Was scheduled on WS 1790 YVR-LAS and after zone 1 had boarded, boarding was halted. I was sitting on the plane for about 15 minutes wondering why no one else was boarding. Finally they announced that ops wanted our fin for a flight to HNL. We were deplaned and the new flight is delayed almost 2 hours. I was going to miss a connection so the very nice gate agent was able to reroute me, but that’s the first time I’ve been deplaned mid way through boarding.

Anyone with EF know what happened to the original YVR-HNL fin?

I’m not all up on the new regs, but I’m unclear why the airlines were all bent out of shape about them. Can an airline just mark things as “unscheduled safety” and get away with it? Now, it was only 2hrs delay here, so maybe not much to get excited about. But if another plane has an unscheduled maintenance issue, that is the ONLY plane that is affected and given a pass from the teeth of the new regs, no? To roll that on to other planes too as this would appear, doesn’t square. Presumably WS saw a return load of HNL pax with hotels, compensations, and flights to make up, and decided Ad-hoc that your FIN could sub in and save them some pain.

If you are sufficiently annoyed, and/or believe they are truly in the wrong, it could be useful to pull a FIN log and call them on it. Perhaps you have more engaging hobbies though... and like I say, I am not all up on the new regs.