United 1731 and Kona Travel Challenges

I was going to write an article about the subject of Kona travel before this event on board the aforementioned flight even happened. And, after a lot of conversations with both experienced and not-so-experienced travellers on that flight, the theme of my original article seems to fit into this one. So here we go.

Let’s start off with the basics that really have nothing to do with United Airlines 1731, which was scheduled to serve from Kona to Denver, Colorado.

The Drip Arrival

Every year, for almost four decades, the IRONMAN train hits the Kona airport. This isn’t anything new for the airlines. And, to be honest, our train is a small drop in the bucket when it comes to passengers coming into Kona every day. There are 13 routes that feed into Kona directly from the mainland. There are also those who fly into Honolulu first, then do the short jaunt to the Big Island. There are over 133 flights that depart from Kona every week. So, the idea that 7,000 to 12,000 people (depending on the number of athletes racing, their support crews, and industry people) coming in and out during a week is pretty freaking small and normal. But, for some reason, we deal with the same issues over and over again.

The Kona journey has always been the same for me. I get to the airport and play the “who is a triathlete and who is racing” game with all my friends. I look for the more decorated people at the airport and admire their “drip” like the internet says. You arrive in Kona tired because you never really remember just how long of a trip it is. It’s a little packed at the luggage area, and everyone is trying to figure out where the new area will be to pick up their bikes. The local staff is sort of used to all this, and they keep getting better and better at it. If you rented a car, you hope to high heaven that someone else is traveling with you so you can ditch the luggage and pick that up first. If not, you become “that” person that fills the small rental car shuttles up with all your stuff.

Customers are more excited and, therefore, likely to be patient. The airline personal are also the same way, and not as stressed, simply because the sheer volume of people, and issues, aren’t as great because the arrivals are spread out over a few weeks.

Without complete flight data on the IRONMAN passengers (which we aren’t going to get), I would say the rush of athletes coming into Kona is probably 50 percent less on the way in than on the way out. And that is simply just assuming that people start arriving the week prior to race week. It seems like every year that period gets a little more stretched, too. So, let’s say for example, that the majority of people arriving are doing so from Thursday (the week prior to event week) to Tuesday (of event week). Once again, this is my gut feeling.

The Mass Exit

This is where it gets messy every single year. While most of us arrive in Kona over a five day period – rested, excited and patient – we all try to leave on the Sunday or Monday after the race. We are tired, sore, and not so patient. And, for heaven sakes, we absolutely don’t want to walk our bikes to the end of the airport to drop them off. This is where things become way more different than the other 363 days of the year. Which leads me to my question: why don’t the airlines bring in temporary reinforcements?

I’m not talking about general Kona airport employees. I’m talking about airline gate agents. Gate agents (generally speaking) are airline employees who have much better local airport knowledge and, also, of the airline system in general. This would make a big difference because the check-in process seems to be where most of the bottleneck occurs. Last year I made the mistake of flying out on Monday night. I have the best status on Delta, and it still took me 90 minutes to check in. This year I left on Sunday, and it was only a 45-minute ordeal, but that was because I timed things just right. Every year it’s the same. Lots of people and not enough agents to check them in, let alone help them figure out what line to get into. It all seems to get worse as the night goes on, too, because, when other things go wrong later in the day, the (few) agents on duty have been so overloaded they can’t wait to get home. (And, when some of them do, things quickly start to go south.)

Back to UA 1731

In my opinion this is where the disaster of an experience named United 1731 started. After speaking with six different sources, I have come to understand some of the issues passengers faced. Let me be very clear about a couple of things: I don’t have access to flight logs from United; I have not reached out to United. I am simply going off information provided to me from trusted sources who were on the flight.

Here are the three things that happened in Kona for this departure:

1. There was a mechanical issue.
2. There was a medical emergency.
3. There was another mechanical issue.

The First Mechanical Issue

Mechanical issues happen a lot with aircraft. Most of them are little things, and often they are issues with a back-up system, or even a back-up system to the back-up. But, regardless of the system, they require a separate set of people to look at it, and there’s always lots of paperwork. So, while this first mechanical issue took some time, it was resolved in what I understand to be a pretty normal timeframe. So, while inconvenient, this was pretty normal and didn’t cause a huge delay.

A Medical Emergency on the Taxiway

Clearly we should all be glad his happened on the ground instead of in the air. Once you are in the air, you typically have to land the plane, which probably would have meant the plane would have needed to turn around and return to the Kona airport.

The medical emergency happened on the way to the runway. In speaking with a Slowtwitcher who was sitting directly behind the woman who had the emergency, the flight attendants were just getting their seatbelts on before takeoff when one of them suddenly got up and asked if someone on the plane was a medical professional. The plane then had to head back to the gate, and turn off the engines as an ambulance was called. The woman was given oxygen, taken off the plane, and went off in the ambulance. We sure hope that she is OK.

All this created the first two to two and a half hours of what eventually would become an over 5 hour delay.

The main issue seemed to be the time it took to replace the oxygen tank used by the passenger on the plane. According to the people I spoke with, it took about an hour from the time the flight attendant asked if there was a medical professional on board to the time the woman was off the plane. Getting the replacement oxygen tank didn’t start until after that.

Another Mechanical Issue

This caused a major delay. Once this was finally completed, the third issue hit – a second mechanical issue. This was caused by the restarting of the engines. This became an issue because if the flight didn’t take off within short order, the pilots would be timed out of flying the plane on its entire planned route (exceed the amount of time a pilot can be in control of an aircraft) according to FAA regulations. In other words, by the time the crew started working and the time the plane landed in Denver was going to exceed the legally allowed time. That meant that the flight couldn’t go to Denver.

They could get to San Francisco (SFO), though, then get people where they needed to go from there, as it is a United hub. The passengers were told they could go to SFO, or they could get off and get rebooked. Finally, at 1:05 am Kona time, the flight took off with all but two passengers: one who chose to stay behind, and the woman who had gone to the hospital.

Flight logs show the original departure time of 8 pm was pushed to 1:05 am, with the plane landing in the new location (SFO) at 8:27 am

Let’s keep in mind that being forced that staying in Kona would have sucked for the passengers. This would have caused everyone to have to get off the plane, get their luggage and get to a hotel. This also would have meant that United would have likely needed to find another plane to help with the backlog of passengers that are now in Kona. Planes on this route fly back and forth, so if this plane was stuck in Kona, United would have had a problem getting people to Kona. No one wanted to be stuck in Kona, and everyone I spoke with said they wanted to fly to SFO and deal with that delay – the true athlete mind set: just keep moving forward.

Upon arrival in SFO is where United really messed up, in my opinion. The United gate agent was nowhere near ready for this situation.

Denver passengers were told to stay on the plane. Then about 30 to 45 minutes later they were told to de-board the plane, but to leave their carry on bags. Then they were told to grab their carry on, but to make sure to put it back in its original spot. Everyone else that had connections was stopped as soon as they deplaned, then asked to show their tickets. (Until the United agents figured out that wasn’t going to work and just let everyone go after spending about 30 minutes telling them they couldn’t leave).

How does this tie into the original article that I was going to write?

Major airlines should increase the number of in-house agents on site during the mass exit of IRONMAN athletes and supporters at the end of Kona week. Customer service needs some extra love, and the local airport workers simply can’t do it all. This is a perfect example of lack of attention to detail. I would image that, when they look at this issue, and if they look back at this time frame in years past, they would see a spike in customer service complaints that could be avoided.

An extra gate agent, or two, could have really helped to make sure the local staff in Kona had the ramp ready for someone to get off the plane in that emergency. They could have gotten extra water or food for the passengers who were delayed for what ended up being over five hours, and could have helped find that replacement oxygen tank faster. That extra person could have taken the extra time to make sure that staff in SFO were more prepared for the flight that was coming in.

Once again, this happens every single year at the same time. And, next year, there will be almost twice as many people racing, with almost twice as many bikes to get on planes. Airlines should take note and be prepared to shine, instead of looking bad.

I hope that any airline employees reading this article will take note. The people on these planes, during this week, are some of their most valued customers. They travel a lot, and chances are some of them are in charge of large company travel programs, and they 100 percent do their part to keep the airlines in business. Check the facts, do the homework, and let us know if we can help in any way. We (the triathlon community) love to fly, and we are grateful when we get to take all our geeky triathlete gear with us. In the end, we are grateful for you, the staff at all the airlines, who make it possible for us to do that. Let’s work together each year instead of repeating the annual Kona-exit clown show. Because currently all you have are some (rightfully) pissed off people.