uastarflyer

I prefer they strategically plan so that we don’t have two ridiculous remaining options.

Reroute the outbound (or cancel) rather than send a domestic bird, but only after exhausting planned redundancies at the hubs

Again, the mistake wasn’t what happened at the small outpost FCO. It was policy making at the mega hubs stateside

jsloan

So, you'd rather not go, then. Because there's no way that they just sent the 772HD for the fun of it; they did it because they didn't have an alternative.

That's your choice, but I suspect 80% of the passengers on that flight would disagree.

Lux Flyer

In an ideal world, they would have an exact replacement aircraft at every location they fly, in case things go mechanical. Actually in an ideal world, planes would never go mechanical.

But even what your saying wouldn't solve this problem. Even if they had a hub in Europe, it would not solve the problem of swapping a 772HD in. They aren't extremely unlikely to have a Polaris equipped aircraft sitting there just waiting to sub in, in case something goes mechanical, planes going through hubs are already assigned part of a rotation. So unlikely, that they didn't even have that same situation stateside. Your acting like they just have a spare Polaris equipped aircraft sitting around and they didn't use it "just because we have these 772HD's back now". Its costing UA a hell of a lot more to fly that plane on this flight, now that they need to downgrade or reroute ~20 FC passengers. If they had a Polaris equipped aircraft to sub into the route, they absolutely would, but that wasn't the case, and again, the majority of stakeholders in this situation are going to prefer this flight operates with a less than promised aircraft, as opposed to not operating at all.

No, I'm saying UA has a policy entitled "United Polaris Aircraft Swap" that specifically applies when a flight is marketed as Polaris and the aircraft is configured with what they consider the Polaris hard product, but gets subbed out for an aircraft without the Polaris hard product. Of course UA recognizes their aircrafts have different configurations, and they recognize that customers may book their flights specifically for the Polaris hard product in addition to the Polaris service, so when they don't get it because the aircraft is subbed after they book, they have a policy on what to do in that specific situation.

uastarflyer

And I want the focus to be on the chain of events that resulted in sending a domestic plane to Rome rather than a plane intended for such a mission. From a hub no less.

FYI, this domestic plane was running IAD-MUC turns in the days prior to going to FCO. Why is that? That is troubling!

Obsessing over the gunpoint go/no-go is a very uninteresting discussion.

But in a less than ideal we would have some backup capability at mega US hubs. That is where the decision was made to send a domestic plane to MUC and again to FCO. Either programmers in Chicago or operations staff.

Making this about go/no go at the outpost is a red herring. By that argument nobody should say anything about the food quality. You either eat what they give you or not. Done. Most of us here don’t see that as the only aspect correct?

jsloan

It would have been really odd if it hadn't come from a hub.

Obviously because UA is short at least one 77W.

Part of that is because the 772HD were offline for so long, and their reintroduction got pushed back repeatedly even as travel demand to Hawaii skyrocketed. I know that they had to borrow some other frames to cover the Hawaii service. They've mostly pulled those back, but it'd be naďve to imagine that they've worked through all of the repercussions already.

At some point, we have to accept that UA's network ops team, while not perfect, is operating from a position of having a lot more data than we do. For example, you ask why it was being used on IAD-MUC and then on IAD-FCO, and my answer is that that probably impacted the fewest people.

"Just have a few spare 77Ws lying around" is how the bureaucrats who wrote EC.261 thought the airline industry worked too. But that's a several hundred million dollar investment just to protect passengers from a minor inconvenience.

No. Not if you're an airline that's lost billions of dollars the past couple of years and is trying to keep from losing hundreds of millions more. You do not build slack capacity of each individual plane type into your peak season when you've already had to deal with an unexpectedly long grounding of another variant. Not if you want to keep your job, you don't.

uastarflyer

You’re assuming backup capability means parking extra planes at each hub 24/7

As I said upthread, policy. There were enough planes. Obviously, as IAD-MUC flew. How the policy is fashioned and executed is the question. Resulting in a domestic AC dispatched to a significant *A hub in MUC

Policy exists wrt crew backup as well.

btw, UA is profitable and has its best revenue quarter ever right now, not that it matters to this question.

mduell

The 777A is intended for east coast TATL!

HNLbasedFlyer

Doesn't that mean they didn't have enough planes?

Unitedloyalflyer

Then put the appropriate number of premium seats on those planes. All that is really needed is 3-4 rows of PP on those planes

uastarflyer

The flight departed. Quantity was there. Product mix was a miss.

JBlaine

I thought SFO-EWR in business gives access to the Polaris lounge?

JALsnipe

No, United Club only.

https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly...-services.html

Lux Flyer

That's not what their assuming at all. It still is a multi million cost to have an extra 77W sitting idle for any substantial period of time. What you're literally asking is that they had an extra 77W, during the peak travel season of the year, and had it held back from flying a set schedule so it could be available in the event another 77W went mechanical. In the winter, sure that might be possible. In the busiest time of the year? Zero chance any airline is going, or be expected, to underutilize one of their most expensive pieces of equipment for the sake of preventing an unpredictable occurrence. At what point is enough enough, what if 2 77W's went mechanical in Europe, who gets the spare, or do we now need to have slack for two 77W's? What about 3? Ultimately if UA had a 77W that wasn't already committed, they would have subbed it, but they didn't, so they went with the least bad option, which was to inconvenience the smallest amount of people possible by subbing in a 77HD.

Edit: To add, all the airlines have tried having extra capacity sitting around before, underutilized planes. Know where it got all of them? Bankruptcy. So easy we forget 20+ years ago when airlines tried to run themselves without being paying as much attention to things like utilization and being efficient, it doesn't work.

UA also took on 20 billion in new debt in a little under 6 months in 2020 (for some additional reference points year end 2021 total debt was ~41.1b compared to year end 2019 ~20b). I don't think it takes an economics major to tell you the problem with a company doubling the amount of debt on their books in that short a period of time. Not to mention their past 9 quarters have all been in the red. So yes, this may end up being the best revenue quarter ever for UA, but maybe there's a reason we don't use total revenue for the most recent quarter to make financial judgements of a company, since it doesn't paint anywhere near the whole financial picture. In addition to that, it being their best revenue doesn't even tell the whole story of the quarter, so lets not also pretend that their expenses haven't skyrocketed in that same time span with fuel doubling in cost, nor the fact they're in the middle of labor contract negotiations with the union that represents ~1/3 of their work force (and given the current state of inflation, and what they're having to start people out at to get new employees in some of their stations, is lining up to probably be a substantial increase to the union wage scale). Even suggesting the fact that because their revenue is at record levels so it shouldn't be a big deal that they lost billions in recent years seems short-sighted and disingenous at best.

h2oflyboy

The 777HD suck if you're a single traveler in the one of the middle seats in the center. The best seating config is 2-3-2. You're alone window/aisle; 2 people (window and aisle); 3 pp it's the center; 4 - it keeps going any combination works. I'm looking at using miles for a trip - 295K miles on UA and if they swap out equipment to one of the horrible 777HD, I could have gotten on TK for 70K which is 2-3-2 in Biz.

Plus there's no PQFs earned on award tickets - DL gives award ticket credit for status.

O62

Hello folks, I have a reservation on UA 700 IAD-SFO in the next few weeks and at the moment it is slated as a Polaris-config 777. Now I also know that that could change to a different aircraft or config at any moment, but given that, (a) is there a way to see what this airframe is slated to fly next (i.e. is it going TPAC so it'll probably stay polaris and (b) Is there any advantage to being a lower row number in case it was swapped for a 777 HD and there are not enough F seats?