Mike,

Its difficult to say whether or not United ‘jumped the gun’ in transferring pax to American.

From experience, when an aircraft is unserviceable, the situation is generally very fluid. Say you have a departure in three hours, but the aircraft is unserviceable. The initial estimate from engineering is that the aircraft will be out of service for at least four hours. Now depending on the route and the available options for re-routing pax, you may decide to re-route the passengers.

It is not unknown to then receive a phone call an hour or so later, to be told the aircraft is serviceable. Of course by this time you have probably lost most of your pax.

Of course, after the event, with the benefit of hindsight, numerous questions are asked, by the company management, as to why the situation was handled the way it was. The phrase ‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ springs to mind’.

There are of course many more variables to take into account, before actually re-routing pax, as it’s not a decision to make lightly. But in essence, situations like these do occur from time to time.

In fact I’ve most of this afternoon, working out a plan, with our ops desk, for tomorrow’s flying for the company I work for. A classic case of an unserviceable aircraft, but no estimate as to when it may become serviceable.