Headwinds, ‘fuel overburn’ force United flight to return to Hawaii
This screenshot from Flightaware.com shows the path of United Flight 724 on Sunday. The flight turned back because it didn’t have enough fuel to make it safely from Honolulu to San Francisco.
A United Airlines flight to San Francisco was forced to be return to Hawaii two hours after taking off Sunday because of fuel problems caused by strong headwinds.
United Airlines flight 724 left Honolulu at 12:50 p.m., but was forced to turn back because of “fuel overburn.”
An airlines spokeswoman said “fuel overburn” is caused by strong headwinds.
The plane landed safely and the 260 passengers were accommodated overnight, given meal vouchers and will be reimbursed, the spokeswoman said.
The passengers were booked on a San Francisco flight scheduled to leave at 11:42 a.m. today.
26 responses to “Headwinds, ‘fuel overburn’ force United flight to return to Hawaii”
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Somebody forgot to put gas in the plane.
Pilots have been complaining about this for quite some time how the accountants at HQ have been reducing total carried fuel to reduce weight and therefore reduce costs. This puts crew, passengers and equipment at risk.
Yep but ultimately the Captain has final call on the fuel load. No one likes hauling excess fuel. My friend who is a Hawaiian captain says this kind of thing happens but not that often. He said they rely on information from other flights along the same route or from flights that have completed the same route in addition to the weather reports. Sounds more like a case of headwinds that were not detected by either. Must have been real strong because the flight was operated by a 777 not a smaller aircraft and they typically load additional fuel to cover such contingencies.
Sad to say with many airlines, while the Captain has final call on the fuel load, loading more than the company is comfortable with may mean reduced flight time, no bonus, other issues.
FAA should investigate to see if UA shorted the fuel load in an attempt to save money. If so, a massive fine would get UA’s attention.
I would think they would be required to have enough fuel to reach their destination and also carry a reserve amount in case of emergency. What happens if they get diverted to another airport at the last minute or face a delay before they can land? Doesn’t sound like safety is their chief concern.
The FAA should take punitive action, their actions at best were reckless, at worst bordering on gross incompetence.
headwinds to SF from Honolulu are highly unusual. Freakish event. Jet stream usually means tailwinds.
you don’t know much about meteorology, do you?
Flying West to East I believe the wind is generally behind you.
generally, yes. but the jet stream moves around a lot, and may have been far north of the flight path. you also have to take into consideration other weather phenomena of varying magnitude. headwinds on a flight from HNL to SFO are not unheard of.
I don’t think she knows much of anything.
kona wind ? kaumakani pume halau
You are generally correct allie, but winds aloft are influenced by many factors, fronts, low and high pressure cells among them. Hard to speculate what happened in this case, but the important thing is everyone is safe.
From Internet available information:
Winds at flight level 390 on 4/4 at 1 am Zulu, time on Flightaware for this flight, shows Jetstream at 310 degrees at 124 knots about the point they turned back.
https://www.windyty.com/?200h,2016-04-04-00,28.998,-133.774,4
Their heading was 252 degrees,
http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?PATH=sfo-hnl&PATH-COLOR=red&PATH-UNITS=km&SPEED-UNITS=kts&RANGE-STYLE=best&RANGE-COLOR=navy
Headwind component was a relatively mild 66 knots
http://craigsweb.net/mystuff/wxcalculator.htm
United Dispatch uses far more sophisticated types of winds aloft information when they do the fuel calculations, altitudes, and routes.
When we flew Westbound from Europe to SFO last October, we had a tail wind of over 200 knots, opposite of what is generally expected from jetstreams.
Wise to turn around sooner than later?
I use to be a high mileage flyer with them…….those glory days are gone.
Reduce the weight of the airplane by shrinking the seats some more.
To bad for the people that had connecting flight to other parts of the country.
Better late than dead right?
In the old days the turnaround point was called the Point of No Return or PNR. Regardless of what it’s called nowadays, though, this was a good decision on the part of the Captain.
agree
This is a bunch of BS. There are hundreds of flights daily from the West Coast back and forth–they know within minutes the time and fuel required–they just pain old screwed up either on the fuel load or fuel control, i.e. altitude.
I’m sure this has happened before, but it’s the first time I’ve heard of it.
Seems like United Air flew without the proper amount of fuel. it is actually a pretty big screw up as mistakes like that can end up with disastrous results.
This matter needs to be investigated by the FAA.
I had this happen to me before, not sure why this is newsworthy? It happened to me about 2 years ago. No press over that one…
I had one with AA in 2010 too, not in the press either, and no nothing else.
Let’s face it, the weather is weird now. The winds are a-blowin’ up there! Take a look at the average flight time from Honolulu to Osaka…and back…a full hour increase in both directions. I think there is a lot going on that we don’t know anything about in terms of weather and climate change, and exactly how close the bean counters are running the numbers to carry passengers…it may be better that we don’t.
I’m surprised there were no comments about too many over-weight passengers causing additional drag on the aircraft?!