Saturday’s United Airlines flight 198 to was forced divert to San Francisco because a pilot forgot to bring his passport on the trip. Passengers received $15 meal vouchers when they landed in San Francisco. Here’s the message that the airline sent to passengers:
UA198 SFO-PVG: Your flight diverted to San Francisco due to an unexpected crew-related issue requiring a new crew. Once they arrive, we’ll get you back on your way to Shanghai as soon as possible. We sincerely apologize for this disruption and appreciate your patience.
United Airlines San Francisco
Ok, mistakes happen. But the same thing happened to another United flight to Shanghai last week, too! In that case they caught it prior to takeoff. The flight delayed several hours while they brought in a new pilot to operate the aircraft.
Comment
byu/squidllllles from discussion
inunitedairlines
When you board an international flight, gate agents check your passport along with your boarding pass before letting you on the plane. Clearly they should be doing this to crew, too.
United Airlines Boeing 777-300ER Business Class
The cost to divert a widebody aircraft is tremendous. Aside from the inconvenience to all of the passengers on board, you’ve got crew costs and extra fuel. Presumably the pilot had to dump fuel prior to landing in Los Angeles. And the return flight is going to be delayed, as well. It’s the airline and passengers who absorb the cost of the mistake, not the pilot (except for the ribbing the pilot receives from colleagues and United pilots have long memories).
If only we had a rule like EU261 or Canada’s APPR that would have provided affected passengers more than just simply a $15 meal voucher. Like, if a situation like this happened in on eligible flight, that would have resulted in compensation of hundreds of dollars to each affected passenger. Instead, the airline can call it a ‘whoopsie’ and everyone faces personal liabilities for loss of accommodation at the destination, tours, business meetings, etc. Yes, private insurance policies are a good option to protect yourself, but they often have very restricting terms, such as that a delay has to affect 50% of your trip or delay you over 72 hours. Read the fine print. Elect better leaders who actually legislate and protect consumers better. I’ll repeat something similar to this every time something like this happens. Keep advocating for ‘better’ folks. And, no, having AI to reduce the number of pilots to ‘just one’ wouldn’t have solved this either, because the single pilot could also forget his darn passport! *facepalm*
you don’t need more government regulation to force crews to do what United requires them to do.
If anything, United needs rules that require its crews to swipe their passports through the same systems that customer passports have to be swiped.
Seems like this is the kind of mistake that should have you permanently demoted to short haul flights and never fly international again.
Then again, does the pilot need a passport if he never gets off then plane? Make him sleep there.
Well I was on that exact routing within the last two weeks! Thank God, it wasn’t my flight…… That is so unprofessional and as commented, every person boarding the flight should get a simple Passport check. On both flights the passenger loading was 100% and the meal service was disgraceful!! To inflict a dinner on Economy passengers where the two choices were vegetarian pasta and French toast is an insult to fare-paying passengers!
Like Lance, I wondered if the pilot who forgot his passport could simply stay on the plane at Shanghai and then deal with US customs when he returned to SFO.
#1 How does this even happen?
#2 This is probably the most important “required item” for crew
#3 Even though this was the CA who is the most in charge of the flight, he/she should be verified before boarding the flight
#4 The salary a CA makes should be cut in half or something as compensation for pax instead of a measly $15
Just my opinions on this.
UK/EU261 would at least compensated to some extent the passengers. Shame the richest country in the world sides with airlines rather than passengers !
As a flight attendant for another “major”, all flight attendants are checked (passports) at check in. Pilots have “allegedly “ refused to do the same and are not required to undergo checks. Too much stress I guess?
If my pilot could forget his passport what else might he forget do? I find this disturbing.
I don’t know about needing new laws but United definitely owes these passengers a much better compensation offer such as refunding the full cost of the airfare. Delays are often unavoidable but this is pure boneheaded behavior.
That pilot is right up there with the Southwest pilots that took off on a taxi way at Orlando. This is basic requirements of the job. Fly Internationally? Your passport should always be tucked in your travel bag. How dumb.
Certainly this is ridiculously, but Gary do you even read what you’re posting when you create the headline? Your cities are backwards. PLEASE GET AN EDITOR or at least feed your posts through AI to correct the silly errors.
Passports are so passé. Everything is facial recognition now and everything (everything) is contained in international computer databases.
UA198 is a 789 from LAX. It diverted to SFO. All of this is if you believe FlightAware data to be accurate.
But even still … why not just make the pilot stay on the plane and fly back? You only need a passport if you actually enter another county.
A) Obviously the pilot should have brought their passport.
but…
B) They were already leaving back to Shanghai. Making them divert and land at that late a point seems very silly. Did they even leave the international terminal anyway?
The empty weight is listed at 284,000. Assuming 90,000 pounds of crew, passengers, luggage and cargo (assuming 300 people at 200 pounds each with 100 pounds of luggage each and no cargo), those two things total 374,000 pounds. The maximum landing weight I found online is listed at 425,000 pounds. So fuel would have to be dumped but not all of it. Hundreds of miles were flown over the Pacific to get back to SFO, so the fuel would have been dumped during that time. I wonder how much cargo flies to China on a United 787-9 flight. I would bet not much. A 2022 EASA study has 185 pounds per average passenger plus their carry-on luggage. There could be around 300 people considering passengers and crew but SeatGuru indicates somewhat less, maybe around 270 to 275 on a full flight. 100 pounds of luggage on average is probably an overestimate but not necessarily so. I typically carry that much transpacific and I see a lot of people in line that seem to have as much as I do but that does not make the assumption true. Crew members would not carry that much.
I agree w J Thurber. 1) the evidence that he had a proper passport/visa is held by the company and is part of the electronic flight manifest 2) unattended kiosks in many countries now control the border, so biometrics are all that are required, 3) the fact that they often scan the paper passport and cross check with biometrics (or the other way around, I am not sure) is legacy and outdated, 4) whatever details that are stored in the embedded chip in the passport could easily be held in a QR code or mobile phone.
You could easily be provided a QR code by the accepting nation prior to travel, many countries already do that for other reasons (submit paper passport details photo and real time facial photo during online process).
This is a flight that originated from lax that diverted to sfo.
@ Gregory B. Cotton – try telling that to China LOL
And was a 787 according to FlightAware.
Wow. a $15 food voucher
Making a bit of an assumption with the “forgot his passport” line. “Passport issues” does not equal forgotten passport. Could be last minute visa issues, GenDec issues, etc. Someone typed in the wrong number. Could be China being China. Now, maybe it was forgotten. I’m not saying it wasn’t, but nothing you’ve presented here tells me that was it.
I want to know exactly what $15 dollars buys at SFO? Perhaps a snickers bar?
Hmmmm…. It’s almost as if the pilots are in contract negotiations and are attempting some type of “work action’ knowing that United will never do anything to discipline them for it. In fact, United will probably give them a pat on the back, a handshake and a lollipop. Who cares at hundreds of passengers have been inconvenienced? .Flight attendants are in contract negotiations. Long and contentious contract negotiations. Can you imagine if this had been a flight attendant? They’d be fired.
Mistakes happen. The last thing operating crew needs is the gate agents asking to see passports.
I’m confused…if the pilot left the US without a passport, how did he get back into the US? Doesn’t federal law mandate a passport for entry? So if the pilot did not have a passport when he landed at SFO, got off the plane, and entered the US – shouldn’t he then be stopped by Customs and fined?
You say pilots have long memories, obviously not long enough to remember that when working an International Flight that you will need your passport.
UA is not too good at checking passports, as I can unfortunately attest. I was permitted to board SFO-AMS with an expired passport. It was no fun when I landed at AMS though I lucked out and was granted a 48-hour entry visa to obtain a replacement passport from the US consulate. UA was also lucky as they could have been ordered to ship me back at their expense.
(How could this happen? It was my 2nd passport, and had expired during the pandemic and therefore wasn’t hole punched. And clearly nobody noticed…)