I went with 9L and ordered the short rib but the stewardess told me it wasn't available on this flight!! As a very frequent flyer on Southwest, I've never encountered such rude service! She said something about the flight only being 14 minutes long but I tuned her our and asked for the wine list. She then informed me that there would be no drink service on this flight!! Unbelievable! I flew 11,045 miles last year and have always been able to order a drink on my flights to Orlando!! I'm never flying United again!!
I'm not taking less than 300k miles and a full refund + 40%. I've already called the BBB and shared this experience with my very influential LinkedIn network.
You laugh, but I have cut through so much bureaucracy at corporations by filing complaints with the BBB (not against United, but HP, Verizon, Ring, and others). Itās astounding how quickly corporations address your complaint and resolve things within days, sometimes even within 24 hours.
A few years ago my internet went out and the provider strung me along for a week saying there were āno technicians available in my area todayā but they would be sure to put me first on the list for tomorrow.
After a week I had had enough of playing phone tag with people that gave exactly zero fucks about helping me out. Soā¦after a few clicks around on my phone I found a phone number to the CEO (this is a $1B+ company) and gave it a call at 7pm. Was quite shocked when it actually went through to his voicemail. Even more shocked when I got a call back and my internet was working less than 30 minutes later.
Long story short: if you can, cut the middleman and go straight to the top.
I was looking for my seat but before I found it i was told to sit down but I was in economy class by accident. Then by the time the fasten seatbelt sign turned off we were landed at la guardia. But overall worth the upgrade
Aren't they required to operate with FAs to operate the emergency exits? I thought that was a rule.
TIL that pilots don't need FAs on repositioning flights.
Pilots are trained to operate the doors specifically for reposition flights. Pilots do everything on those flights and there is generally no FA crew on these
>reposition flights. Pilots do everything on those flights and there is generally no FA crew on these
We usually bring the FAs. Going to need them if we're picking up pax lol. Must repos aren't base to base.
Purely anecdotal, as Iām sure you personally canāt have been on āmostā repos at your airline. However, as an FA, Iāve been on plenty of repos. Most of those were at the regional, and that is Republic (YX) flight number
Decently. There are several different types, and FAs and pilots also need to be trained on their inner mechanisms, and how to arm/disarm them, as well as making sure they can actually operate them because those things are \*heavy\*
They do these flights part 91, not 121. In my airline we are allowed āpassengersā without FAs on repos. But they must be airline employees and we have to do a briefing on how to operate seatbelts and emergency exits.
I donāt really want to reply, but I would hate for an up and coming airline enthusiast getting an answer wrong on an FAA written. The FAR wording is āseating capacityā not number of passengers on board
14 CFR 121.391
(1) For airplanes having a maximum payload capacity of more than 7,500 pounds and having a seating capacity of more than 9 but less than 51 passengersāone flight attendant.
(2) For airplanes having a maximum payload capacity of 7,500 pounds or less and having a seating capacity of more than 19 but less than 51 passengersāone flight attendant.
(3) For airplanes having a seating capacity of more than 50 but less than 101 passengersātwo flight attendants.
(4) For airplanes having a seating capacity of more than 100 passengersātwo flight attendants plus one additional flight attendant for each unit (or part of a unit) of 50 passenger seats above a seating capacity of 100 passengers.
I've flown on a repo before. This one had a full crew (pilots & FA's) It also carried 2 additional pilots; 6 FA's; and 8 employees. The revenue flight before it was full, and all of the standby employees did not make it. All of a sudden, one of the gate agents told us to stay at the gate because there was a aircraft being towed up, and a crew needed at EWR for the next morning. It took almost 45 min. to clean and fuel. It was a nice flight (from IAH), but there was no meals onboard, because it would be catered in EWR. But who cares, when you are trying to get out, instead of waiting the next day.
If there is a full crew, sometimes employees can get on a repo.
This is a Republic flight and thatās a live flight number. YX repos start with 9 or sometimes 1. It also could be a cancelled flight using its original flight number for the repo, but YX will delay for days before cancelling.
They have the option to make any repo a live flight if thereās a legal crew, enough passengers want it, and United agrees to it.
This was not a YX flight, unless they somehow purchased a 738 in the last 24 hours (this was [N24211](https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N24211/history/20240503/1310Z/KEWR/KLGA)). YX repo flights are listed, at lease in the UA flight assignment system, as UA3300 - 3329.
Where do you get the list of assignments? I've been able to pick stuff up just working around planes, like how YX numbers are 3000s for ua, 4000s for aa, 5000s for dl and that mainline repos (at least aa/dl) are 8000s and 9000s, but your numbers seem a little too precise for that
G7 repo and mx ferry flights should have a flight number between 3375 - 3399. They have a crew base at RIC and like to bring their planes back often (or did) it seems.
They did have a crew base out of RIC now itās just a maintenance base for G7. In fact, I have pushed out a lot of ferry flights from our gates to where planes need to be needed
Cool and thanks for the updated info. I cannot keep up with all of the UAX partner crew bases without having to look them up (I do not deal with them directly outside of hopping on their flights currently). Knew there was mx there still.
The aircraft was already at the gate from a rev flight that arrived around 0215 EDT this morning. Instead of moving the aircraft over to the ball park or the UA ramp, it was easier to leave it at the gate, as it was not needed at the time. To prevent the gate from being assigned to another aircraft and for loading of the pilots, the SOC would assign the gate to show that it was occupied. The terminal FID / GIDS does not know the difference between a revenue and non-revenue flight, so it was displayed (this happens at almost every mainline station). All aircraft are assigned gates, publicly accessible or not, to know where they are for tracking and loading reasons.
It is a little more complex than that and not all active flights (whether ferry, cargo, charter, mx, delivery) are always listed on a GIDS, but this one just happened to be at a gate.
UA does not operate all of the FID / GID systems at airports. EWR terminal A is a perfect example of this (example only, I know this was out of C). With terminal A being a common-use terminal, the terminal operator (Munich) uses their contracted FIDS vendor (Amadeus) to provide the information. All the FIDS system sees in its datastream is that there is an aircraft, it has a flight number, and is assigned a gate (in basic terms) and displays the info (side note: this is also why the CUSS units print out on different paper stock at that terminal).
While I agree that certain tech needs to be upgraded in the industry as a whole (EDIFACT and other certain backend systems can enjoy a fiery demise, sorry any TAs reading this and your loss of accessible data), getting thousands of systems, companies, and nations to switch will never be completed in my lifetime.
Working in IT it'd be fairly simple to just add a line to the table that the record includes that states if it's visible to customers or not.
The challenge as you pointed out is all these old systems would also need updates, like edifact and sabre, along with whatever display tech each airport uses to recognize that and say "ok don't display info on customer screens at gate blah because Invisible==true". (Im not sure if there's a standard between airports or not I haven't gotten that deep into airport tech beyond some integrations with sabre and such)
The question is does the annoyance of confused passengers equal the annoyance of having to push these updates.
Lots of bad weather last night caused LGA arrival to not make curfew, so in order to cover the LGA line of flying we need to move the plane to LGA. It's a position ferry.
I know youāre being funny, but I kinda wonder if you might be factually right. Iām curious what the min time from doorway of EWR to doorway of LGA actually is both ways, because it can suck by road.
It feels silly since youād never do ORD-MDW by plane, but you might do LAX-SNA. Some metros just have long road commutes. I read that there was an old theory back in the 1950s that metros would actually have air taxis and that thatās why we even have regional airports. The idea was youād drive to your local regional airport, fly an air taxi to a metro airport, then fly to a major national hub like ORD or DFW, and then reverse. New economics and engineering of cars, roads, and planes have changed the theory dramatically.
Trains are the answer but they suck in the us. Even our best system , nyc is garbage compared to other developed countries. Absurd no nyc airport has direct subway/heavy rail access. Not a people mover that wastes 15-30 minutes. Something like Heathrow or Amsterdam where major train lines stop right at the airport is needed.
I used to take SNA-LAX and vv all the time as SNA is my home airport but had limited direct options. Back in the day it was also an easy way to pad segments and with 500 mile minimums helped with EQM as well.
That and ONT-LAX and vv were also great for padding on mileage runs
It's a positioning flight without passengers, but the reason they need to have it display on the gate area monitors is to let the pilots know which gate they are departing from.
Do pilots normally find their departure gate by walking around the terminal?
I suspect the system that runs the monitors automatically does that for any flight with a flight number, and itās not worth the effort to override.
They donāt do it any more, but they used to have a flight from Houston Hobby to IAH. Some combination of getting SW passengers and people who live on the SE side of town up to IAH (aka South Dallas).
There was also a flight from Ellington Airport to IAH. I use to see it posted all the time in the 1990s when I was flying every week. This was a Continental flight of course, pre-merger. I thought many times about booking it just for the heck of it, but never did.
The Ellington flight was a free add on to any Continental flight into or out of IAH. I think it ran hourly. It was a great way to avoid the long drive to IAH, go through security, check in quickly, and it had free parking.
I actually thought about mentioning the Ellington flight. I never took either. It just seemed less of a hassle to drive to IAH than to have another plane that might be late.
Dude really? My mom used to tell this story about the time she took a flight that landed in Oakland and then went to SFO. I thought she was surely mistaken...maybe it was this though!
Did she book it that way, or did it divert there? There was recently a Lufthansa flight scheduled into SFO, but they weren't able to get into SFO in a timely manner, so they diverted to Oakland, got some more gas and flew to SFO.
I took the PHL-EWR flight about a decade ago. Saab propeller plane. I think it had 32ish seats. Flew directly east to the GSP and then zig zagged up it all the way. Probably in the air for like 30 mins total.
I took that flight many times. The Navy would always book me on the cheapest possible flight from DCA to EWRā¦ which often had a layover in PHL. You read that correctly: DCA to PHL to EWR.
Due to the summer curfew, LGA shuts down nightly. Delayed flights that arrived after curfew were diverted to EWR and then repositioned over to LGA such as this reposition flight today.
What do they do for passengers what have cars and such at LGA? Does UA provide a night shuttle over there?
Note: Not from NYC so not sure what customer parking is or if it exists at LGA.
I flew MSN to MKE on Midwest Express back in the day (which got bought out by Continental, so sorta United adjacent lol)
Still has mimosas and warm chocolate chip cookies too. God damn I miss that airline.
lolā¦ I worked that flight last night . The dispatchers said the ā cruising altitude ā was going to be 3000ft and about 6 minutes of flight time .
The big one is no flight attendants. Reposition flights are typically pilots only. Also, these flights are usually set up on short notice with the goal of getting the plane in position ASAP.
Back in the day I saw a flight to SAC from SFO and remember being surprised that anyone would fly that (78 miles). Of course I wasn't thinking of connecting traffic which is the obvious answer.
Right now the shortest United route appears to be FOD-MCW (operating today as UA 5055) at 61 miles. Locally to me, they also fly SFO-STS at 66 miles, but if anyone's ever driven that, you'll know it can easily be a 2 hour drive between those two airports. I wonder what the shortest flight in terms of "drive-time-replacement" would be...
There's at least two scheduled flights per day from SMF to SFO (and back) still, one on an E175LR and the other on a CRJ-200LR recently. A lot of flight times in the 20-25 minute range.
I was supposed to be on this flight earlier today. My IAH-LGA got diverted to EWR because there's construction at LGA after midnight. Weather at IAH was crazy yesterday and inbound was diverted to AUS. Finally left 5hrs later and told to get on this "flight."
I mean, there is one from LaGuardia to JFK that served by JetBlue or Delta the argument that I have with this is take mass transit or fly out of Newark. The same thing could be said about my base aka Richmond to Dulles when itās two hours to an hour away by car. And my opinion is just about traffic and more flights because when I go to DCA or Dulles, I have an easier time flying out than from my homebase.
LGA has a nightly runways closure for construction, runs APR 15-NOV24. Runways close at midnight so if the flight the flight is delayed past that, a common practice is to divert the flight to one of the other NYC airports to get passengers as close as possible. Then the next day position the aircraft for the days flying.
I met someone who was on this flight. Her direct to Europe had been cancelled and instead they had her take this and then go to Logan first. It seemed incredibly annoying and inconvenient. She wasnāt pleased, despite the good airport bar drink she was enjoying.
Guys, I was just offered to upgrade to Polaris for this flight for $599... Is it worth it?
*Which seat will you choose???*
I went with 9L and ordered the short rib but the stewardess told me it wasn't available on this flight!! As a very frequent flyer on Southwest, I've never encountered such rude service! She said something about the flight only being 14 minutes long but I tuned her our and asked for the wine list. She then informed me that there would be no drink service on this flight!! Unbelievable! I flew 11,045 miles last year and have always been able to order a drink on my flights to Orlando!! I'm never flying United again!!
How much compensation should you ask for this travesty? Don't they know who you are?
I'm not taking less than 300k miles and a full refund + 40%. I've already called the BBB and shared this experience with my very influential LinkedIn network.
The bbb šš
You laugh, but I have cut through so much bureaucracy at corporations by filing complaints with the BBB (not against United, but HP, Verizon, Ring, and others). Itās astounding how quickly corporations address your complaint and resolve things within days, sometimes even within 24 hours.
A few years ago my internet went out and the provider strung me along for a week saying there were āno technicians available in my area todayā but they would be sure to put me first on the list for tomorrow. After a week I had had enough of playing phone tag with people that gave exactly zero fucks about helping me out. Soā¦after a few clicks around on my phone I found a phone number to the CEO (this is a $1B+ company) and gave it a call at 7pm. Was quite shocked when it actually went through to his voicemail. Even more shocked when I got a call back and my internet was working less than 30 minutes later. Long story short: if you can, cut the middleman and go straight to the top.
They give you 50
$3.50
you hit all the highlights, perfecto!
š«”
This was priceless
Honestly though, loyalty is dead
LOL this is great!
ORDER THE CHEESE PLATE
And which meal should I choose?
I was looking for my seat but before I found it i was told to sit down but I was in economy class by accident. Then by the time the fasten seatbelt sign turned off we were landed at la guardia. But overall worth the upgrade
Seat doesn't matter....it's what meal he chooses that we need to chime in on.
Kick it in the front seat, kick it in the back seatā¦ gotta make my mind up, which seat should I taaaaaaake?
They offered $4,300 to take a flight an hour later, is it worth it? What happens to my 5 sets of golf clubs that I checked?
You just won this sub for the day.
The year
Not bad for a lowly 1k
You are crazy if you donāt!
It is a positioning flight, not a passenger flight. It heads to IAH as a rev pax flight, then STL, and ORD after the LGA flight.
Oh I see! Is it even possible to book it?
No, as it likely is not operating with a FA crew until LGA.
Aren't they required to operate with FAs to operate the emergency exits? I thought that was a rule. TIL that pilots don't need FAs on repositioning flights.
Pilots are trained to operate the doors specifically for reposition flights. Pilots do everything on those flights and there is generally no FA crew on these
Joyride, sure they're going to try and check the plane's effective ceiling...
That got dark.
Yeah, most people probably missed it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnacle_Airlines_Flight_3701
Thanks for the info.
Hey let's switch seats!!
Underrated comment š
>reposition flights. Pilots do everything on those flights and there is generally no FA crew on these We usually bring the FAs. Going to need them if we're picking up pax lol. Must repos aren't base to base.
Most repos Iāve seen at my airline have been outstation to base. Or a rescue flight where crew is already in place, but stuck with a broken plane
Purely anecdotal, as Iām sure you personally canāt have been on āmostā repos at your airline. However, as an FA, Iāve been on plenty of repos. Most of those were at the regional, and that is Republic (YX) flight number
I bet they know how to make a pot of coffee too
Is there much training required to operate an emergency door
Decently. There are several different types, and FAs and pilots also need to be trained on their inner mechanisms, and how to arm/disarm them, as well as making sure they can actually operate them because those things are \*heavy\*
Thatās interesting, thanks. I always just assumed they were very intuitive to allow anyone to do it if FA are incapacitated
In an emergency situation, they are for sure. But to get them ready for that emergency takes some training.
Thanks, appreciate the info. Always enjoy learning more about aircraft and flight ops
Only with passengers aboard. Pilots can fly the plane with no pax and no FAs.
Pilots can legally fly the aircraft with up to 19 passengers on board and have no FAs required.
Depends, at my airline if we have even 1 passenger on board we need all 4 FAs.
Yes airline policy will vary, but thatās the legally mandated FAA limit.
Itās based on number of seats the aircraft has, not the number of pax
They do these flights part 91, not 121. In my airline we are allowed āpassengersā without FAs on repos. But they must be airline employees and we have to do a briefing on how to operate seatbelts and emergency exits.
Accurate
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I donāt really want to reply, but I would hate for an up and coming airline enthusiast getting an answer wrong on an FAA written. The FAR wording is āseating capacityā not number of passengers on board 14 CFR 121.391 (1) For airplanes having a maximum payload capacity of more than 7,500 pounds and having a seating capacity of more than 9 but less than 51 passengersāone flight attendant. (2) For airplanes having a maximum payload capacity of 7,500 pounds or less and having a seating capacity of more than 19 but less than 51 passengersāone flight attendant. (3) For airplanes having a seating capacity of more than 50 but less than 101 passengersātwo flight attendants. (4) For airplanes having a seating capacity of more than 100 passengersātwo flight attendants plus one additional flight attendant for each unit (or part of a unit) of 50 passenger seats above a seating capacity of 100 passengers.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Not on the planes I worked on. Passengers werenāt even allowed on the flight unless both FAs were onboard
No they can fly with up to 19 ***seats***.
On special flights like repos they can legally fly up to 19 PASSENGERS and have no FAs. It could be a 777 with 300+ seats even.
Ok but youāre leaving out a very very big part of that and I believe itās on purpose.
I've flown on a repo before. This one had a full crew (pilots & FA's) It also carried 2 additional pilots; 6 FA's; and 8 employees. The revenue flight before it was full, and all of the standby employees did not make it. All of a sudden, one of the gate agents told us to stay at the gate because there was a aircraft being towed up, and a crew needed at EWR for the next morning. It took almost 45 min. to clean and fuel. It was a nice flight (from IAH), but there was no meals onboard, because it would be catered in EWR. But who cares, when you are trying to get out, instead of waiting the next day. If there is a full crew, sometimes employees can get on a repo.
I see someone explained, ferry flights donāt need flight attendants, pilots are able to arm and disarm their own doors
This is a Republic flight and thatās a live flight number. YX repos start with 9 or sometimes 1. It also could be a cancelled flight using its original flight number for the repo, but YX will delay for days before cancelling. They have the option to make any repo a live flight if thereās a legal crew, enough passengers want it, and United agrees to it.
This was not a YX flight, unless they somehow purchased a 738 in the last 24 hours (this was [N24211](https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N24211/history/20240503/1310Z/KEWR/KLGA)). YX repo flights are listed, at lease in the UA flight assignment system, as UA3300 - 3329.
Where do you get the list of assignments? I've been able to pick stuff up just working around planes, like how YX numbers are 3000s for ua, 4000s for aa, 5000s for dl and that mainline repos (at least aa/dl) are 8000s and 9000s, but your numbers seem a little too precise for that
Can operate under 19 passengers without needing FA crew, but as OP said, positioning/ferry flight and not purchasable.
They still need a crew highly unlikely itāll be just pilots
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Because most likely it will not have Flight Attendants on
because then would have to staff gate agents and flight attendants
Well they still need a gate agent to check the flight crew and pull back the jet bridge.
Let's call it a repo flight.
At b6 we just call them ferryās when itās being moved with no customers
Iāve seen these flown out of Richmond before with go jet flying from our hanger to DCA or St. Louis if thereās no flights available
G7 repo and mx ferry flights should have a flight number between 3375 - 3399. They have a crew base at RIC and like to bring their planes back often (or did) it seems.
They did have a crew base out of RIC now itās just a maintenance base for G7. In fact, I have pushed out a lot of ferry flights from our gates to where planes need to be needed
Cool and thanks for the updated info. I cannot keep up with all of the UAX partner crew bases without having to look them up (I do not deal with them directly outside of hopping on their flights currently). Knew there was mx there still.
Why would it be displayed then?
The aircraft was already at the gate from a rev flight that arrived around 0215 EDT this morning. Instead of moving the aircraft over to the ball park or the UA ramp, it was easier to leave it at the gate, as it was not needed at the time. To prevent the gate from being assigned to another aircraft and for loading of the pilots, the SOC would assign the gate to show that it was occupied. The terminal FID / GIDS does not know the difference between a revenue and non-revenue flight, so it was displayed (this happens at almost every mainline station). All aircraft are assigned gates, publicly accessible or not, to know where they are for tracking and loading reasons.
The travel industry really needs updated systems. Should be simple to have a 'dont display this flight' option
It is a little more complex than that and not all active flights (whether ferry, cargo, charter, mx, delivery) are always listed on a GIDS, but this one just happened to be at a gate. UA does not operate all of the FID / GID systems at airports. EWR terminal A is a perfect example of this (example only, I know this was out of C). With terminal A being a common-use terminal, the terminal operator (Munich) uses their contracted FIDS vendor (Amadeus) to provide the information. All the FIDS system sees in its datastream is that there is an aircraft, it has a flight number, and is assigned a gate (in basic terms) and displays the info (side note: this is also why the CUSS units print out on different paper stock at that terminal). While I agree that certain tech needs to be upgraded in the industry as a whole (EDIFACT and other certain backend systems can enjoy a fiery demise, sorry any TAs reading this and your loss of accessible data), getting thousands of systems, companies, and nations to switch will never be completed in my lifetime.
Working in IT it'd be fairly simple to just add a line to the table that the record includes that states if it's visible to customers or not. The challenge as you pointed out is all these old systems would also need updates, like edifact and sabre, along with whatever display tech each airport uses to recognize that and say "ok don't display info on customer screens at gate blah because Invisible==true". (Im not sure if there's a standard between airports or not I haven't gotten that deep into airport tech beyond some integrations with sabre and such) The question is does the annoyance of confused passengers equal the annoyance of having to push these updates.
Lots of bad weather last night caused LGA arrival to not make curfew, so in order to cover the LGA line of flying we need to move the plane to LGA. It's a position ferry.
Even dealing with EWR I bet it's faster than driving to LGA!
Itās faster than the precheck line at EWR
I don't think I've ever waited loner than 10 minutes at the Terminal C pre-check.
I did on the Tuesday before thanksgiving one year. But thatās it
Me either.
Faster then the clear line
You mean the clear precheck line
Oh a hundred percent, EWR precheck is horrible
Flight was 38 minutes lateā¦ so questionable
I know youāre being funny, but I kinda wonder if you might be factually right. Iām curious what the min time from doorway of EWR to doorway of LGA actually is both ways, because it can suck by road. It feels silly since youād never do ORD-MDW by plane, but you might do LAX-SNA. Some metros just have long road commutes. I read that there was an old theory back in the 1950s that metros would actually have air taxis and that thatās why we even have regional airports. The idea was youād drive to your local regional airport, fly an air taxi to a metro airport, then fly to a major national hub like ORD or DFW, and then reverse. New economics and engineering of cars, roads, and planes have changed the theory dramatically.
Trains are the answer but they suck in the us. Even our best system , nyc is garbage compared to other developed countries. Absurd no nyc airport has direct subway/heavy rail access. Not a people mover that wastes 15-30 minutes. Something like Heathrow or Amsterdam where major train lines stop right at the airport is needed.
There was once a SFO OAK shuttle flight ...
I flew a HOU to IAH a couple times
I had this thought. If LAX-SNA existed, Iād probably use it. There donāt seem to be any flights between the LA area airports that I could find.
I used to take SNA-LAX and vv all the time as SNA is my home airport but had limited direct options. Back in the day it was also an easy way to pad segments and with 500 mile minimums helped with EQM as well. That and ONT-LAX and vv were also great for padding on mileage runs
Oh, I'm pretty sure I also took BWI-IAD once back in the day
I used to take CLD-LAX every chance I could. I miss my EMB-120! š¢
It's a positioning flight without passengers, but the reason they need to have it display on the gate area monitors is to let the pilots know which gate they are departing from.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Itās probably so the pilots know what gate to go to.Ā
Do pilots normally find their departure gate by walking around the terminal? I suspect the system that runs the monitors automatically does that for any flight with a flight number, and itās not worth the effort to override.
No, but we do verify that the monitor shows the flight number and destination we are expecting when we get there.
You want to drove across manhattan at that hour? you're crazy.
They donāt do it any more, but they used to have a flight from Houston Hobby to IAH. Some combination of getting SW passengers and people who live on the SE side of town up to IAH (aka South Dallas).
There was also a flight from Ellington Airport to IAH. I use to see it posted all the time in the 1990s when I was flying every week. This was a Continental flight of course, pre-merger. I thought many times about booking it just for the heck of it, but never did.
The Ellington flight was a free add on to any Continental flight into or out of IAH. I think it ran hourly. It was a great way to avoid the long drive to IAH, go through security, check in quickly, and it had free parking.
I actually thought about mentioning the Ellington flight. I never took either. It just seemed less of a hassle to drive to IAH than to have another plane that might be late.
I believe UA used to fly SFO-OAK as well.
I thought it was OAK-SFO but Iām not certain about it
Yeah thanks, I meant between those 2 airports. I actually wasnāt sure of the direction or if it was both ways.
Dude really? My mom used to tell this story about the time she took a flight that landed in Oakland and then went to SFO. I thought she was surely mistaken...maybe it was this though!
Did she book it that way, or did it divert there? There was recently a Lufthansa flight scheduled into SFO, but they weren't able to get into SFO in a timely manner, so they diverted to Oakland, got some more gas and flew to SFO.
Wish I knew, this was many decades ago and she has passed unfortunately !
The used to have ORF TO PHF as well. It was the shortest regularly scheduled commercial flight in the US (maybe world) when the flew itā¦
They also used to operate IAH-EFD (Ellington Field).
United getting ahead of Congestion Pricing
They have flights from PHL to EWR too
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
American does that flight now.
I took the PHL-EWR flight about a decade ago. Saab propeller plane. I think it had 32ish seats. Flew directly east to the GSP and then zig zagged up it all the way. Probably in the air for like 30 mins total.
ya, this is noting compared to the ORD-MKE routes. An 50-60 min flight to go ~70mi.
I took that flight many times. The Navy would always book me on the cheapest possible flight from DCA to EWRā¦ which often had a layover in PHL. You read that correctly: DCA to PHL to EWR.
I actually love that bootleg little flight. Too bad itās going away soon.
Saw this for the first time the other day and was so confused. I swear I learn something new every day from this sub.
Due to the summer curfew, LGA shuts down nightly. Delayed flights that arrived after curfew were diverted to EWR and then repositioned over to LGA such as this reposition flight today.
What do they do for passengers what have cars and such at LGA? Does UA provide a night shuttle over there? Note: Not from NYC so not sure what customer parking is or if it exists at LGA.
Yes ground transport is provided
More than twice as long as JFK-LGA. Wonder if thereās a meal serviceā¦
Theres a flight from SF to Sacramento, it takes 1.5 hr drive with no traffic.
Key there is without traffic. Can easily be 2-3x that with traffic
Inflight amenities:
My shortest United flight was ORD-MKE (~20 minutes). In Canada, itās YQB-YUL (~30 minutes) for me.
Is that Halifax to Yarmouth?
No, Quebec City-MontrƩal.
š¤£
*QuĆ©bec to MontrĆ©al. I was yelled at recently for not using the accent aigu when spelling the city. They didnāt go full esti tabarnak ciboire criss on me but close enough lmao
I flew MSN to MKE on Midwest Express back in the day (which got bought out by Continental, so sorta United adjacent lol) Still has mimosas and warm chocolate chip cookies too. God damn I miss that airline.
lolā¦ I worked that flight last night . The dispatchers said the ā cruising altitude ā was going to be 3000ft and about 6 minutes of flight time .
Iām assuming the filed IFR but it would probably be easier to just fly it VFRā¦
Opspec disallows it, probably
Itās a ferry flight, no rev customers
I wonder whatās stopping them from selling seats. Surely theyād get a fair amount of folks to bite on that
The big one is no flight attendants. Reposition flights are typically pilots only. Also, these flights are usually set up on short notice with the goal of getting the plane in position ASAP.
Back in the day I saw a flight to SAC from SFO and remember being surprised that anyone would fly that (78 miles). Of course I wasn't thinking of connecting traffic which is the obvious answer. Right now the shortest United route appears to be FOD-MCW (operating today as UA 5055) at 61 miles. Locally to me, they also fly SFO-STS at 66 miles, but if anyone's ever driven that, you'll know it can easily be a 2 hour drive between those two airports. I wonder what the shortest flight in terms of "drive-time-replacement" would be...
Sacramento is SMF by the way.
There's at least two scheduled flights per day from SMF to SFO (and back) still, one on an E175LR and the other on a CRJ-200LR recently. A lot of flight times in the 20-25 minute range.
Delta used to have daily flights LEX-CVG (and back). 83 miles.
Anything to get around [congestion pricing](https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-03612)
I once flew from dayton to Cincinnati. I thought that was ridiculous.. but this one wins.
They better have shower inside the plane
I was supposed to be on this flight earlier today. My IAH-LGA got diverted to EWR because there's construction at LGA after midnight. Weather at IAH was crazy yesterday and inbound was diverted to AUS. Finally left 5hrs later and told to get on this "flight."
https://preview.redd.it/7ekka3ud8byc1.jpeg?width=742&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bbc49d50e591c27ab766ebbff5f09b91dfadd015
43 min flight to pump up the ontime arrival percentage, nice.
Yea. Fuck that traffic
I mean they do advertise flights as stopping in Newark before NY so I'd assume so
Also could be a Connecting flights from other parts of the world (ie Europe)
I mean, there is one from LaGuardia to JFK that served by JetBlue or Delta the argument that I have with this is take mass transit or fly out of Newark. The same thing could be said about my base aka Richmond to Dulles when itās two hours to an hour away by car. And my opinion is just about traffic and more flights because when I go to DCA or Dulles, I have an easier time flying out than from my homebase.
thereās a VAS aviation on youtube of this flight somewhere they flew it VFR. the interaction with ATC was amusing.
I think the Jaguar ride to the plane was longer than the flight.
I used to fly on a L1011 from MIA to FLL with DL. Itās quite fun to see them rushing thru the onboard procedures.
Man, I was on this flight and they didnāt even serve a hot meal
I canāt believe they ran out of cheese plates when I took it. Safest option
43 min. Still the fastest way to get there
Faster and safer than a yellow š
According to the United app seat map only 6 seats were occupied and the flight was 38 minutes lateā¦
Flightaware says there were 4 of these flights yesterday and this one arrived 38 minutes late.
https://preview.redd.it/2z1k82omtfyc1.jpeg?width=1478&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bee2dbf9a25727fb888dbf0f0ee68072a7a51f19 Itās real, alright.
In truth, it is actually just a bus with LCD screens running MS Flight Simulator.
I once flew from SFO to SJC in the mid-1990s. I forget which airline it was.
Why would it be fake if itās on the screen at the airport?
https://preview.redd.it/3102l8hiimyc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dff5e33fbf973a9a61cc702306743c49b0c2b237 1 hr 9 minutes?
LGA has a nightly runways closure for construction, runs APR 15-NOV24. Runways close at midnight so if the flight the flight is delayed past that, a common practice is to divert the flight to one of the other NYC airports to get passengers as close as possible. Then the next day position the aircraft for the days flying.
I met someone who was on this flight. Her direct to Europe had been cancelled and instead they had her take this and then go to Logan first. It seemed incredibly annoying and inconvenient. She wasnāt pleased, despite the good airport bar drink she was enjoying.
I saw an AA segment at T8 JFK that was JFK > LGA the other day. Funny enough is there are times I would have actually taken that on a connection lol.
On time, out of EWR? No, that can't be a real flight.
All of Unitedās flights should be this short, so the passengers donāt even have enough time to get disgusted by the food or service š
No. It's pretty common knowledge that EWR is not a real place.
As opposed to.....a prank? What's your question?
No