swiftaw

I'm taking UA 144 EWR-OPO at the end of the week, so I have been following its performance for the past few weeks. More often that not it seems to be delayed leaving EWR, in many cases by several hours. For example, last night it left at 12:19am (scheduled for 9:50pm), Sunday night it left at 11:49pm.

BlueZebra

Have you looked to see the arrival time of the assigned plane?

swiftaw

Last night it got to EWR at 7:41pm

msantosnj

I've seen the same with EWR to LIS (UA 64) as well. Doesn't matter when the incoming aircraft arrives, it typically leaves late.

Granted, the weather hasn't helped as of late.

BlueZebra

The turn around for planes on international flights at their US airports is usually over 3 hours. It was unlikely to make a 2150 departure with a 1941 arrival.

Repooc17

Except the inbound was a precleared aircraft from Dublin, and that flight was also late by 3 hours.

It also doesn't take 3 hours to turn a plane from B, even accounting for deplaning and other logistics.

United has done a poor job operating its flights timely. Sure, some times it's uncontrollable, but even with no uncontrollable events, we have seen mass delays and cancellations.

EWR764

EWR has been an unmitigated disaster this summer. Full stop.

dinoscool3

These late night flights are commonly late. I'm flying 161 to EDI next week, its literally UA's last flight of the night, and it has left on time maybe twice in the last three weeks. I'm in for a long night (and the lounge closes at 22:30)!

TomMM

At least you should know what to expect.

BlueZebra

Add in that 8900 flights nationwide (1/3 of the total daily flights in the US) delayed yesterday...

AsiaTravel2019

EWR is a crowded, poorly run airport with a badly laid out terminal C. Many employees and crew based there have bad attitudes. Avoid if you can, tolerate it if you can't.

Edit: on the plus side, the newer UC at C123 is pretty nice, I hear the new terminal A is nice.

m.y

OPO is a leisure destination with few connecting passengers, the turn around time in OPO is also pretty long such that the return flight still operated on time despite the 2+ hour delay. I would imagine UA would prioritize flights with many connections or to high yield destinations or larger plane with more passengers when there are gate or staff constraints.

Repooc17

That would be true if OPO is the only victim in the United OTP saga which has been going on for months now.

Sadly, EWR can expand as much as they want, there are still effectively only two runways (one for departure and one for arrival). Plenty of airports with less traffic have more than two runways, where you can have concurrent departures and arrivals.

fly2nrt

I was on UA144 last Wednesday and.... IT WAS ON TIME. Even landed early. 😮 😮 😮 😮

No idea why this flight is always late... get's cancelled pretty often as well. And incoming aircraft doesn't seem to matter either.

The Lisbon flight is a little better but not by much.

emcampbe

‘Always’ is a little exaggerated (though not completely) - per Flightstats - it was on time 28% of the time over June/July. So always, no.

Has to do with a combo of things. Poor ops out of EWR aren’t out of the norm on any given year, but particularly bad this year. There is some part of that that isn’t UAs fault - there has been some weather and there is always airspace issue in the NYC-area. But this year, other factors are definitely present - stress on the current fleet, staffing (both within and outside of UA), excessive fleet utilization beyond what should be acceptable. These flights also wouldn’t take as much priority as more ‘important’ flights - if they have the staffing and can only ensure, say, the LHR or OPO flights get out on time, guess which one takes priority.

Its 2023, and we’re passed the COVID peak, yes, but the resurgence in demand, without the resurgence in infrastructure is problematic. I suspect this will match will improve over the next 2-3 years, and bring ops more in line with historical trends. But for now, this is what we get.

On another note, I’ve always tended to avoid EWR - not a good airport, a whiff of wind will send ATC delays skyrocketing more than anywhere, etc., so my personal guideline is to give a minimum of 2-2.5 hours of connection time to compensate (at ORD, I’m happy to book an hour or even slightly less). I guess I can be happy that now I’m on the west coast, and while the same issues aren’t completely non-existent, seems to be way better than on the eastern side of the country.