# Bad-ordered airplanes - it's almost as bad as Amtrak!



## MARC Rider (Jul 30, 2015)

Two weeks ago I flew from BWI for a business trip. It seemed that the entire populace of the region was flying that Sunday and I ended up missing my flight due to long check in and tsa lines. Imagine me, shoes unlaced,running up to the gate and seeing my plane backing away. First time this ever happened to me.

Four hours later, having spent the morning eating breakfast at the Silver Diner and enjoying a sightseeing tour of concourses A B and C, I saunter over to my gate and find the flight is leaving from another, at the other end of the airport, natch.

I go over there and find out that our plane was coming from Boston. It was supposed to be a through flight but they were transferring the pax. Then they told us they were waiting for the pilot from the Boston plane before we could board. He finally shows up looks the pane over and calls the maintenance people. We could see him through the window in a very animated discussion with a mechanic, pointing at one of the engines. Finally after some fiddling around involving rotation of the turbines, they boarded us. I don't begrudge them the delay, I overheard a crew member saying something about an "oil leak". As the saying goes, "better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than be in the air wishing you were on the ground." The flight was about 30 to 40 minutes late. No problems in flight other than a bumpy ride over the Appalachians.

My colleague, who came out on a later flight, had it much worse. It took the third plane they used to be considered airworthy enough to take off. He arrived at 2AM, more than 4 hours late.

It occurred to me that being a half hour late for a there hour flight is the proportional equivalent of being 5 hours late for a 30 hour train ride. And being 4 hours late for your flight is proportionally the same as arriving 48 house late for your 30 hour train ride. Even Amtrak at its worst isn't that bad at least not in my experience.

By the way the flight home was a breeze. Traveling on Saturday makes all the difference.


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## Swadian Hardcore (Jul 30, 2015)

It depends on the airline, their fleet, their operations, etc. In general, airlines have better OTP than Amtrak and extremely high dispatch reliability, plus excellent safety records.


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## jis (Jul 30, 2015)

In my book nothing makes 4 hour late equivalent to 48 hours late no matter how long the original journey was. But that could just be me. After all I spend a quarter to third of my time traveling by various modes.


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## Swadian Hardcore (Jul 30, 2015)

I agree with Jishnu, four hours is four hours wasted, two days is two days wasted. I can do a lot more in two days than in four hours. Delayed time is wasted, while time in transit isn't, because you are actually going somewhere.


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## Ryan (Jul 30, 2015)

I did a Monday-Wednesday, which was painful.

I have a Monday-Friday trip coming up that's going to be even worse, I feel (at least the M-W was a direct flight, the M-F trip will connect through Charlotte).


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## jis (Aug 1, 2015)

I had a pleasant experience with bad ordered plane with a deftly managed substitution of a 757-200 by a 757-300 and an almost on time departure of the substitute. The substitute plane flew in from San Fran into MCO on a red eye and arrived just one hour before the scheduled 8am departure of the flight to EWR. The plane was turned and departed just a few minutes behind schedule arriving in EWR ahead of schedule.

Meanwhile the originally assigned plane was fixed and plugged in as substitute for the next original segment for the plane that came in from SFO.


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## Devil's Advocate (Aug 1, 2015)

MARC Rider said:


> It occurred to me that being a half hour late for a there hour flight is the proportional equivalent of being 5 hours late for a 30 hour train ride. And being 4 hours late for your flight is proportionally the same as arriving 48 house late for your 30 hour train ride. Even Amtrak at its worst isn't that bad at least not in my experience. By the way the flight home was a breeze. Traveling on Saturday makes all the difference.


This is where you lose me completely. I've flown thirty different airlines to fifty different airports across hundreds of individual flights, and like any other regular traveler I have plenty to complain about, but this thirty minutes equals five hours claim makes no sense to me. Same for the four hours equals forty eight claim. Sounds more like grasping at straws by using irrational ratios to generate false equivalencies.


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## Swadian Hardcore (Aug 1, 2015)

I love the 757-300. Great-looking plane and powerful engines.

Agree with DA and Jishnu. It seems like the OP was just angry.


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## Texan Eagle (Aug 1, 2015)

For what its worth, I have done about 100+ flights within the US and international in the last 5 years and have had exactly ONE bad-ordered plane, that resulted in a 1.5 hour delay.

On the other hand, in the same time, I have been on Amtrak 25 times, and had THREE locomotives fail on me, and TWO more times the car have mechanical issues, not even counting the signal issues, or freight trains breaking down holding us up for hours. And oh, if I add Caltrain into the count, I don't have enough fingers to count how many times they break down in a single year's time.

Airplane reliability is orders of magnitude better than Amtrak, or Caltrain for that matter.


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