Lanceair

Anyone wondering if some of this melt-down is due to the shifting of flying from EWR to ( ORD, DEN, IAH, MCO)? Is some of this the chickens coming home to roost? Management pushed EWR flying out into the central hubs to get some NB upgrades, well, they got the upgrades, however, looks like the dominos fall pretty fast when you have to ship in all your crews? 👨‍✈️🤷‍♂️

UALinIAH

I personally don’t think so. Management is addicted to EWR like crack. They have IAD right down the road to funnel connecting traffic through but chose to keep EWR at max capacity. At the merger for example we had JFK and EWR. JFK was closed post merger and EWR increased. IAH pre merger flew many more destinations like CDG, had nonstop to SYD post merger etc. ORD was a large 747 and 777 base. Now ORD is a shell with only a few 787s. They’ve streamlined a majority of the traffic through EWR and SFO (one of the fastest shrinking large cities in the USA) and wonder why things go wrong when there is a hiccup. The only mid continent base with more traffic post merger is DEN. EWR has historically been a commuter base. When weather is bad it doesn’t matter what base the crews are attached to, the majority hop a plane to get to work. IAH/DEN and to a smaller degree ORD have a much higher % of peeps simply driving in to start their trips. EWR/PHL/JFK/LGA all are affected with a single large cell. It’s not like having more EWR based pilots mean more locals driving to the airport when things go wrong. If that was the case there wouldn’t be any EWR unfilled CA slots.

I get what you’re saying. IAH is where they’re still able to fill CA slots so they’ve artificially increased it. The issue is still EWR and getting crews in/out IMO

JurgenKlopp

So the billions Port Authority dumped into Newark term C and now A was just a waste. Cool rant bro. Let’s just rely on Queens instead. Worked out great for Lucchese family…

three1five

NYC has been eating airlines alive for decades… JetBlue 15 years or so ago in the winter, DL had some prolific summer NYC cancellation events pre Covid and again last year, and EWR seems to always be on the edge. When the tower closed during the cold snap this past Dec 24, we took it in the shorts then too.

is this meltdown worse than normal or does it feel worse because of the contract situation? Honest question.

Bahamasflyer

OK….so we just let him spout off misleading info to the public and not challenge him at all on TV? OK got it😵😵

RaginCajun

Let me ask the pilot group this:

Would your mindset and/or behavior have been any different during the last 6 days if operating under a new UPA given the same meltdown conditions?

Spartacusbob

This is not an unfair assessment.

Airhoss

Some of the “hero’s” on here are are more dense than depleted uranium. Having been caught up in the BS this last week, I can say without he slightest hesitation that this I 100% an ATC/United management caused melt down. When my connecting airplane gets to me 5 or 6 hours late because it was hung up in EWR or IAD on a ATC ground stop that’s got nothing to do with me or the rest of the UAL pilot group.

Tropical

UALPA should have a press conference. They don't talk about the contract, they tell the customers that the pilots are working overtime and doing everything they can to help, and that the union doesn't condone management being asleep at the switch. DALPA did this last summer for our meltdown and it got great approval ratings for the customers. All summer long they were cheering us on in our contract fight.

Lanceair

A lot of what you said is true, EWR has always been a **** show, even when properly staffed with pilots, ramp crew and controllers. I think the difference now is that the EWR 737 has shrunk by about 100 crews.(as an example, I cannot speak to the other BES) The domino effect of that is less crews actually on reserve (whether sitting at home or in the crash pad) less crews available to drive in (think 5 hour radius), that gets you Delaware, Northern VA, central PA, Upstate NY, Southern ME to the Cape. Many of the folks in that radius usually commute in on a jet, however, when offered SRM with conflict, it wouldn’t take too much math to figure out a long drive to NJ would be lucrative. When you are artificially pumping crews into EWR to fly the schedule, and the inevitable CF hits, it becomes impossible to recover the operation because all your crews are stuck on the tarmac, waiting in the crew room or searching for hotels.

In another twist of irony, if you look at the NB CA positions across the country, they have all been homogenized, so the historically junior bases, SFO, LAX and EWR, are no longer so junior.

If you remember a couple years ago, it was managements plan to fly Hub flying out the Hub, thus isolating problems in the system and solving IROPs locally, instead of relying on other bases. I think the vacant CA positions blew up that idea, so management had to 180, and search for EWR CAs in MCO, LAS, ORD, IAH and DEN.

Now that management has tried every other way to solve this problem, there is another, rather ONE option left, perhaps the easiest and most logical answer, and now after four straight days of IROP, the most economical answer…💵🫴👨‍✈️😁