Message for United - You still need some fuel

Frustrating flight home yesterday through Chicago using United Express (United Airlines contracted out regional jet service). I realized that there were serious weather problems that created backups, so delays were not unanticipated. Still, I wasn't quite ready for the way that things unfolded.

[As a long aside, I must mention that, as always, I would appreciate a bit more honesty at the airport. Example: An already much delayed flight gets pushed back again from 2:45 to 3:15. The reason given - the plane still needs a copilot and a flight attendant. When might a pair be available? Well, there are a pair that have been assigned to this flight, but the plane that they are currently serving has yet to arrive because of flight delays. When might their arrival be expected? Sometime after 4:00. Why then did you change the expected departure from 2:45 to 3:15 if you know that there will be no crew until 4:00 (or later)?]

All of that is an aside to the main event, however. At 5:30 the plane finally pulls away from the concourse to take a frustrated set of passengers on the final leg of their journey. The pilot announces that we are about twelfth in line for takeoff. (That admittedly is a ways back, but not too surprising for a busy airport experiencing a day of backlogged flights due to early morning bad weather.) The pilot also announces that we should not be alarmed as he turns the jet engines off an on as we move up in that he is trying to conserve fuel. After about twenty minutes (again this is a bit of time, but not all that long, nothing that should go unanticipated at O'Hare) we are about second in line when the plane starts a looooong taxi. I am wondering what's going on. Finally the pilot announces that we no longer have enough fuel to complete our flight so he needs to go back to the terminal to get more fuel. Huh?

In the end, it took about an hour and twenty five minutes (our original wait, refueling, getting renewed permission to take off, waiting in the line of planes a second time) before we took off on the twenty minute flight. What's worse is that all that time that we were waiting for a copilot and a flight attendent to arrive (that took hours) the pilot had asked that the plane be refueled saying it was getting low, but United refused saying that he should have enough.

Flying isn't what it used to be.

It was probably the regional carriers ops that refused to provide more fuel. But the face of it looks like it was UA. It's hard to imagine that ops would deny a request from the pilot of the plane, since the pilot is the one who is ultimately responsible for the flight and safety. But FT is full of odd stories about some of UAs regional carriers. Mesa seems to be the one that gets the most complaints.

Do you know who operated the flight? Was it Mesa?

-David

Sounds more like they didn't want to pay the high O'Hare prices for fuel and was hoping to buy up at their next destination. We do that all the time with our cars, when we're driving between Milwaukee and Iowa. Anytime we can milk a tank to Iowa - - or top off there before heading into Cheeseland - - we do it to save typically 20-30cents per gallon!

Icarus said:

It was probably the regional carriers ops that refused to provide more fuel...
Do you know who operated the flight? Was it Mesa?

-David

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In this case, Mesa provided the longer leg of our flight. Trans States was responsible for the Chicago fiasco.

I am sure that one of the reasons we had our original long wait for someone to compliment our flight crew was that it could not be any available co-pilot and flight attendant, but had to be someone connected with Trans States. There are not too many such people.

This is one of the hidden problems with the hub system. When the major carriers farm out the regional operations, it severely limits any flexibility when weather problems occur.

Timeshare Von said:

Sounds more like they didn't want to pay the high O'Hare prices for fuel ...

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That was one of two possibilities my wife and I thought of. The other was that they did not want the plane to take off with a full compliment of fuel because that would have added weight to the plane. Regardless, whoever made the decision in this case ended up costing Trans States a lot of money for fuel (the plane burned up a bunch of fuel on the tarmac plus the plane still had to be refueled in O'Hare).

To be honest, I don't think that there should be any flights from our final destination (Milwaukee) to O'Hare. No one in there right mind would fly that distance to just go to Chicago. It not only would be an expensive air ticket, but terribly time inefficient. You can get to Chicago by any other means faster and cheaper.

So our plane routes only reason for being is to serve as a feeder for United flights elsewhere. It would make so much more economic and ecological sense if we were allowed to take a more distant flight from our airport of origin (there are many) and then switch airlines to finish off our flight to our final destination (Portland Maine). But because airlines no longer want to share fees, we have created a system that endangers passengers' abilities to successfully fly where they need to (I can cite tons of problems that people have had making connections with regional jets to hubs), but wastes a tremendous amount of fuel. My experience flying from Portland to Milwaukee is just one example of many.