“Operational Reasons”
Discussion
Teddy Lop said:
we had an emirates Dubai>Sydney flight delayed several hours due to "storms". Sydney was fine, the weather was at the planes onward destination of NZ, I figured it was just cheaper for the airline to park the bus at Dubai for a few hours rather than Sydney and we could just all go f
k ourselves.
Not exactly what you want when you're on a 28hr flight to begin with.
I don’t know about Sydney but at most airports there really aren’t that many places you can pop an A380 for a few hours or potentially longer.k ourselves.Not exactly what you want when you're on a 28hr flight to begin with.
My dad got caught up in the drone incident at Gatwick and had to divert to Manchester as it was the only place left with room for one. If he’d been on something smaller no doubt they could have squeezed in somewhere closer.
surveyor said:
I'm easy. give me a guess Tell me if you are not sure. If it gets to the time and it's not sorted come back and give a new estimate
Like that’s gonna work.....“They were clearly just guessing and when that didn’t work they just said they weren’t sure. Every time they came up with an estimated time of completing, it got within 30 minutes of that and they’d go and change it!”
generationx said:
Previously these delays have mounted and mounted, resulting in a cancelled flight...
Quite easy for that to happen... Few minutes delay getting in, small tech issue that needs looking at, or takes a bit longer than it should, suddenly the crew are out of hours and you need replacements or to cancel the flight.Budget airlines are more susceptible because we insist on razor thin margins to keep costs down.
I had a delayed flight due to operation reasons. We were all on the plane, but it wasn't allowed to leave. I was ion row 1 and could hear the cabin crew talking to the pilot - They had forgotten to file the revised flight plan and papers with the tower. By the time they had approval to leave (nearly 2 hours), they crew were out of time so we had to land at Faro and wait another 3 hours for a replacement crew.
LotusOmega375D said:
My pet hate is the flight is delayed due to “the late arrival of the incoming aircraft.”
We can all see the plane hasn’t arrived on time, but WHY?
Because of operational reasons! Duh! We can all see the plane hasn’t arrived on time, but WHY?
But truthfully, the ground crew at your airport might not know why the flight is late coming in, they'll just see that it is late coming in. With an aircraft often operating on minimum ground time, one delay in the morning will often persevere throughout the rest of the day. The incoming airport will be able to see a delay code as part of the message when the flight leaves its origin airport, but that won't hold all the ones from earlier in the day. So an aircraft that left Gatwick late because of a technical fault will tell the arriving airport it was late because of a tech fault. But the return flight won't be late because of the tech fault, it will be late only because the flight was late and they don't have enough time to make up for it in the air or on the ground. And that can carry on forwards for all subsequent flights that aircraft is operating that day.
Shakermaker said:
LotusOmega375D said:
My pet hate is the flight is delayed due to “the late arrival of the incoming aircraft.”
We can all see the plane hasn’t arrived on time, but WHY?
Because of operational reasons! Duh! We can all see the plane hasn’t arrived on time, but WHY?
But truthfully, the ground crew at your airport might not know why the flight is late coming in, they'll just see that it is late coming in. With an aircraft often operating on minimum ground time, one delay in the morning will often persevere throughout the rest of the day. The incoming airport will be able to see a delay code as part of the message when the flight leaves its origin airport, but that won't hold all the ones from earlier in the day. So an aircraft that left Gatwick late because of a technical fault will tell the arriving airport it was late because of a tech fault. But the return flight won't be late because of the tech fault, it will be late only because the flight was late and they don't have enough time to make up for it in the air or on the ground. And that can carry on forwards for all subsequent flights that aircraft is operating that day.
PurpleTurtle said:
I was once on an EasyJet flight home from Cyprus, but the inbound plane had a blowout on landing.
They don’t carry a spare wheel, who knew!?
Despite the Captain coming to the departure gate personally, standing on a table so everyone could see/hear him and explaining in plain English “we’ve had a blow out, there is no spare, one is already on its way from Luton, but you are sadly not going home tonight, we will put you up in a hotel”, still people accused him of ‘lying’ about it.
I’ve never seen a piece of more honest corporate problem handling yet still some dicks had beef with him.
People are dicks, this is amplified when people are supposed to be on a plane.They don’t carry a spare wheel, who knew!?
Despite the Captain coming to the departure gate personally, standing on a table so everyone could see/hear him and explaining in plain English “we’ve had a blow out, there is no spare, one is already on its way from Luton, but you are sadly not going home tonight, we will put you up in a hotel”, still people accused him of ‘lying’ about it.
I’ve never seen a piece of more honest corporate problem handling yet still some dicks had beef with him.
OP, this isn't a pop at you. I got the question and the interest behind it.
surveyor said:
One of my real bug bears. It's a pathetic excuse when an employee has either not bothered to find out or is too embarrassed to explain a delay. It tells the customer absolutely nothing about why they are not sitting in a plane and more importantly nothing about when they will be sitting in the plane.
The employee who has told you about the delay usually knows about as much as you do, having been told to follow the company issued protocol on "delays" - which will be that in the event of (x) - apologise for the delay due to operational reasons and then sit and wait for further updates. Diagnosing the problem will often take place before they tell you how long it is going to take to fix. whether that problem is mechanical, electrical, or something else like cleaning, the pilot's sick, etc. There is such a thing as giving people too much information in these situations. I heard several people blaming the ground staff employed by MyTravel (which became Thomas Cook, whatever happened to them?) of being incompetent because of a hurricane affecting the Caribbean and preventing any departures from the UK. the front line staff you're often dealing with aren't involved with actually resolving the problem, they are involved with checking your tickets and making sure you don't have more than the permitted amount of luggage, they are there to provide Customer Service at whatever level the airline deems acceptable, but they won't be the people fixing the plane/arranging new crew/checking the weather forecast.
To top and tail the weekend last night's return flight was cancelled completely. Some kind of strike action apparently. Notification followed by a desperate scramble/search/booking of another flight in an attempt to get a seat before they were all gone for first thing this morning.
Requiring a 4.0am alarm.
And the flight was delayed.
Because of a late incoming aircraft...
Requiring a 4.0am alarm.
And the flight was delayed.
Because of a late incoming aircraft...
Once we took off from Amsterdam to Southampton after a 5 hour delay (Blown Tyre whilst Taxiing for take off). We still took off clearly aware that we could not have arrived at Southampton airport before it closed so mid-flight were diverted to Birmingham arriving just after midnight. No hire car places open and a two hour wait until they arranged coaches to take us to Southampton.
surveyor said:
Might be nice to hear that we are just waiting for a mechanical defect to be repaired.
Yep, literally no potential problems at all could arise from announcing to a load of passengers that the aircraft they are about to fly on and may be nervous about currently has a mechanical defect... 
Johnnytheboy said:
Crossflow Kid said:
Johnnytheboy said:
I wonder what 'non-operational reasons' are?
Engineering Meteorological
Medical
Legal
Diplomatic
Security
plus a few others.
HTH
You asked a perfectly reasonable and under the circumstances completely understandable question and got a perfectly reasonable answer.
Next time you can get fuxked.
As can the horse you rode in on.
And your mum.
There are such things as non-operational reasons but I guess a legend like you knows that, along with absolutely everything else, just like every other smarmy
.Gassing Station | Boats, Planes & Trains | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff