Re: General United Airlines Delays/Cancellations/etc. Discussion
jb747, many thanks. I assume that one of them was the aircraft that should have formed UA840 ex SYD for LAX yesterday (Saturday 2 January 2016) as the
Sydney Airport website indicates that yesterday's departure was cancelled.
Do you know why they did not operate beyond HNL?
It would be good to hear from any AFF readers who were booked on these flights or who otherwise know what happened to passengers. Were they placed on HL, JQ or QF flights nonstop down to Oz, or did they have to take a 'scenic route' such as via NRT? It is an unfortunate time of the year to be 'short terminated' at a location such as HNL because with Christmas holidays, one might expect the other carriers' flights to be full or close to it.
These unexpected events may have been encountered previously by most airlines but that does not mean that working out how to get stranded passengers to their booked destination would not be stressful for the operations staff. It's not as if they can just ring a road coach company as an interstate coach or rail operator can, and have buses at most locations within a couple of hours at most!
And then there's the problem of a multi-million dollar aircraft not where it should be, not to mention tech and cabin crew in (this case) HNL and SYD plus MEL, catering askew in say SYD...all adversely affecting future rotations or rosters, and at the absolute minimum a few hundred other delayed passengers booked from Oz to the USA. And then the airline has to find a crew to take the aircraft back to LAX or SFO, or wherever it is next sent.
The cost of such events must rapidly exceed a couple of hundred thousand dollars: miniscule compared to the larger international airlines' revenues, but unwelcome to the beancounters. Also very complex!