Passengers booked on United Airlines Flight 884 from Washington Dulles International Airport to Rome spent nearly 12 hours stuck on the ground before the airline canceled the flight entirely, leaving travelers more than a day behind schedule.
The flight was scheduled to leave Dulles at 5:35 p.m. on Oct. 2 for an overnight trip to Rome’s Fiumicino Airport. Instead, a chain of problems kept the Boeing 777-200ER grounded for hours, including a cockpit malfunction, severe thunderstorms, and multiple crew swaps, according to a report from “The Aviation Hub” blog.
United Airlines confirmed the sequence of events in a statement to Fox News Digital: “United flight 884 from Washington Dulles to Rome returned to the gate after taxiing to take on additional fuel for a longer planned flight due to weather. During this time, a new crew was brought in, and a maintenance issue that arose was resolved. The aircraft then pushed back from the gate, but then required another mechanical inspection. The flight was then canceled due to crew time limits. We rebooked customers on an extra flight that departed on Saturday evening.”
The aviation blog “Simple Flying” reported that a faulty door seal and an incident involving the plane’s pushback tug likely contributed to the delays as well.
By the time the flight was finally canceled around 4 a.m. the next morning, some passengers had already been waiting 12 hours, according to Men’s Journal. The plane had returned to the gate roughly three hours after initial technical trouble to take on extra fuel, only for thunderstorms to further stall departure.
Passengers were forced off the aircraft once the original crew hit its legal duty-time limit after a six-hour delay. A replacement crew then boarded, but additional mechanical problems forced a second deplaning before United scrapped the flight altogether.
Those affected were eventually rebooked on a flight that departed Dulles just before 7 p.m. the following Saturday — more than 25 hours after their original departure time.
Passengers React
One traveler who was on the flight vented in the United Airlines MileagePlus Experts group on Facebook, writing, “I’m surprised there hasn’t been a mutiny.”
“You should be eligible for compensation if you have a traveler’s credit card. These things happen. That’s why there’s insurance,” another Facebook user responded.
That same commenter added a blunter take: “I fly a lot also. If you can’t handle the problems, you have three choices. Fly private, fly a different [airline], don’t fly. I have been flying for 43 years with United. There are ups and downs, live with them or move on.”
A different United flyer defended the delays as a matter of safety, writing, “Most of the issues you point out are regulations written in blood. … I’d rather not have to relearn them at the risk of safety.”
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