Some passengers who wanted to celebrate the New Year twice experienced very untimely delays…
United Airlines flight from Guam to Honolulu will not ‘fly’ until 2023
Thanks to the International Date Line, some flights arrive the day before departure. This is always a great experience, but it’s especially cool if you take off on New Year’s Day and land on New Year’s Eve because you get to step back in time by a year (or something like that).
A few days ago, United Airlines promoted on Twitter/X that you only live once, but you get to celebrate New Year’s Eve twice. The airline had highlighted daily flights from Guam to Honolulu scheduled to operate at 7:35 a.m. the previous day and land at 6:50 p.m.
This is especially great for those flying on January 1st because you can celebrate New Year’s Eve in Guam, get on the plane, and then celebrate New Year’s Eve in Honolulu. There are several other flights that arrive the day before, but this is the only flight operated by a US airline that allows you to go “back in time” like this.
As it turned out, United were wrong. Not only do you only live once, you also only get to celebrate New Year’s Eve once… at least if you take a United Airlines flight from Guam to Honolulu.
As it turned out, the flight was delayed for just over six hours. Instead of leaving at 7:35am on January 1st, we left at 1:49pm. And instead of landing at 6:50pm on December 31st, it landed at 12:34am on January 1st.
Talk about bad luck!
United’s flight from Guam to Honolulu has to be one of the most punctual flights in United’s system. Statistics show that flights arrive on time 95% of the time, and if there are any delays, they are usually minimal. The last time this flight arrived in Honolulu after midnight was on April 20, 2023, more than eight months ago. The next time your flight experiences a delay like this is on New Year’s Day, talk about bad luck.
So what went wrong with this flight that caused the delay? The flight was operated on a Boeing 777-300ER with a registration code. N2747U. Unfortunately, the delay on the flight from Guam to Honolulu was simply due to the plane arriving late. On Dec. 30, the plane flew from Hong Kong to San Francisco on time, but that’s when reliability began to fail.
- On Dec. 30, the plane departed from San Francisco to Honolulu at 9:35 a.m. and was scheduled to arrive at 1:15 p.m. In the end, we were delayed for nearly 9 hours due to maintenance issues, leaving at 6:06pm and arriving at 9:17pm.
- On Dec. 30, the plane departed from Honolulu to Guam at 3:05 p.m. and was scheduled to arrive the next day at 6:55 p.m. In the end, we were delayed for about 17 hours, departing at 7:57am the next day and arriving at 11:48am the next day (I wonder if this further delay was due to crew availability or because the airport I don’t know if it’s due to restrictions.))
- The plane was then scheduled to spend about 12 hours on the ground in Guam, so at least some of the delay was absorbed, but the plane arrived at 11:48 a.m. and ended up turning around in Guam in about two hours. Became.Departs at 1:49pm
conclusion
You can’t predict when maintenance issues will occur, but the timing of one delay on New Year’s Day certainly seems unfortunate. United had been promoting a Guam-Honolulu flight that could take off in 2024 and land in 2023, as it would be the only such flight operated by a U.S. airline. Unfortunately, due to maintenance delays on the previous flight, the flight was delayed by about 6 hours, and we ended up arriving in Honolulu just after midnight.
Sure, it could have been worse, but I hope most of the passengers on this flight didn’t book it specifically because they wanted to celebrate the New Year twice.
What do you think about this βyear-longβ delay for United? π