JetFlyer06

Saw UAL 803 (a 777 going Dulles-Narita) dumping fuel and I believe returning to Dulles yesterday over upstate NY. I looked on UAL's site and it said the flight was delayed until the next morning to due crew (rest?) issues. Anyone know what happened? That's a pretty big mistake if they took off and had to dump 1,000s of pounds of fuel due to someone timing out enroute, etc. Just curious if anyone had the scoop. Thanks in advance.

Jet Man

I'm going to guess the plane went mechanical CAUSING the divert, THEN the crew timed out. Just a guess!

Lambourne

Mechanical issue and a return to field. The UA 777 has a 180,000 pound difference between max T/O and max LDG. They were probably at max T/O wt for a IAD to NRT flight. It was re-crewed due to operating crew not being legal to t/o, fly around dumping fuel, then taking off for another 13+ flight. This is one of many issue affecting long haul flying.

You indicate that you are "Delta North", I would think you would be abreast of the issues affecting long haul operations from your own services. It is not like the crew is doing a CLE turn. The flight is very long and the duty day butts up to the maximum if flown on schedule. .

L

myoface

FlightAware > United Air Lines Inc. #803 > 10-Oct-2009 > KIAD-KIAD

Either something very weird going on with this flight or a glitch with Flightaware.

johnso29

Easy BOSS! Not all of us are WB Drivers. Some of us still have to do that domestic stuff.

JetFlyer06

Yeah take it easy, I was just curious what happened. Of course I realize these things occur and I was NOT placing blame on the crew in any way (crew sched should know if someone was going to time out enroute before they block out). In this case it was a mechanical but it's just not something you see every day.

captjns

Hey Lambourne... lighten up on the caffiene... The kid respectfully posted a question that did not warrant a disrespectful resposne from another professional.

IrishTiger

That's effed up. What's up with THAT?

syd111

It started out as a question but then went into the that would be a big mistake if they were dumping over a time out issue. Should have asked the quesion and left it at that.

Groundhog

Nope.
Sure, he asked a question, but he didn't stop there. His first assumption was that either the crew or the company made "a pretty big mistake" by taking off with a FTDT issue.
So he said "if". Who cares? There were so many other reasonable explanations, he figures that based on the delay code for the next departure of the flight, the best possible explanation for the return was due to a screw-up on FTDT calculations? The FTDT issue was a result of the return, not a cause of the return.

If you're going to make an accusation or assumption like that, then you ought to be prepared for a rebuttal.

I think what he meant to say was this:
"I hope the crew is doing alright. Obviously there was some sort of inflight emergency. Due to the highly trained professionals in the cockpit and in the cabin, a potential disaster was averted. I don't think the public understands the value of the people that they have flying them safely every day. Good work, guys and gals."


Nah. Its easier to assume the worst.

Hog