News and notes from around the interweb:
- It’s not every day you see a commercial flight landing at an Air Force base!
United flight #UA2078 is getting ready to fly from Luke Air Force Base to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
The flight diverted to Luke Air Force Base after declaring a minimum fuel emergency earlier tonight. With fuel reserves running low, the military airfield was the… pic.twitter.com/WTv4bEEb76
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) July 21, 2026
- United Airlines will get a $7,175,000 rent rebate for building its new San Francisco airport terminal 2 lounge
- I wrote over the weekend that American Airlines will retrofit Boeing 787-8s with their new business class suites and also that they are building a new 37,000 square foot Admirals Club at DFW terminal C and will open a ‘Provisions’ grab and go in the new terminal F.
American is now out with the news about the Admirals Club in C and provisions in F and also that they’re opening Flagship Check-in at D30.
- What’s grosser than gross
@AmericanAir #3280 ORD to CLT, this is gross pic.twitter.com/CFz1zTegj5
— Joe Tarulli (@joetar996) July 19, 2026
- Barclays will start offering Samsung cards on Wednesday, July 22. 5% on Samsung purchases; 3% on Samsung Wallet spend; 2% on streaming; 1% on everything else and $200 initial bonus offer after $2k spend within 90 days. 3% on Samsung Wallet spend will be interesting to some.
- Mileage running, before there were miles.
- Do not be that guy.
@AmericanAir How is this fair that I lose 1/3 of my seat on a 3 hour flight. Happens to me every flight practically. pic.twitter.com/TThPdowRza
— Cathy H (@cathy_h_nc) July 20, 2026
Interestingly, the IAH-PHX flight that diverted to LUK (west of PHX) left IAH on schedule (takeoff 18 minutes after scheduled departure) and was at LUk 7 minutes after their scheduled PHX arrival. I understand unexpected headwinds or routing eating extra fuel, but what happened here?
Nice, a “Clean. Your. Planes.” update! (Also, hire enough staff to do so.)
Apparently PHX had a ground stop due to heavy storms, which explains the diversion to LUF.
During Monsoon (June 15 – Sept 30), Mesa Gateway and PHX Skyharbor are often in the center of storms and flying over the mountains can be “exciting”. Luke as an emergency make sense but I’ve never had a AA or DL flight with that issue during Monsoon coming from the east coast, including 7 hour flight from PHL due to headwinds on AA. Someone at UA mess up bad, normal re-route is Vegas, Ontario, Tuscan (however they had weather yesterday too), New Mexico or Denver.
@sunviking82 — “Someone at UA mess up bad” … I think you just made Tim’s day.
@ This comes to mind, @ sunviking82:
Looking at Flightaware, the United flight that diverted was a 737-900 (NOT the more common -900ER). Alaska used to fly some; United still flies a dozen of them. I’ve talked to friends at Alaska. The 900 is pretty much a stretched -800 without any increased weights over the -800. Meaning, it traded more fuselage and passenger weight for less useful range.. The -900 can’t fly with full passengers and full fuel (that’s over the weight limits). With full pax, it only has about a 4 hour useful flight range plus VFR reserves. That’s why it didn’t sell very well, FYI.
The IAH-PHX flight probably had the required fuel, plus fuel for a close-in alternate, plus the 45+ reserve (instead of maybe an hour+ of holding fuel a 900ER could have easily taken).
Looking at the route they flew on flightaware (deviation around weather and one turn in holding) it’s not hard to see how they used up any reserves and were forced to get on the ground somewhere soon, especially once PHX went down.
No screw up. Just a flight with only some ability to absorb a small airborne delay that got a big one instead. It would have been a screw up if they had tried to hold deeper into their fuel reserves, or tried to force themselves into PHX while the storm was hitting the airport
@Pilot paul. Interesting and useful. Thanks.