Back to the gate for a form?
 

I was on UA 256 last night (DEN-ORD). We boarded and taxiied out to the runway (or near it). After sitting there for about 45 minutes, the captain came on and said we needed to go back to the gate for a form. Evidently we were carrying some cargo that required us to have this form on board. I don't understand a) why the captain didn't figure out she needed the form before we left the gate and b) why they couldn't just fax it to her or something. There is some sort of document transmission system in the cockpit I think, because on my ORD-DEN flight that morning the captain said he was waiting for some maintenance paperwork "and, oh here it comes".

And does anyone know what cargo we were carrying? We didn't have a Lifeguard callsign - just United 256 heavy.

In any case, it was nice being in F and getting dinner - the cold salmon plate wasn't bad.

My guess is that she knew the form was needed, but decided to push back, taxi and then return to the gate so the passengers would have a story to tell their friends and family. :p

I'm glad someone else likes the salmon and shrimp plate! :p It looks like your flight only got into ORD 40 minutes late, so I hope you did not misconnect.

Funny man.

We also needed to sit at the gate and get gas from sitting out there with the engines on.

Nah, ORD is my home airport. And yeah, it wasn't the delay itself that was annoying - I just don't understand why they didn't realize they needed this magical form until we'd been sitting waiting for it for 45 minutes.

We took off almost exactly an hour after we were supposed to. I've noticed UA pads its schedule a lot so it can claim that flights are on time when they're late. As an example, that flight was supposed to be 2h 20m, but the captain and FAs told us several times our scheduled flight time was 1h 46m.

The shrimp tasted a little fishy, but on the whole it was a nice light dinner. I have heard that the low fat and kosher meals tend to be better, though.

The "scheduled" time is block-to-block, i.e. from pushback at the origin gate to blocking at the arriving gate. This includes time for taxi and possible slot delays, which are common in the busier airports (JFK, for example). UA has to account for that in the total transit time, because there's no point quoting an airborne time of 1:46 when taxi and slot delays can add another 30-45 mins.

Also, note that the "on time" designation refers only to getting the flight out... it doesn't refer to arrival, although certainly a late departure has a higher risk of late arrival (and therefore a late departure for the next flight).

Hazmat?

On all United flights nobody makes any money until the door is closed and you leave the gate. Once the door is closed and you push back then everyone is "on the clock". Not sure if this is also true for FAs (I believe it is), but it is for flight crew. Because of this pay system there is always a great emphasis placed on "pushing back" at the earliest possible moment. After that, even if they have to return to the gate, the clock (and dollars) keep ticking. Now, I'm not saying the Captain would push knowing that she didn't have all her documentation, so the FO probably got blamed. ;)

It could have been any number of things: including medical stuffs that were not time critical (organs and such), hazmat, live animals, or any number of other things.

As to why: it's entirely possible that the crew did not know about the specific cargo until contacted by UA dispatch, and the thermal printer in the cockpit might have been inop.

The problem here is that the number of possible things is so large, you may never know for sure unless someone with access to UA's internal systems can dig it up for you.

But the speculation is always fun :).

I was on 1168(DEN-BWI) and saw you guys sitting there, then request to taxi back to the gate. I was wondering what was wrong. Now I know :)

I was listening to channel 9 and heard the pilot tell the tower we needed to go back to the gate. She announced it over the PA a second later - I didn't even have a chance to gripe to the guy next to me. :)

Interestingly, the whole crew on the flight was female. Never had that before.

There are "on time departures" and "on time arrivals", which I think is defined as arrival at gate no more than 15 minutes behind the schedule. I think the DOT exercises some control/influence on US carriers to make sure that their published schedules are reasonable given flight history, i.e. each flight number should not operate as late arrivals too much of the time (not sure of the definition DOT uses). It's a sort of truth in advertising, i.e. don't say you can make it from ORD to LGA in 1:30 at 5:00pm when you know that taxi and slot delays mean it's really more like 2:30 most of the time. You will see the same route (and same or similar equipment) showing somewhat different block-to-block times at different times of day. In my experience these do not vary as much as they really should, but they do vary in the right way (longer at peak times, shorter at non-peak).

Looking at today's schedule for ORD-LGA, departures from 7:00am to 8:50pm, the following are the scheduled block times:
2:06
2:08
2:13
2:10
2:11
2:18
2:16
2:21
2:27
2:24
2:21
2:21
2:01

You can see the increases in the morning and afternoon rush times. The shortest actual times ran about 1:55 this weekend so the afternoon peak has about a half hour extra time built in.

Charles

Thanks for the clarification. It's unclear which statistic United refers to when they say a flight is "80% on-time" or what-not... I suspect they're referring to on-time departures rather than arrivals, but it's not readily apparent. Regardless, taxi and slot delays must be taken into account, as you have verified.