TennisNoob

I didn't see any media postings or threads about it. Does this happen so often that it didn't hit the news?

The gate agents tried to lie and tell us there was a mechanical error on engine 1.

goodeats21

UA 20, as in IAH to AMS?
When did this happen. Showed on time/early the last couple of days, and scheduled on time today...

TennisNoob

Yes UA20. IAH-AMS on 1/13. The text messages that we got all kept saying "we are addressing a technical issue on your plane."
Finally we got one that states "our maintenance team needs more time to inspect the exterior of your plane for possible damage."

Funny enough on our return flight the jetbridge took 10 minutes to connect with the aircraft. In the end they didn't even connect it properly there was a few inches of height difference. We were all like >.>

Lux Flyer

Doesn't sound particularly news worthy based on what you described. Non-moving aircraft parked at the gate, not involving another aircraft (yes those types of issues happen more often then you realize). Does every time some piece of major equipment gets damaged at your workplace result in a news report? There are lots of things that happen at airports that in the grand scheme aren't major events that draw news attention, and a parked aircraft being damaged generally doesn't draw attention.

Just like runway incursions which happen more often then people realize While the JFK mess absolutely drew a ton of news attention due to how close it was and people are in shock about "how could this happen". There are hundreds of runway incursions across US airports every year that never make the news because they aren't major events. JFK had 2 additional ones last year, SFO had 14 (https://www.asias.faa.gov/apex/f?p=1...A%3A%3ANO%3A28).

Appears to be Friday 1/13's departure as it took a 3 hour delay due to an aircraft swap.

jsloan

I mean, if something hit the engine, it probably doesn't function, making it a mechanical error on engine 1.

What would the point be of "lying"? UA has the same responsibility either way.

Extraordinary1

Perhaps the gate agents did not know any better.

prestonh

If the jetbrige damaged the cowling or underlying engine structures I could certainly understand the coding of the aircraft as mechanical.

beachmouse

Back in the day, I had a Northwest flight where the baggage train hit the fuselage hard enough to dent it and SOP was that they needed a mechanic to inspect the plane and declare it was cosmetic and not structural damage.

The problem was that GRR only had an ‘on call’ mechanic certified to handle that at the time and he had to come in from the lake where he was fishing.

Im not sure how long that delay ultimately was but since it was clearly long enough that we were going to miss our connection and n MEM, we ended up taking ourselves off that flight and rebooking for the next morning.

TennisNoob

Considering there was only 1 gate agent when we deplaned, I guess he would know....

I agree maybe not "TV news" worthy but not even an blog post about it. I remember this happened before with Singapore Air at IAH (bloggers did post about it) and etc. but that's really rare to my knowledge.

I agree that aircraft collision happens much more often since after all the person watching the plane might have a dead radio etc. But here we are talking about an non moving aircraft with a single person controlling the said jet bridge.