Some very passionate aviation geeks had quite the day yesterday, and it probably didn’t go quite as smoothly as they (or the airline) had planned.
Continue reading: 70 AvGeeks Fly To Seven United Airlines Hubs In One Day, And It Got Messy
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
This is awesome! Now, where are the Delta-freaks and American-fanatics to do the same with their hubs?
Holding planes for an hour and a half plus for people "trying to fly to all hubs today” doesn’t have great optics"
Best words of the internet today
UA is always about the fluff more than the substance
If the flights were held by some kind of automated system at United, then that's that.
But it was a stunt. If someone at United was deliberately holding flights to avoid a PR embarrassment, they owe the hundreds of needlessly delayed pax that weren't part of the joy ride some serious compensation.
any automation that automatically holds flights for even 30 minutes w/o human input is and should be classified as a failure.
UA has no such system; it was an intentional choice to tank their operation for the benefit of a PR stunt that simply proved why UA runs a second tier operation.
did I mention UA's bottom of the barrel baggage handling? 🙂 🙂 🙂
Great spin on a story. Missing a few facts including it was not an eight hour delay for these travelers. It ultimately was 20 minutes. What you're not looking at is all of the travelers that made it 6 hours early because United pulled in another plane after the breaks issue. The delays had nothing to do with the passengers on board but a mechanical failure.
You also seem to not have the facts to share all the things United did to get all of the non-hub runner travelers to their destination, including rides in LAX over to the international terminal and having non-United flights held for people. I guess some people will do anything for a good head.
I’m hopping to join next year and I don’t think I would have become such a geek without OMAAT.
@ Sandy -- I'm sorry if you feel I wasn't fair, but there's not intended to be any spin to this story. As I said, I think this is a fun concept, and I commend the people who participated in it. I try to be balanced, though, and look at all sides of something.
I was suggesting that *other* passengers collectively suffered eight hours of delays, not the people who were just flying between hubs all day. You're right, those people were barely inconvenienced, and I think that also gets at the point I was making, about how there's another side to this.
Let me top UA off today about fluff with Tim Dunn.
@ Tim Dunn -- We're waiting to learn which EWR-LAX frequencies UA operates with 737-900ERs, please!! These are the important details!
Thanks for replying. You are still missing the point though. You are talking about the passengers that the HubRun inconvenienced and not all that got to their destination because of United getting involved. You also seem to want to blame an airplane breaks failure on a group of travelers.
Try a new headline that isn't clickbait - Almost 70 United Airlines Loyalist had an incredible journey! It
So someone misses an international connection out IAH on a trip they and their family have been looking forward to due to a stunt by some super avgeeks? Hopefully, United checked on that before massively delaying the flight.
Honestly with ~70 passengers all at risk of having the exact same misconnect, I would suspect United's standard policies / connection saver would have actually held it for that long, assuming it wasn't causing an incremental cascade of 70+ delays on the other end for other passengers.
That is an awful lot of people to leave without... And most likely the standby list couldn't make up that many seats. I've seen flights delayed an incremental hour for ~20 passengers to connect so 2 hours for 70 seems reasonable. Now the one I observed was an international flight so there's an opportunity to make up a lot of that hour delay in flight (it was a ~10 hour flight) and the misconnect implications on the back end are pretty minimal as it was landing in Sao Paulo.
Same - I’d do this for Delta, American, or Alaska too. This seems kinda fun. I think we need Tim D., MaxPower, and rebel to do this with each of their respective “rival” airlines as well.
Wow. How lame are the lives of those people…imagine thinking this is actually a good use of time and resources.
It makes sense for United to hold a flight for 70 people as that’s a lot of people to rebook! What disappointed me was that these 70 people didn’t continue westward to HNL and do the island Hopper to Guam. That would had been an even more epic trip and you know none of these 70 people would had slept the whole time.
Max Power: Kids. From now on, there are three ways of doing things: the right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way!
Bart: Isn't that just the wrong way?
Max Power: Yeah, but faster!
So glad we are past the point where idiotic leftists are gluing themselves to stuff to protest climate change. 4 years to act...5 years ago! Now it's ok again to take completely needless flights. Small wins.
The same fleet was to cover IAD-ORD-IAH-DEN anyway on that day, that the subsequent delays are probably not really related to those 70 passengers. Although, UA could have substituted fleet but it didn't. DEN-LAX was definitely waiting for them though. 2 hour delay might be inconvenient for some.
Very cool. Good on them!
Counterpoint. You want to go for lunch to your favorite little restaurant. The door is open because it's blocked by a line of 70 people. They don't care about the food, drinks, service, or price. They're part of a club and today they're "Occupy Restaurants." When they're done holding all the tables preventing other customer or "turns" they'll go to the next one.
Seven restaurants in all. Regulars can't go in. Tourists are frustrated. The restaurants don't want to turn down the customers even though there's no real revenue coming.
Seems a bit antisocial egotism is in play. So 70 people got to try their plan, the "big win" being bragging on social media. Works for Trump.
we're also waiting for the far bigger number which is how UA went from a better operating profit in 1Q2025 than DL to a $1.6 net income deficit to DL for the full year 2025.
as for the flight on the 739, please do check flightaware
our data is always correct
signed,
your flightaware account rep.
Except in LAX and DEN the arrival and departure dates were otherwise identical. So I suspect it isn't that UA was holding the aircraft but rather that it was the same aircraft, no?
@Sandy how do you know all the other pax made it to their destinations in a reasonable amount of time?
If my flight had been held for TWO HOURS so this group could continue having a fun day out I might be a little upset.
A very unchristian last line Walter. A ‘good shepherd’ would care about the ‘flock’ of a neighbour and not mock the afflicted.
However, as you choose make mileage out of this situation Wayne, then I will feel free to do so at your expense too. What goes around comes around Ex-Mayor, yes?
Eskimo, you are wasting your time waiting for the one term Mayor of Lilburn, GA, to reply to your questions. A quick look at the publicly available information will give you a true picture of the personality behind the login name.
(Maybe, hear me out, we should have an EU-261-style rule in the US, so that delays like that, under the airlines’ control, would lead to compensation for affected passengers…)
Zing! Jack! Got’em! Bahaha!
(Don’t worry, Dr. Mantis Toboggan abandoned us and now lives in Asia.)
Is that one of those 737-900s that Delta flies transcon (SFO/LAX-JFK/EWR) while United offers a mix of Polaris on 787 (best), 757 (2-2 lie-flat), or 772 (2-4-2 rear-facing lie-flat)?
(At least EWR Terminal A does have a beautiful new Delta SkyClub, UnitedClub, American Airlines Admirals Club, and soon-to-be brand-new massive Amex Centurion…)
"subsequent flights were delayed - sometimes by hours" ... Quite Unfair to legitimate pax .
UA could "lean in" to this and have a special run where the same plane does the whole route. Everybody wins: There's no danger of misconnecting, UA gets a PR win, and normal pax don't get delayed.
Of course they could get delayed: a delayed rollover will impact the passangers of the following flights.
Sorry, I am calling BS on blaming connection saver for the length of the delays. Two of the connections ended up being over 2 hours long - way longer than necessary for people to make it to another gate. One of those was on the same aircraft. 2+ hours between flights on a narrowbody? UA should use their Asia hubs to learn how to operate efficiently.
I benefitted from UA connection saver at two of their hubs, SFO and GUM. In both cases the flights were held just long enough to make it to the next gate at a reasonable walking pace without any stops - not for hours.
Flightaware has no record of UA flying 739.
As always, our data is always correct.
That Tim Dunn hole is lying.
Signed,
Your flightaware account rep.
70 people misconnecting is basically a cancelled flight to deal with.
Probably was less overall disruption to hold one or more of the flights. Though sounds like DEN-LAX might have the only one held longer than otherwise given teh same plane used IAD-ORD-IAH-DEN
In the third or so paragraph, you mention seven hubs and then list only six airports. I think you’re missing Newark.
I did something similar in 1989. I finished spring term at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. My truck and mother was on its way to California from back east. We planned on driving up the ALCAN. At that time United’s 10:30pm FAI-ANC 727-22 continued south with stops at SEA-GEG-SFO then ended at MRY at my sisters place where my truck was waiting. I left FAI around 11pm and landed in MRY around noon the next day. Same aircraft all the way through.
How were these not "legitimate" passengers? There's no suggestion they were comp'd so they purchased their tickets, or used miles/points, just like everyone else. It's no different than any other large group traveling and having to make a connection.
Your counterpoint is inapt. You posit "the restaurants don't want to turn down the customers even though there's no real revenue coming." There's nothing to suggest that the members of this group were not revenue passengers - either by purchasing their tickets with cash or using miles/points. Your counterpoint would have had to be that your favorite restaurant had half of its seating taken up by a party someone was throwing, or some other one-time event.
AA has too many hubs! New York (JFK/LGA), PHL, DCA, CLT, MIA, ORD, DFW, PHX, LAX. I asked ChatGPT about a hypothetical route and the conclusion generally was even going east to west you're probably going to have to spread it over two days, either working in a redeye somewhere or just having a long layover. The problem is getting in to, say, PHX, too late to catch the last flight to LAX. Oh well.
#stupid. Pls don’t say, ‘this is what they like to do, like others might like to play golf for the day’. Nope. Objectively this is a colossal waste of time/energy/money etc. as is golf, BTW.