Ouch: United 777 Stranded In Goose Bay For 11+ Hours (And Counting)

By: Ben Schlappig

Updated: August 15, 2022
Published: January 20, 2019

74 comments

Update: Nearly 27 hours later, passengers and crew have returned to Newark. A few blog readers were on the flight, so be sure to read the comments below for some “fun” details of the experience.

Well this flight certainly wins the “awful diversion of the day” award.

Yesterday’s United flight UA179 from Newark to Hong Kong is currently stranded in Goose Bay, Canada, and passengers haven’t been allowed off the plane.

The flight left Newark at around 3PM local time yesterday, and started the journey to Hong Kong. The flight was nearing Greenland when they had a medical emergency, so they made the decision to divert to Goose Bay, Canada.

For what it’s worth, Goose Bay gets a fair number of diversions, especially for transatlantic flights, both for medical and mechanical reasons (we’ve even written about a United Goose Bay diversion in the past).

The plane landed about 11 hours ago, but passengers are still stuck on the plane in Goose Bay, and haven’t been let off.

#UA179 basking in the morning sunrise at @Town_HVGB Labrador, Canada.The OAT is -32c which feels like -50c with the windchill.A frozen door is a real term in those temps. @unoslau @lwslade401 @MMHK78 @rcausseil @united @FlightAlerts_ @TomPodolec @JacobBarkerCBC @AlysonSamsonCBC pic.twitter.com/oDMot1Y4Ja

— Philip Earle (@PhilipEarle) January 20, 2019

Note that it’s currently -24 Fahrenheit in Goose Bay.

While the initial diversion was due to a medical emergency, they then started having issues with one of the plane’s doors, and as a result haven’t been able to depart.

Even if the plane didn’t have that issue, this would have been a tricky situation. Pilots and flight attendants have maximum hours they can work, and at this point they would have exceeded the limit if they continued to Hong Kong. However, presumably they could have returned to Newark or another major airport, but like I said above, the plane isn’t able to fly.

United is currently sending a “rescue” flight to Goose Bay, with a crew and mechanics. A 777-200 is currently enroute from Newark — UA2758 — and it’s scheduled to arrive in about 90 minutes, at 12PM in Goose Bay (11AM ET). That flight is just under 1,100 miles.

I’ll be curious to see where United flies passengers from there. I’m guessing the plan is to fly everyone back to Newark, in which case it will have been a 24 hour flight to nowhere. I doubt they’d be able to continue to Hong Kong based on the new crew potentially timing out, but I could be mistaken. I imagine whatever they’re going to do when the rescue plane gets there will take some time.

This is so incredibly bad. UA, this is the all time worst customer experience I have ever had. Shame on you. Stranded for 12 hours… pic.twitter.com/Q13vIW9ejF

— Rose Kazan (@KazanRose) January 20, 2019

Obviously the logistics here are really complicated.

Was anyone on yesterday’s UA179 who can share a firsthand report of what happened?

More discussion »

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Jennifer Guest

February 6, 2019, 12:56 am

I was on this flight. Finally back from my trip to China and available to comment. We were on the plane for 27 hours only to end up right back where we started. And then we still had our 16 hour flight to Hong Kong after that. So when I read a comment like the following I need you to know that you are minimizing the situation greatly. And as it would happen, our next flight was also delayed and we were kept on the plane for several extra hours again. Overall, not a good experience. Of course, the individual's health was a priority but United definitely could have (and should have) sent a rescue plane much sooner than they did. CP@YOW says: January 20, 2019 at 10:54 am @WTF – I agree that it is not comfortable in economy, but why do you consider the passengers to be “imprisoned” in a “claustrophobic” situation when on the ground for 11 hours, as opposed to the scheduled 16 hour EWR-HKG flight they intended to be on?

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Luis Guest

January 26, 2019, 3:24 am

Delta flight makes an emergency landing with an engine problem in a remote Alaskan island leaving passengers stranded for 11 hours onboard the plane but somehow that one does not make the headlines. Why is that? The same thing happened with the Dr. Dao incident. Delta had a passenger removed off the plane by dragging down the aisle just weeks before the Dr. Dao incident and not a peep. But UA has a similar story and all of the sudden... well, you know the story. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/delta-flight-from-beijing-to-seattle-lands-on-alaskan-island-due-to-engine-issue-alaska-public-media-reports/?fbclid=IwAR23XnZ-un_43IU6qBt4Ggs-9bl0QeZav4M9tsVgth-XOaN3W-0tgwBHaYo

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callum Guest

January 21, 2019, 4:46 pm

Darwin Charles - Again, your point is stupid. While Americans are generally poor with Geography, I GUARANTEE that every American who visited Toronto for a weekend last year is aware that Toronto is in Canada, and that Canada is not Toronto. It is PERFECTLY acceptable to say that you are visiting a country, and not specify the city. What you "notice" Canadians generally do is utterly irrelevant - and not something I accept either. The vast majority of Canadians I speak to about going abroad say which country they are going to, not the specific city, especially when it's an obscure place like Goose Bay which virtually no-one has ever heard of...

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derek Diamond

January 21, 2019, 12:25 pm

Someone, maybe a substitute teacher in Goose Bay, might consider a new business which would resupply passengers with food. They would then contract with airlines for a yearly fee and fee for each use. I wonder if airlines would pay. Bare bones service would be rapidly order and deliver fast food. Additional service might be blankets. Yet additional service might be to escort 15 business class passengers into town and wait in the person's home/lounge. I don't know what the charges should be or what the airlines would pay but what if the airlines paid $300 per month and you could get 15 airlines to pay. That would be $4500 per month or $54,000 per year.

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John Guest

January 21, 2019, 10:44 am

@Jennifer Ward That would be incredibly stupid. The temperature outside was -20 and with the high winds, the wind chill was -50. The plane was far enough away from any buildings that you would be in danger walking to the terminal without the proper amount of protective layers on. They even bussed us from the one plane to the other which was "only" about 200 feet. Just walking down the stairs to the bus and back up the stairs onto the other plane was quite brutal wearing clothes appropriate for the destination (Hong Kong). Opening an emergency door and deploying the slide would put EVERYBODY in considerably MORE DANGER than being stuck in a well heated airplane cabin, so I'm glad nobody attempted to do anything like that. On top of the brutal cold, Goose Bay is both a civilian airport and a Canadian Forces base, so you could probably expect a quick reaction from the military if you attempted to illegally enter Canada. I know a lot of people were frustrated by being stuck in the airplane, but there is also a lot of exaggeration on Twitter as to the state of things on that plane. The toilets were not overflowing and I don't even remember seeing anybody posting that, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from. Food was not dwindling in the way people described. We had been served dinner before the emergency landing, and several hours into the delay they served us breakfast. By morning when the Canadian officials started coming into the airport, they brought a huge resupply of water, sandwiches, muffins, and doughnuts from Tim Hortons.

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