737 Max grounded by Trump
 

Wow! Fast reaction when the FAA won’t act swiftly enough.

That, and a mess of weather-related flight cancellations in Denver. Give it a few days - and check online for auto rebooking before you call.

If the plane is, in fact, grounded, either voluntarily or otherwise, there's an excellent chance that UA will simply swap the scheduled equipment to a 737-900 and you won't need to do anything. I'd give it at least a week before I tried to call UA about it, as it will take some time for that to move through their systems and they will prioritize immediately upcoming flights in their database update.

Now Boeing is saying they are recommending it to the FAA. What kind of lunacy is going on with the communication between Boeing, the FAA, and Mr. Orange?

Yeah, that Boeing press release is about as trustworthy as one coming from the White House...

This didn't age well.

Oh, I agree, but that makes the "we are flying a plane that the rest of the world says is unsafe and has grounded" move all the more jaw dropping stupid. United had worse company (SWA and AA) but they also had less exposure to the plane, and as others have said have slack in their system now.

In no possible world would any crisis/branding expert ever tell you to fly these planes. No you get ahead of the curve. Instead, United continues to be a follower, focused on something else than how their brand is viewed.

Exactly.

I understand the general distaste for government in the current political climate (this is not just a 45 thing, but I digress) but what can people point to as evidence that the FAA is an ineffective regulator? The sudden cynicism over the FAA is a bit alarming, to me.

Our aeronautical system has always been pretty apolitical, about as much as a federal agency can get, and the system has always worked pretty well. What's changed?

Order came out at about 8:30a HST, UA 1273 SFO-OGG pushed about 5 minutes later and looks to be returning to terminal.

Looks like UA is scrambling to swap already. 2nd LAX-OGG looks like it might have been swapped to 738 from 739 Max. There's going to be 4 PO'd F passengers.

1772 BOS-IAH returned to gate now with a 2 hour delay - "Unexpected Operational Issue"

Expect others will follow.

UA1016 is about to land in CUN. Will be interesting to see if they are allowed to bring it back. Same with the three that will be in Hawaii.

No rational manager of a publicly-traded corporation would commit this kind of asinine hari-kari, especially when the company is likely insured for the risk associated with a federally-mandated grounding of an aircraft type.

But hey, it's a chance to swipe at UA, and that can't be missed, right???

didn't you see the statement coming out of pilot union? they have full confidence in the plane. USA is not some banana republic with 200-hour co-pilot on a 737 doing international trip, or some pilots from certain countries who are afraid to fly or cannot be trusted to fly in case complex automation fails.

what the crap about united being a follower? If FAA orders something, United complies. There is no need to jump the gun if your entire safety team and you own pilot union believes in the airplane.

What is interesting is that UA decided to stick to schedule instead of preemptively adjust some of the Max schedule to keep them in the contiguous US where recovery would be easier should such an order come down..

Good. No way we can have planes that are too complex to fly in the air