sabre1041

Was on UA952 ORD->MUC today and was the first in probably over a dozen arrivals to be bussed in

However, i will 100% take a hardstand in FRA instead of arriving in pillar C (Happened only once). Not only do you have to take the sky train, you also need to reclear security

Imstevek

This isn’t a UA only issue. NH uses remote stands all the time at NRT/HND.

bubbashow

I get hard stand at schipol about 50% of the time on UA. This is a function of the airport

Kacee

Yeah and they pack the buses like the Tokyo metro. Fun times.

ErgoTraveler

The only time I flew into a hard stand at FRA was the IAD flight. All my flights from IAH always went to a jet bridge at the terminal. Don't know why the IAD was so lucky...

ezefllying

The cynic in me wonders if flights to/from IAD get lower priority than EWR/IAH/SFO in the eyes of UA airport ops when assigning gate space at foreign airports, as it did in the eyes of whoever prioritized Polaris Lounge construction. Though I’m probably wrong, it seems like UA takes Dulles for granted (figures government traffic is locked in?) and is determined not to make the investments to attract more premium traffic through the airport.

Anyway, today I flew UA 988 home. I was thrilled to see that the inbound arrived at A18, so I was confident I’d get a jet bridge. As I walked up to the boarding gate T-30 from departure, an anxious agent urged me to head quickly down the stairs onto the bus. Then we were off to my old stomping ground, V129.

SFO_LOW_CLOUDS

A lot of times, it's not up to United. The airport assigns gates. A more fair comparison is LHR, which I've never had a remote stand on UA.

hirohito888

I think it has to do with the fact that there is a 4-5h turnaround time between the inbound and outbound flights to IAD and that logistically, it's easier to just park and service the aircraft at a hardstand than to park and tow. Yesterday's flight arrived from ORD at 530AM and departed at 11AM for IAD, and today's flight arrives from IAD at 7AM and will depart at 11AM.

Compare it to EWR 781 which arrives at 9AM and departs at 1120AM (around 2.5h turnaround time) or IAH 772 which arrives at 1150AM and departs at 150PM (2h turnaround time).

smf_ltn

Seems many hardstands are driven by airport capacity and long turnarounds for the airplane, I had two hardstands last month in LIS, but survived FRA just fine. When choosing flights, what options do we have to minimize hardstands? I see we can track tail numbers in FlightAware premium. Then maybe we can determine historic turnaround for a given flight/gate?

MatthewLAX

Remote stands in BCN and FRA (generally IAD only, once in a while ORD) are very annoying.

EWR764

For an airport like FRA, it's almost entirely dependent on turn times. Historically, UA TATL schedules to/from IAD had long turns at the European station, with early AM arrivals turning to early PM departures to arrive ~3pm. OTOH, UA ORD schedules, as well as historic CO flights, had short turns in the EU. CO westbound departures were typically mid-morning. The longer turns, especially at FRA, straddle a few LH banks where contact gates are preferred for other departures.

Now, with so many more US gateways, UA can mix-and-match inbound cities with outbounds, so it's not always the case that airplanes will turn right back to their respective points of origin. In a few instances, longer turns have been reduced by turning aircraft to different destinations in a W pattern. As a general rule of thumb, though, longer turn at the outstation = higher chance of hardstand. There are plenty of counterexamples but that's as close as you can come to any sort of expectation.

cricketer

This thread is fascinating - I've never had a hardstand on UA in nearly 30 years of flying all over. Long may that continue :-)

televisor

Never not had a hardstand at WUH... (That may have changed with the new terminals though.)

Oddest story I had was LH at BSL. Arrived at a real gate (no jetbridge though), get out the aircraft... and we have to get on a bus? Bus drives us about 50m to another door, we disembark, go inside to the baggage hall. I have no idea why they didn't let us into the terminal directly...

jsloan

Maybe that door was in France, and LH wanted to deliver you to Switzerland.

cricketer

I don't know what to say. Just a few hours after writing this, I got on a bus to an extremely remote hardstand (out where all the Jet Airways planes have been parked) to board UA 83 in DEL (and a few hours after that, I'm in a mediocre DEL hotel along with some folks who are on their second unexpected hotel night, but that's another story....).