RobertS975

Trying to understand the logic here...a good friend was scheduled to fly on UA188 to JNB on Thursday 7/28. After showing a several hour delay (which I assumed was to wait for late inbound connecting passengers), the flight canceled altogether. Friend was rebooked on UA188 for today Friday 7/29. On awakening this AM I see that 188 again is canceled "for operational reasons ". But there appears to be a special section UA 3014 to JNB scheduled for 830PM, a mere 15 minutes prior to the canceled UA188. I assume this is a rescue flight as their are now 2 plane loads of passengers on either side of this route that need transportation.

Why the special flight and number for tonight? Why not have simply operated the original flight 188 tonight, Friday?

Repooc17

There is another flight originally scheduled for today also as flight 188.

RobOnLI

What appears to have happened is UA188 from Thursday was delayed until Friday late morning (before being cancelled I presume). Then the original UA188 for Friday was scheduled on time leaving *two* United 188 flights in the air at the same time which is supposed to be a no-no. To fix this United scrapped Friday's original UA 188 and inserted 3014 as a replacement flight. Although it's scheduled 15 minutes early it's actually estimated "on time" at 2045.

You will find they did the same thing on the return. Both UA 187 were scrapped and the replacement is UA 3015 departing the same time as the original flight.

UA 188 on Thursday was cancelled due to weather. Friday's is due to the above.

-RM

RobertS975

As I hopefully made clear, the regular UA188 to JNB canceled for today, Friday 7/29. But the special section UA3014 is on the schedule to JNB with a slightly different departure time as the original flight 188. Why did UA do that...there has to be a reason.

Not versed at all in the culture of UA, but perhaps by canceling today's 188, it gives the airline the flexibility to rebook whichever of the passengers from both the canceled Thursday 188 and the Friday flight that they choose? And the claim that the Thursday night flight was CXL for weather is bogus. The plane was there all day and plenty of flights went into and out of EWR last night. Yes, there was weather, but it should not have prevented the departure.

drewguy

If nothing else, I can see the advantage to avoiding the fiasco at the gates if there were two UA188 flights departing around the same time. You know half the people would be at the wrong gate or get on the wrong plane and they'd spend an hour sort out why there are two people in seat 9A but 9D is empty, and vv on the other plane.

RobertS975

Why is everyone misunderstanding the basic question? What 2 flight 188s at the same time? Thursday cancelled, there would only have been Friday's flight 188. But that has now cancelled. In its place, there is this flight which I assume is a special section, 3014.
Why not just operate the original 188 for Friday? No duplication of flight numbers that I see.

rankourabu

We were on 188 last night.

Generator broke. They tried to fix it but gave up.
Crew timed out by 11:30pm and they finally cancelled the flight. Lack of updates was frustrating and communication could have been better.

It was supposed to be 'delayed' until 11:30am today as a rescue flight if they found crew (we are getting the CPT inbound). Clearly they didnt

By the time we got to the hotel (app live agent was super easy, lucky because the customer service line was miles long with LHR cancelled last night too) they rebooked everyone on UA3014 tonight.

This probably means that Friday's 188 now has no plane and they got cancelled today too albeit with a lot more advanced notice.
So 3014 is not in lieu of 188 today, it's in lieu of Thursdays 188

let's hope UA3014 actually takes off tonight.

wrp96

Thursday's flight didn't cancel until late into Friday morning so they had to renumber today's flight so they didn't have two of the same flight at the same time. Actually see the more clear info from rankourabu.

As to why it cancelled when other flights were able to eventually go, on a long haul flight (particularly an ultra long haul one like EWR-JNB), there's only limited time they can hold without crew going out of flight time.

Thanks for the more clear info. Hope things go better today for you.

rankourabu

Please dont post inaccurate information.
188 last night was cancelled due to mechanical issues (broken generator)

This was a bit of a fumble by United. The leeway on crew timing out is indeed very slim in this case.
They posted at least 5 rolling delays. Official nose up time for the crew to be legal was 12:45am (4 hours late). They knew early on there was no hope of fixing the plane (by 10:30pm all maintenance crew left), but didn't cancel until past 11:30, so people couldn't get on with hotel bookings etc until late at night.

RobertS975

Thank you for giving me a rational explanation, Abu! So it is entirely possible that many on tonight's now cancelled regular flight 188 may not be able to get on the special section. Not sure how packed these flights are...

rankourabu

Not only are these packed full, but there are virtually no rebooking options on other airlines.

3014 was already full so tonight's 188 folks wouldnt have been able to be put on that one. So good luck to them! I would hope United catches up with another rescue section

RobOnLI

UA188 from Thursday was delayed (obviously ultimately cancelled) until 1130am Friday morning. This means there would have been TWO United 188 flights in the air at the same time (the delayed Thursday flight and the on-time Friday flight). I don't know if it's a strict FAA rule that an airline can't have two of the same flight number in the air at the same time (I think so) but it's basically a no-no. So...at the time UA 188 was delayed until 1130am Friday morning United went ahead and cancelled UA 188 for Friday and renumbered it with UA 3014. This meant at the time there were two EWR-JNB flights scheduled for Friday. UA188 in the morning, UA3014 in the evening. Once they cancelled UA 188 on Friday they didn't re-instate it as 188 after ultimately cancelling Thursday's flight.



-RM

rankourabu

That's not a cancellation reason. That's probable delays due to storms/ATC, which plague EWR on a daily basis.

Real reason:

UA 188: Our maintenance team needs to service a generator before we depart. We're sorry for this inconvenience and we appreciate your patience. Confirmation Number:


You are right about the two flights same number. Which I guess is a moot point since 188 got cancelled on Friday anyway!

jsloan

The way that this is actually handled in practice is that the flights will add an internal letter designation to the flight number. So, UA would have flight UA188 and UA188T or whatever. (I've never noted any consistency about which letter is used).

Airlines have two flights in the air with the same customer-facing number quite frequently. It doesn't require renumbering the flight.

UA may have decided that the best option was to fly the passengers from Thursday's flight on Friday, and then fly the passengers from Friday's flight whenever they could get a plane and crew together. The reason to cancel 188 and schedule 3014 wouldn't be to avoid having two flights in the air with the same number; it would be to get the passengers from today's flight off of it so that they could rebook Thursday's passengers onto it.

rankourabu

They intended to have 2 flights operate for a few hours today, until they probably realized there arent 2 planes available.

3014 is not a replacement for todays 188.