UA's DEL (SFO,ORD,EWR) canceled 22 Apr 2021 due to new crew Covid test requirements?
 

All flights to DEL canceled today (SFO,ORD,EWR) due to new crew Covid testing requirements. Anyone know what the new requirements are?

DEL BOM and BLR flights should probably be shelved until Jul/Aug minimum. It’s pretty horrible COVID trend there.

Canada has banned flights from India for at least 30 days. The U.S. should consider the same.

India is on the State/CDC travel advisory and categorized as Level 4 "Do not travel".

The healthcare facilities in India are in a very bad spot at this time even for ambulatory care, so it's risky for UA to have foreign employees there even if the UA employees have completed the full vaccination regimen.

The UAE and a bunch of other countries that provide much of the lift to/from India are in line to restrict travel from India. In such circumstances, UA serving India would put UA crew members at unnecessary risk even if India had no restrictions applicable to the UA crew members arriving at Indian airports.

United is flying to other level 4 countries with very dire COVID situations (Brazil comes to mind) so it seems the arrival testing and quarantine may be the deal breaker.

The timing of this UA pull-out from India got in motion right after State adjusted its Level 2-listed rating to match the CDC Level 4-listed rating.

Isn't UA doing a relatively more profitable cargo operation with Brazil than with India? Either way, the deal breaker for these UA India flights is probably the fact that the Indian variant of this virus is causing a lot of concern beyond India too -- more concern than a Brazilian variant -- and so neither crew nor passengers should want to go there if they can help it.

I did see an Air India plane taxiing at SFO this morning but does make sense to cancel flights to India given current situation

Wonder if UA will mirror what they and other carriers did to get around China crew restrictions and operate 1-stop services, such as SFO-HKG-DEL and vv, with a fresh crew flying the HKG-DEL-HKG as a single trip and not entering India. Imagine there’s good cargo demand.

A numbers of extraneous posts have been removed Ground rule #1 -- we discuss UA in this forum. The poster and an employee have both suggested the reason the halt of today's flights have something to do with new testing requirement for crews arriving in India but UA has not yet stated the reason nor have any other flights been removed (yet). So this is a dynamic situation.

The situation in India is in the news and best discussed in the India Forum.

Further information on status of future UA flights and any other plans UA has for it flights are appropriate topics. As are reports / questions from those whose travel plan have been disrupted.

WineCountryUA
UA coModerator

Appear UA has pulled the DEL-USA flights (but USA-DEL are still there?) for the next couple of weeks (til early May?)
Suspect there is more to come.

United cargo posted a notice recently

https://www.unitedcargo.com/company/...rticle_id=6506

UA should not be flying there right now except for humanitarian cargo missions. It is disturbing that tickets are for sale (if they are).

India's DGCA and Home Ministry don't indicate that UA's halt at this time is related to any Indian policy changes this week. On the contrary, they indicate that UA's halting of service was not related to any Indian policy change this week.

Here are the DGCA actions taken during this pandemic that has had UA's attention:

https://www.dgca.gov.in/digigov-port...ge/covid19.jsp

There is no April update there even as of when UA got in gear for disruption of its service to/from India.

[I reached out to my contacts at the Indian Home Ministry too -- I used to be stationed in DEL and was probably even one of UA's most frequent travelers on UA's JFK-LHR-DEL service for some period of time way back when ;) -- but I doubt that the Indian Home Ministry are going to have more to say on this than the DGCA.]

UA 898 ORD-DEL 23 April 2021 (today) CANCELLED

UA 801 EWR-DEL 23 April 2021 (today) CANCELLED

UA 867 SFO-DEL 23 April 2021 (today) On schedule for 7:45PM Pacific