Topic of the Week: United Grounds 757s

United had to ground its fleet of 757s this week because of a check that it failed to complete on a computer a few years back. Any thoughts on this?

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Brett Avatar

17 responses to “Topic of the Week: United Grounds 757s”

  1. DGS Avatar

    The CO 757s probably laughed. They may be fatties, but they’re not as dumb as the United birds.

    1. Nicholas Barnard Avatar

      I wonder if there were any instances of CO 757s subbing in, or United swapping in some A321s or something along those lines..

      I remember reading once where CO had to take a 757-300 out and replaced it with a 767-200 and a C200 from XJet….

  2. Ted Avatar

    Geek Squad must have been real busy for a couple of days.

  3. Dave Avatar
    Dave

    If it wasn’t for this little merger thing, who knows if they would’ve caught this problem. I just imagine them going down the checklist comparing the UA and CO 757s and then they realized – they forgot to run the Windows Update.

  4. Hermann Avatar

    Shoudn´t there be a process that keeps track of requirements and deadlines to plan maintenance accordingly? Makes people think like if they miss this, what else do they miss?

    1. David SF eastbay Avatar

      Hermann, yes a computer keeps track of all that. Oh wait, hmmmm…….lol

      1. Sanjeev M Avatar
        Sanjeev M

        Well, Watson was too tired to keep track after three days of INTENSE Jeopardy with Ken Jennings and Rutter.

        LOL have a great weekend everyone!

  5. David SF eastbay Avatar

    I saw one new item that UA said not many flights were canceled due to the grounding. Sounds hard to believe that grounding 96 airplanes caused only 15 flights to be canceled, I think that was the number I read.

    1. Harry Avatar

      overnight checks

  6. Dal Steve Avatar

    …and the fine is? I mean American and Southwest were both fined after mx lapses and received multi-million dollar fines, I wonder what Uniteds will be since these have been flying like this for 5+ years. How many revenue flights have these 96 planes flown?

    1. Harry Avatar

      Generally, no fine if you catch and report yourself

      1. Dave Avatar

        Not necessarily. Self disclosure can mitigate a fine, but in the past few years, these fines have not been entirely dismissed.

  7. malbarda Avatar

    And apparently the grounding of these planes did not adversely affect UA’s schedule. That would indicate to me that UA has a few planes too many…

    1. Hunter Avatar

      The checks were done overnight. Most of the 757s in UA’s fleet don’t fly first flights of the morning. The check takes about 90 minutes per plan (in some cases, they said it takes 45 minutes). So, impact to the fleet was minimal.

  8. Jon Avatar
    Jon

    Typical United. Cover up the problem or cut corners to save money. Took a merger with a better managed company to make United more honest.

  9. Tour Avatar

    Not necessarily. Self disclosure can mitigate a fine, but in the past few years, these fines have not been entirely dismissed.

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