Originally Posted by
LivinTheDream28
Then our flight got underway and I waited for our PDC to come up on my FMS screen. I was then informed by the captain that at UAL, we don't get PDCs and we have to call and get our clearance. After waiting to get a word in for 10 mins I finally called and got the clearance. After we were in flight a while, I decided to send a weather message to get the latest TAF and metar for our destination since it didn't have digital ATIS. I was informed that at UAL, we don't have weather messages and have to rely on our 5 hour old TAFs in the weather packet we received prior to boarding. I couldn't believe it. About 40 mins from arriving, I went to send the in-range report to find out our gate, where the aircraft was going, if it was on time, where we were going, and to let ops know of our specials. Well, you guessed it, no in range reports at UAL, we have to call ops from in the air. This is something I have never done in my almost 5 years here. We have to call ops when we land to tell them we're on the ground? I constantly forget because again, I've never had to do this, it comes up on their computer as soon as we land and they are always there waiting for us. Not at UAL.
Most of what you said was true, however the PDC, WX and gate request are not. At ASA, PDC works just fine in IAD and ORD. The same can be said for inflight WX requests over ACARS. We are able to get TAFs and METARs for anywhere we want. We are also able to request gates over our ACARS, however they did say they wanted us to call in range and I have noticed by calling again on the ground, the amt of time you have to wait for rampers is reduced exponentionally. BTW, do you guys have travel on United and if so, can you check the loads at home?