Don’t blame United Airlines for a horrific delay that kept passengers on a cold plane for 14-hours and ultimately delayed passengers by nearly a day.
United 179, from Newark to Hong Kong, departed Newark Saturday afternoon at 3:00PM. Five hours into the flight, a medical emergency occurred (a passenger experienced multiple seizures) and the flight diverted to Goose Bay Airport (YYR), a Canadian Forces Base, in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The passenger was offloaded and transported to a local hospital with the plan to immediately continue the journey to Hong Kong. But the brutal -20ºF temperatures froze door 3R shut, making it impossible to arm it (essentially enabling the emergency evacuation slide to inflate if the door is opened). Thus, takeoff was delayed.
Four @united tech ops workers trying to fix the right wing emergency exit door of #UA179. A planeful of people is hoping they have better luck than the last set of mechanics and pilots who tried hours ago @United_179 pic.twitter.com/PlC41Rh7qp
— Steven Lau (@unoslau) January 20, 2019
The Delay Continues
When local mechanics could not fix the problem, the 250 remaining passengers braced themselves for a long delay. No immigration staff were on hand, forcing passengers to wait onboard the 777-200 while a rescue aircraft was dispatched from Newark.
After several hours, passengers were allowed off the aircraft in small batches to stretch and get some fresh air. During the delay, passengers were free to move about the cabin and meals were served onboard intended for flight to Hong Kong. When that ran out, airport officials delivered food from Tim Hortons onboard.
Mechanics arrived Sunday morning and failed to fix the problems. Passengers were placed on another 777-200 and flown back to Newark.
There was only one thing that made me sad. One passengers shared on Facebook:
We’ve been stranded here due to the GROSS mishandling of this situation by United Airlines. The entire way they have treated us from troubleshooting, communicating and actual treatment (or lack of) by most of the flight attendants has been not only unprofessional, but downright DISGUSTING. This is not an airline. It’s more like a prison.
By all other reports, it appears the flight attendants did the best they could, under difficult circumstances, to handle the situation. Thus, it is sad to read any commentary like this. But perhaps the passenger was just expressing frustration over what spiraled into a horrible situation.
CONCLUSION
I always feel the need to defend myself against being a United cheerleader. This was an unfortunate event. Perhaps it could have been handled better. But it would be unfair to blame this on United Airlines, as if it can control medical emergencies and sub-zero weather.
United is currently blocking award space on Singapore, TAP, and Thai. I’ll be pummeling United for that in an upcoming post. But I cannot attack United here. These freak accidents happens and thankfully the passengers are now on their way.
Is it sadomasochist to say, with a straight face, that I wish I was on that flight? In business class of course…
image: Steven Lau / Twitter
Hey, if you’d be ok in a middle seat in economy on that flight, you’re justified in whatever opinion you like. Personally, I’d be apoplectic.
You weren’t on the flight, so you have no idea how the flight attendants handled this. And it’s not about the flight going mechanical – that stuff happens. Goose Bay is a 4-hour nonstop from United’s Newark hub. The fact that they couldn’t get either a) another aircraft, or b) a crew capable of fixing the problem in less than 20 hours, is inexcusable. United is a broken airline.
It was a 777-200, United only has ~74 in the whole world (who knows how many in the same configuration…can’t send a plane with fewer seats if it was full). 16 hours to dispatch one is fair from an operational perspective. Airlines don’t keep hundred million dollar assets sitting in storage.
4 hours from Newark to Goose Bay
1 hour to unload a medical emergency
2 hours to work on mechanical, realize you can’t fix it
2 hours to get a plane and crew at Newark ready to fly to Goose Bay
4 hours from Newark to Goose Bay
1 hour to move from old plane to new plane.
4 hours to fly from Goose Bay to Newark
That gets up to 18 hours. So, United wanted 2 hours, maybe. That seems pretty good to me on response time.
United does a lot wrong, but this does not seem to be one of those things. Being on that flight would have sucked, but United appears to have done everything that they could have done to minimize the impact of taking care of a medical emergency.
What happened to global warming? Someone lied to us.
Global warming creates all kinds of inappropriate weather including floods, ice and snow storms. Either you’re extremely silly, or you’re extremely misinformed.
Global Warming is a hoax!
Why, my server just brought me a chilled coca cola!
(Hope you were trolling, else I see a lifetime of bad judgements ahead.)
Dreadful. Exactly the kind of incompetence for which United is legend. There is no excuse for leaving those passengers in that living nightmare for almost 24 hours.
After a recent flight to TLV onboard United Polaris I am ready to believe anything pertaining to United cabin attendants.
The gentleman in question, call him Frank for this instance, was rude from the word arm doors. He scolded passengers and dropped a pile of plates, which happens. What was shocking was his recovery, immediately pointing to a nearby passenger and blaming him. Had this not been outside US jurisdiction I might have expected a Dr Doh incident.
I really don’t get why in this kind of situation passengers are not allowed to deplane and wait inside the terminal. I get that there is no immigration officer available but at least let the passengers stay confined in an area at the airport where I assume a better bathroom and seats would be available. Really, you are not saying you will deplane a full airplane in a big city without proper immigration where passengers may get illegally in the country. It is Goose Bay, where would people go?
If the passengers get off the plane but have not gone through immigration, they are well within their rights to refuse to get back on the plane
But why? They were from Newark, USA. Do you think they had the premonition to know there would be a stopover in Canada so they can claim refuge status there? It is a ridiculous to bring up immigration issue.
It would make sense that a customs or immigration officer would be on call at all times for situations such as this, although the situation might only arise annually or even less often. There’s no excuse for people to be trapped in a plane.
I can’t understand how you can defend UA on this one. They screwed up real badly. EWR is not that far from Goose Bay and could have and should have taken care of the situation sooner than 20 hours. Even DL with their diversion in the middle of nowhere handled the situation much quicker.
How did door 3L become unarmed in the first place? I’m assuming the afflicted passenger was removed through door 1 or 2. Not through an emergency exit door over the wing.
“But the brutal -20ºF temperatures froze door 3L shut, making it impossible to arm it.” While I understand that can happen I never heard brutal temperatures caused that problem. I am based at MSP and I am very familiar with brutal temperatures. Not a single occasion that I know a flight had to be cancelled because a door was frozen and could not be armed at MSP. Maybe UA is just an unlucky airline.
I don’t think you are familiar with brutal temperatures. -20F is significantly less than the average low of MSP, average around 7F, with their record of -50F back in 1996. I would venture to say that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
I’m not. I live in Los Angeles.
But United and local airport officials blamed the cold on the problem. Don’t shoot the messenger.
@Aaron – FAs disarm every door when any door is opened. Standard Procedure and happens every single time. Listen for the “Arm Doors and Standby for Cross Check” from the Purser. You will see an FA arm/disarm every door.
I don’t blame United for it happening, or for the inability to deplane properly, but the recovery is clearly too slow.
There are 3 large hubs of United’s, EWR, IAD and ORD all reasonably placed to provide an aircraft from – the length of time it took is definitely on the long side.
I don’t blame United either.
I blame the licks airport authority and the CBSA for not having z bsckup plan. This happens here a lot.
It was door 3R. Just sayin’.
Correct.
So why couldnt they get an immigration officer.and how could passenger go to hospital with out immigratuon officer.
I presume because it is easier to track one passenger than 250, even in this remote province.
Thank you for writing this. It gave me a good perspective on the event. I think a lot of important information is left out when this event is discussed on the news and such. As someone who flies often, I have had my fair share of diversions, and it is a tough situation for everyone involved. United is in a tricky situation here because it’ll get some flack regardless of what i would have done. Not diverting would have led to tragic consequences; flying without arming a door is a dangerous move; and finally bringing the passengers back to Newark makes the flight a 24 hour flight to nowhere. I think United did the best they could have done in the situation. Additionally, I think united crew members get bad publicity and a lot of people think that they are rude and such, but personally I have never had a bad experience with United crew. They have always been lovely and friendly and very attentive.
I’m scheduled for UA179 EWR -> HKG on February 12th…I can at least be certain that if something occurs with that same flight in the near future United will move heaven and Earth to avoid any further bad publicity 🙂
Looks like the Canadian’s are the ones to blame. All the pax should have gotten off. Just pretend they are undocumented.
Enough Canada bashing! Goose Bay is a very small town of 8000 people in the middle of nowhere. The airport is tiny and thus only letting 20 people off at a time. The town has an extremely limited amount of accommodation – not nearly enough for all the passengers of a wide body jet. Maybe United could have taken this into account when choosing their diversion airport.
edit
“Is is sadomasochist to say, with a straight face, that I wish I was on that flight? In business class of course…”
Edit it to what?
Perhaps replace the second ‘is’ with an ‘it’?
Ha ha. OMHell….
Considering that Goose Bay and Gander are frequently visited by international flights because of deiversions / refueling. Is it out of the question to say the Canadians are being cheap and unfriendly not to have a simple hall that can heated and used for exactly that purpose? One that does not involve passengers in transit clearing customs. When a plane lands that generates fees. This seems as much a Canadian/Goose Bay issue as it is that UA might have been been able to respond faster.
Not quite sure how UA is not to blame for this problem – the plane is supposed to work even at those “brutal” temperatures. It didn’t. The problem is 100% UA’s fault.
First, I will say it was a complicated situation. From my travel and aviation experience to this point, my original thought is, why didn’t they divert to an airport a bit further than Goose Bay but with better facilities? Based on the flight path and reports, I think they originally were returning to Newark but then the “passenger’s condition worsened” requiring an earlier landing. St. Johns would have only been one more hour in the air, and the city is much bigger than Goose Bay and likely has better hospital and airport facilities. Even Bangor, ME would have only been 90 more minutes. Both closer than EWR. I am no medic, and I have not worked for an airline yet (I aspire to in the future), but I wonder if that extra one hour realistically means the difference between life and death for someone in an epileptic episode like the case here?
Gee, guys, if United was at fault, maybe the company should have just let a passenger die on board and continue on to Hong Kong. Now that would have minimized complaints about United, wouldn’t it? In truth it is difficult to image that any airline in the world would have been able to have handled this much better than United did. Certainly some specifics would have been different, but the same basic complications are involved with each airline: An airport with minimal services, a busted airplane, and limited crew times and other aircraft availability. No airline in the world could have automatically handled this in a way to avoid any criticisms because no airline could have solved this in a perfect manner to keep everyone happy. It’s just the way life is. Like Matthew suggested, this is just one reason why I pay extra for business class on long flights, because you never know how long you will be stuck in the child seats in the back. Another issue that the Negative Nellies might want to consider is that ETOPS breeds this sort of problem by taking airplanes into airspace away from large diversion cities. ETOPS is built around little-used airports for diversion around the world. You take a chance with an ETOPS flight and you take a chance of long diversion messes. ETOPS is a new kind of technological gamble. You buy your ticket and you take your chance.
China treats people/air passengers BETTER – than Canada! Do NOT blame United!
when a recent Swiss flight from Zurich to Hong Kong had to make an emergency landing in Urumqi (China) – the China government let passengers disembark and rest in the terminal (despite most pax having NO China visa); Canada on the contrary, lets 250 suffer onboard a plane – in extreme cold and in clear force majeure situation!!!
So, NOT United’s mistake, but rather the inhuman, “bureaucrazy”, of the Canada Government!!!
@Marc – Think about it for 2 seconds…. Are you really trying to compare the facilities of an airport that carries 20 million passengers each year, like Urumqi, to an airport that serves a town with a population of 8,000, like Goose Bay.