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United 777-200 fleet faces an uncertain future after Dulles engine failure

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Re: United 777-200 fleet faces an uncertain future after Dulles engine failure

#81

Post by brigade »

markus_zhang wrote: post #67
rob74 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We" are (currently) not flying the MDs you are referring to, and it's questionable if they will ever fly again. And paradoxically the worst hit are not the airlines flying the MD-11, but the cash-strapped firefighting companies who only relatively recently switched to the (now also grounded) DC-10 from much older planes ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c61ALDSN-ws&t=335s ).

I agree that we are not currently flying MD-11, but that's just because of the November tragedy. I don't think they are going to retire it if not because of it. That is, they retire it out of scare of more tragedy, not because of older age.

MD-11s aren't in commercial passenger service, so it's unlikely they retire it due to a poor reputation.

The huge question is what changes the FAA requires to unground it; if they decide design changes are needed to reduce the risk that an uncontained failure of engine 1 or 3 directly takes out engine 2, that could likely be economically infeasible.

Re: United 777-200 fleet faces an uncertain future after Dulles engine failure

#82

Post by justapassenger »

rottencupcakes wrote: post #22
miki123211 wrote: post #14

To a European like me, United was such a weird airline to fly. There were actual commercials played before the safety video, the cabin crew warned passengers to make sure children cannot see the adult content they're watching (can you get more American than that?), and their credit card was offered multiple times during the flight. At least the WiFi was reasonably cheap. Over here, that stuff would never fly (no pun…

What has become much more degraded in Europe than America is the domestic flights. Try flying Lufthansa (or one of their half dozen subsidiaries created almost entirely to give worse service) anywhere inside of europe. Everything is a money grab and the service and boarding are terrible. United maintains a relatively consistent experience between domestic and international, minus the free alcohol.

Flying everywhere is degraded experience - no need to argue if Europe or US is worse.

Most of flights today are glorified busses, with less room, that just happen to have wings attached and staff trying to sell you things.

Re: United 777-200 fleet faces an uncertain future after Dulles engine failure

#83

Post by brigade »

dawnerd wrote: post #46
lfshammu wrote: post #15

wow the blogosphere really is just ai slop now

What gave it away for me was the Conclusion heading. LLMs love adding those in and its just unnatural for news/blog posts. Reading back over it, everything about it just seems very machine written.

Aviation blogs have commonly been putting a conclusion section with header just like this since well before LLMs existed

Re: United 777-200 fleet faces an uncertain future after Dulles engine failure

#84

Post by FridayoLeary »

thedrbrian wrote: post #61
rottencupcakes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every drink is for sale, even coffee. They aggressively use the bag sizer and try to take bags away at the gate, under the ruse that their tiny Airbus overhead bins cannot fit them (they can).

Just put it in the hold. I can’t stand waiting for the cheapskate to find somewhere to put their 45kg “rucksack” in the over head bins just to save a tenner.

The airlines deserve no money above the price of a ticket. The way i see it the hold comes free with the rest of the plane. I see no reason why i need to pay another 40 pounds to bring a case, so i will shamelessly abuse my allowance. (if it was a reasonable amount like a tenner, that would be a different story, as it stands it's a cash grab)

Re: United 777-200 fleet faces an uncertain future after Dulles engine failure

#85

Post by [deleted] »

coredog64 wrote: post #76
Digory wrote: post #27

"...777 fleet faces an uncertain future after Dulles engine failure ... and also before Dulles engine failure, for reasons having nothing to do with the Dulles engine failure." To be fair, I read all of it, and both sides of the question interest me. But the engine failure and the economics of the 777 are totally different things.

The article's TL;DR is that the economics of 30-year old P&W4090 engines make these airframes even less useful to United.

[deleted]

Re: United 777-200 fleet faces an uncertain future after Dulles engine failure

#86

Post by ErroneousBosh »

miki123211 wrote: post #14

To a European like me, United was such a weird airline to fly. There were actual commercials played before the safety video, the cabin crew warned passengers to make sure children cannot see the adult content they're watching (can you get more American than that?), and their credit card was offered multiple times during the flight. At least the WiFi was reasonably cheap. Over here, that stuff would never fly (no pun…

> except maybe on Ryanair or other extremely low-cost carriers.

I fly on Lauda most often, who are operated by Ryanair. You show up, you get on, you sit down, a couple of hours you get off again. A trolley comes round with drinks and snacks, but it's a short journey even with a small child. Can't you just stick an orange and a bottle of water in your bag? It's what the Austrians do.

The first time I flew over with my small son he was three, and having been up since 5am was getting a little fractious and fidgety, so I explained he was probably a bit tired and bored and maybe he'd like to eat something and have a sleep, and I'd wake him up once we were back over land.

A bit later on someone further up the plane started remonstrating with the cabin crew that they didn't have the sandwich she wanted on the trolley, eventually shouting "IF IT'S ON THE MENU YOU GAVE ME I SHOULD BE ABLE TO HAVE THE DAMN SANDWICH!"

Well that shut everyone up.

And in the ringing silence that followed, a little voice, with the punch and clarity that only 3-year-olds have, that Brian Blessed or Meat Loaf would have given any limb you care to mention for, piped up:

"DADDY, DOES THAT LADY NEED A SNACK AND A WEE NAP TOO?"

Re: United 777-200 fleet faces an uncertain future after Dulles engine failure

#87

Post by mandevil »

alibarber wrote: post #54
bklyn11201 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe will financialize everything just slower and with more regulation. Branded credit cards are coming. See Brussels Airlines and Mastercard A well optimized domestic USA airline makes money from credit cards, points, trip insurance, upsells, and segments the consumer into a dozen bins based on what they’re willing to spend for a couple more inches of leg room.

Not sure about your bit of Europe but I’ve had branded credit cards from European airlines here in Europe for a long time. They’re definitely past ‘coming’. Not as lucrative for me the holder as you’d get it the US, but I can’t really imagine being without one.

As I recall, that's because it's basically impossible to have a US rewards card in Europe. European authorities tightly cap interchange fees (the fees that come out of the merchant's end of the deal).

US issuers are much less regulated. In the US there are cheap cards that offer no perks and take a small (0.2-1%) cut from the merchant, and the perks cards that have lots of perks and take a bigger (3.5%) cut from the merchant. The CC companies, naturally, want more people to use perks cards so they get more of a cut, so to encourage consumers to use these cards they give some of it back to the users in the form of these rewards.

This model recently came under attack when a whole bunch of merchants brought an anti-trust lawsuit against Visa and MC for their requirement that if you wanted to accept the cheap cards you had to accept the expensive cards as well, merchants want to be able to accept the cheap cards and reject the higher tier cards. The negotiations about that settlement continue, so we'll have to see how it all shakes out, but it could result in a major limiting of American reward cards. Or maybe not, always in motion the future is.

The EU parliament passed a law capping interchange fees at 0.3% (for local personal cards, business has some other limit that I don't remember) so there is just no money to offer rewards to customers of European banks. Much better for merchants, lower prices overall mean probably better for poorer folks, worse deal for wealthy people with good credit who pay attention and pay their bills in full every month. Speaking as an American one of those people who benefit from rewards cards, I think that it is better for society to go with the European choices than the American.

Re: United 777-200 fleet faces an uncertain future after Dulles engine failure

#89

Post by jcims »

rottencupcakes wrote: post #22
miki123211 wrote: post #14

To a European like me, United was such a weird airline to fly. There were actual commercials played before the safety video, the cabin crew warned passengers to make sure children cannot see the adult content they're watching (can you get more American than that?), and their credit card was offered multiple times during the flight. At least the WiFi was reasonably cheap. Over here, that stuff would never fly (no pun…

What has become much more degraded in Europe than America is the domestic flights. Try flying Lufthansa (or one of their half dozen subsidiaries created almost entirely to give worse service) anywhere inside of europe. Everything is a money grab and the service and boarding are terrible. United maintains a relatively consistent experience between domestic and international, minus the free alcohol.

> Lufthansa

I had to walk away from a $600 ticket that I booked at the last minute b/c in the 30 seconds between the time I paid for the ticket and the time the booking returned, the connecting flight filled up and I had to wait a day I didn't have for the next one. Couldn't get a single consideration from anyone, they said they couldn't cancel the ticket b/c the first leg was still available. Just had to walk away from the money and find another airline.

I'm sure it happens on every airline but man I was pissed. They go to the bottom of the list until the next tomfoolery occurs.

Re: United 777-200 fleet faces an uncertain future after Dulles engine failure

#90

Post by cvoss »

Any headline which reads "X after Y" is clickbait. Such a headline is constructed to imply that Y caused or led to or is in some way related to X. But then you read the article and find no connection at all. In this case the article confesses (rather late):

> The Boeing 777-200 is not an unsafe airplane. As far as I can tell, that is not the issue even after the incident over Dulles over the weekend.

X after Y headlines are always technically correct. Sure, X is presently true. And remember scary/salacious/enraging thing Y that happened recently? So X is after Y. Click me.

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