10 hr United Flight and no TP!

[KevinAu 441]

If they were smart, they would have the customers leave the used napkins in trash bags placed in the lavs. Of course that still creates its own set of problems.

[tttocs 301]

 

 

It's a little more complicated than just forgetting to put a fresh roll of tp on the roller when you are about to undertake a 10 hour flight.

 

Of course.

 

I probably wasn't as clear as I should have been in my sarcasm.

 

As I said, had I been on the flight (and I've certainly been on my share where things like this have gone awry) I expect I would've been annoyed - OK maybe even PO'd and a number of other things.  But outraged as indicated in the report?  It was the reporting and over-reaction that I was (attempting to) aim my sarcasm at. 

 

I can just imagine the post-flight interviews as the media caught wind (<cough> sorry!) of this.  "Say would you mind talking to us - what's your name?"  "Gretchen".  "Hey, Gretchen, how terrible was it, and how outraged were you?"  "Well..."

 

Did United screw up?  Sure.  Like Gretchen, I do expect TP to be included in the cost of my ticket. :blink:   But in the grand scheme of things in this world, this one doesn't even nudge my outrage meter. 

 

In any case, once the mistake happened, United had egg all over their faces from a media standpoint either way.  Can you imagine the fun that would've been had when the reason for the diversion of an international flight became known?  And then you'd have had passengers "outraged" that their London connections, critical appointments, etc. had been missed due to what would have been a significant delay.

 

Of course the real answer is don't make the mistake in the first place.  I expect someone(s) ended up in a fair bit of hot water over this one.

 

Scott

[Airbusman330 300]

 

 

I flew domestic flights and we never had the bevy of QA and supervisors and cleaners that were supposed to check and double check to make sure there was enough tp as you mention.

 

We don't do the same for domestic either, I only do QA on international outbounds.

 

 

 

You probably know more about the workings of the lav truck than I do.  All I knows is that the stuff I see coming through the transparent blue tube moves pretty slowly and looks like it is only gravity fed.

 

I don't know a thing about the trucks since ramp personnel drives them and not cabin but when they drain the tank it seems as if they do suck the waste out since the hose bucks and the vehicle makes this vacuum noise. We only had trouble with plugged lavs when people accidentally try to flush rags and such.

 

 

 

So if your procedure there is for the FAs to just pick up the jetway phone and call for something, then why didn't they? 

 

I'm not with United so who knows how things work over there but at my place Flight Service has one ground based FA who acts as a liaison for the flying FA's (international outbounds only) and she makes sure that the plane is in order with catering, cabin service, makes sure that any inop cabin equipment gets looked at by mx, etc. Now that's 4 different groups of people who have a chance to catch such a mistake.

 

 

 

A transcon where the FAs report to the cap that none of the toilets are flushing anymore on a fully loaded 320.  They neglected to check the lavs before the flight and now the toilet bowls are all full and will not flush.

 

Ramp should have serviced the lav's regardless of waste tank levels, at least that is the SOP here and on international outbounds the lav guy clips a service slip on one of the yokes as proof that they were emptied (although FA's can check the tanks via their control panel on the 777). But hey mistakes happen and it only proves that we are human. 

 

 

 

On a flight from SFO to LHR, I see ample opportunity to divert in the first 5 or so hours an pick up some paper, while it's bad that it was missed in the first place, the fact they decided to carry on regardless is what's really screaming at me here. Have UA no appreciation for their customers, the people who are responsible for them having jobs?

 

I would have been annoyed at the fact that there is no TP but I would have been more upset if we diverted just because of that especially if there is a connecting flight to make. 

[KevinAu 441]

Alright so you would be upset if the flight diverted and you missed your connection. What about the 200 other people waiting at the destination to get on that plane? And if that plane got stuck there for a day and its outbound canceled, how upset would they be? You see, there is always a bigger picture to all of this. Once they left without tp, it was only a question of how many prople would be upset to what degree and containing the negative pr. Sometimes the path that upsets fewer people may be to divert the plane, have the connectors take later flights, instead of cancelling the next flight and having to reaccomodate an entire flight's worth of people.

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

I don't think their was any delay because they forgot TP....The flight was UAL931 and you can see it's last 4 months in the activity log on FlightAware:

 

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL931/history

 

The article doesn't say what day it happened but my guess was it was in the past 4 months.

[Captain Kevin 586]

A little confused here. The article is saying United 931 from San Francisco to London, but United 931 actually runs the other way around. So was it United 931 from London to San Francisco or was it United 930 from San Francisco to London.

EDIT: Seems the Huffington Post got it wrong, clicking the link in the article led to an ABC link saying it was United 931 from London to San Francisco.

 

EDIT: Seems the ABC link is contradicting itself, seeing as one sentence says it went from San Francisco to London and another sentence says London to San Francisco.