Whoa, United.

For some reason, United Airlines just can't seem to do it right.

United flight cancellations continue into third day - Chicago Tribune

Despite being three days past a nasty snowstorm that put a big knot in United's nationwide domestic operations, they still weren't up to snuff today.

The Elk Grove Village based airline apparently did all they could on Sunday and Christmas Eve to fly passengers onto their Christmas destinations. But they did that in spite of their Christmas Day schedule (they basically ignored it) and flew their aircraft and crews to far flung destinations away from where they were supposed to be on Christmas morning.

Not a big deal though on Christmas day - not too many people flying then, so they could afford to cancel a bunch of flights and still fly 70% of their schedule.

Not so though, for the day after Christmas - a historically busy travel day. Because many of their flight crews were still not in position, many of their flights were cancelled for a third day in a row. Here's an example of how that might happen:

Crew A flies a 757 and is based out of DEN. On Christmas Eve, they started a trip and were supposed to fly (all times mountain):

DEN - DSM (1:15-2:30)
DSM - ORD (4:23-5:10)
ORD - LGA (6:37-8:19)

and time out in New York. The next day, our crew reports at 7:00 am for a 7:50 - 11:41 flight back to DEN, finishing the day at SNA around 5:15 p.m, so they can fly next day's 8:03 a.m. departure back to DEN.

Unfortunately, on Christmas Eve, the crew is delayed everywhere, and doesn't get into LGA until 1:25 a.m. on Christmas Day. Luckily, all those passengers going to New York eventually get there for Christmas, so things are good for them.

However, for the pilots, and the airline, things are a bit more complicated. The pilots don't start rest until 1:30 in the morning...meaning they only have 5.5 hours until they start their next day ... which is illegal. So unless United has a spare crew (unlikely, since this is Christmas Day), their morning flight is delayed and the crew is stranded in New York.

Because of airline work rules, the crew can't fly until they get a certain amount of rest (the actual amount escapes me at the moment - but it's generally between 8 and 14 hours, depending on the hours worked the previous day). That 757 is stuck in New York until the crew gets their rest.

To make it even more complicated, the crew and the aircraft go their separate ways after getting back to DEN. Our stuck LGA aircraft is supposed to go on to SEA, while our crew to SNA in a different aircraft. So both of those flights are screwed up and it's still 6 hours before they even have to depart.

The crew can't leave LGA until after 10:00 a.m. to make sure they get 8 hours rest. But that's only 2 hours or so - which isn't bad. Unfortunately, to make sure our airplane gets to SEA on time for the next day's flights, United operations cancels the DEN & SEA flights altogether and sends our aircraft and crew to ORD at 12:30 p.m. to sub for a different stuck airplane so it (our 757) can be in position for a totally different SEA flight to be ready for next day's ops.

The crew flies to Chicago, but because of LGA's delays, they don't get to ORD until 2:30 p.m. Ops has canceled the next two flights to SNA, so they sub the crew onto a different 757 that's missing it's crew to BOS from 4:10 to 6:00 p.m. The crew ends up in Boston, and are out of working hours until the next day - 3,000 miles from where they were supposed to end up in Southern California.

Because United's pilots are shorthanded, there are barely any reserve DEN, ORD or LAX crew members to make it to SNA for the 8:05 a.m. flight out to DEN (on the day after Christmas) - so even if somehow United managed to get an aircraft to the airport, there's no crew to fly it.

See what a cluster-**** this whole airline operations thing can be?