason (e.g. their inbounds got irropsed); they may have had crew assigned to the flight that got pulled for another flight; they may have expected to pull crew from another flight; they may have still been working their way through the reserves list and weren't sure of the crew situation yet. Point is, we don't know.

And there's also the possibility that they've never seen a thunderstorm before and are completely incompetent. But I'm inclined to believe they were doing their best and it didn't sort itself out in your favor this time.

I guess your frustration that the GA left (while GS were boarding?) is real, but sounds like they were dealing with inbound diversions and a bunch of delays and if the GA stepped away to deal with another flight while ops decided what to do with your flight, that seems like a good move.

And they certainly don't run the hotels or have control over Boston's hotel capacity or occupancy rate. They told you it was cancelled when they knew it would be cancelled. This idea that United knows they are going to cancel a flight and then keep it on the books to frustrate passengers is the worst kind of assumption and is unfounded.

aCavalierInCoach

Saying they thought they could but they didn't doesn't make the operations failure "out of their control" -- I get there were irrops, I get there were diversions (which had long cleared when the worst of this situation developed), but I don't get that conditions in Newark give the team on the ground in Boston carte blanche to throw their hands in the air and say we can't do basic things like turn a 757 within 2 hours of its landing. The ramp wasn't congested, there were multiple gates open, and the entire operation was down to its last few arrivals and departures. FWIW, we do in fact know they weren't making their way through the reserves this earlier because the gate agent told us so, and all of us at the gate heard the gate agent make a the call to ops asking what to do.
The various delayed inbounds and diversions had already cleared.