Hello All,

I flew from LGA to IAD on Sat morning at 7am & our return flight was to be yesterday at 7:15pm. This was on United Express operated by Mesa Airlines on a CJ 7. Saturday was fine checked in online with no checked in baggage. All weel, except teh 6am departure was cancelled due to mech prolems so we had a few extra & angry people aboard.

On the return however faith was against us, no online seating available, my girlfriend & I had one checked in bag (due to the bottle of wine we were bringing from Virginia to NYC). Here is the fun part, first flight oversold- the gate is a zoo, then some problem error signals in the cockpit about flaps not working, 1 & 1/2 delay then we start rolling & stop message from flight deck, "ground stop" due to heavey traffic over LGA. Another 1 hour delay, wheels up finally at 9:30 and I was already vconsidering taking Amtrak. Not going to mention the details about the long wait for bags at LaGuardia.

Here is my question: Is this normal to hold/ delay small planes? Most likely, my home airports are LGA & JFK, (I live close to both of them).

btw, have no status with United I am a LH M&M m ember & lady friend a general United member.

just wanted to get this off my chest, thanks for reading, I feel beeter nw that I vented.

Yes, ground stop/hold at origin is not unusual if your destination airport is congested and/or traffic controlled.

Add the impending winter weather expected for the Eastern Seaboard and then all heck breaks loose.

United Express flights take a backseat to UA mainline flights during irregular operations (ground stops) at slot restricted airports such as LGA.

What probably happend is that your UX flight lost its departure slot to a UA mainline flight that missed its slot and became ready for departure just as your UX flight was scheduled to leave.

This happens all the time at ORD and LGA during weather related issues. Keeping mainline UA flights on-time (or as close to that as possible) is the number one priority.

By the way, a ground stop affects all planes, regardless of size. A UX RJ takes up just as much space as a UA mainline. (Indeed, "heavy" planes need more in-trail spacing, but the FAA's flow control management system does not take this into account.)

thanks everybody, next time I fly back to NYC into JFK & hope for no delays.

This is sort of true and sort of not. FAA initiatives are applied evenly, but airlines can propose substitutions, and UA has a reputation for subbing in mainline and out UX flights, which makes sense to me, help more customers. Most other airlines have mainline and regional completely independent so that doesn't happen (and how UA manages to coordinate them, given that the UX airlines are operated by different companies in different locations, is surprising to say the least; could be it's another one of those unsubstantiated rumors).

The FAA is trying to go to fewer ground stops, replacing them with other tactics like specific flow-constrained enroute areas to avoid, etc. Ground stops make sense when they're truly airport based, but historically they have been mis-used when some nearby airspace is a problem and they had no better tool to handle it. It will be interesting to see if there's any improvement this summer.

Since there is no mainline service to CID the favoring of UA over UX can be real pain sometimes, especially when connecting through ORD. It is almost enough to make one considering switching to NWA which has mainline CID to MSP but their routes don't match up well with my travel.