So just from a anecdotic experience, my mother flew AF422 last month (CDG-BOG) and experienced a massive 3h45 minute delay, reason given "they couldn't turn the plane on". Finally they changed gates and the flight was performed by another aircraft whilst the original was left grounded.

Funny enough, my sister was on it today and after a 3h delay AF decided to cancel the flight, reason being again "they couldn't turn on the plane". She's now trying to get reebooked for tomorrow via AMS or MAD (as AF423/422 is not operating daily yet, like it did in pre-pandemic times). I wonder why AF would go through all the mess of cancelling a flight that is not daily having to rebook hundreds of passengers through other hubs and providing hotels for everybody.

Also checked flightaware, the last 5 departures of AF422 have all suffered delays, although none as massive. However, it is surprising to see the lfight hasn't been able to depart on time for a whille.

My question is: What is AF's 789 fleet dispatch reliability like? Are they running a tight schedule and have no spares?

.

The issues you report are more likely to be lack of a flight crew than actually turning the plane on. It would not surprise me if there was at least an informal policy that you don't start the aircraft until you know that you have an aircrew for it. If this is the case; yes they could not turn the aircraft "on" - but only because they wouln't turn it on without an available flight crew. Nice misdirection though...

While not Air France I recall being kicked off of an aircraft that had an intermediate stop; and then being told that the reason they could not fly me to my destination airport was that the aircraft that was supposed to fly there never arrived.... to which I replied that was not true as I was on it... It took me 9 months to get the airline to admit that they rescheduled that aircraft for their convenience and that I was owed compensation.

Anecdotal- I’ve worked a fair few AF 787s (every frame, and most likely a few hundred turnarounds) and can count the number of cancellations or delays exceeding 20 minutes on one hand. Very few maintenance issues, overall

Having only 10 aircraft does pose some tight scheduling issues, and definitely doesn’t leave a spare. But most of the routes the 78s operate have early morning arrivals into CDG, so shouldn’t be a fleet rotation question.

Sorry to not be able to provide a better answer

Don't forget to claim 600€ of delay compensation.

This is the underbelly talking. Have you looked at the actual number of delayed flights across the fleet? Here’s an overview of the last ten flights per aircraft:

F-HRBA, 7 on time, 2 delayed for over an hour, 1 30 minutes
F-HRBB, 9 on time, 1 delayed for 5 minutes
F-HRBC, 8 on time, 1 delayed for 53 minutes, 1 47 minutes
F-HRBD, 9 on time, 1 delayed 1 hour 17 minutes
F-HRBE, 9 on time, 1 delayed 1 hour 44 minutes
F-HRBF, 6 on time, 1 cancelled, 1 delayed 1 hour 28 minutes, 1 delayed 1 hour, 1 delayed 1 hour 15 minutes
F-HRBG, 10 on time
F-HRBH, 9 on time, 1 delayed 22 minutes
F-HRBI, 10 on time
F-HRBJ, 10 on time

If anything, Air France has a F-HRBF reliability issue, which was indeed the plane that was supposed to fly to Bogota. Rest seems pretty good.

Cheers!

2175301 wrote:

The issues you report are more likely to be lack of a flight crew than actually turning the plane on. It would not surprise me if there was at least an informal policy that you don't start the aircraft until you know that you have an aircrew for it. If this is the case; yes they could not turn the aircraft "on" - but only because they wouln't turn it on without an available flight crew. Nice misdirection though...

While not Air France I recall being kicked off of an aircraft that had an intermediate stop; and then being told that the reason they could not fly me to my destination airport was that the aircraft that was supposed to fly there never arrived.... to which I replied that was not true as I was on it... It took me 9 months to get the airline to admit that they rescheduled that aircraft for their convenience and that I was owed compensation.

You don’t need a flight crew to « turn the plane on ».
On the 787 in the airline I work for, it is even a maintenance procedure.

Could it be a Bogota curse? This may be a tangent, but when I flew to Bogota in 2018 with an AF A340, we experienced four delays before reaching the gate in Bogota.
1) Late incoming aircraft in Paris + slow boarding
2) engine problem (approx 1hr to fix)
3) broken windshield while taxiing to the gate...we had to go back to the gate. (about 2 hours to fix)
4)After arriving in Bogota with an almost 3-hour delay, we couldn't park because we had missed our gate slot and had to wait for a Lufthansa plane to leave the gate.
Air France refused any compensation because they said we were 2hrs and 55 minutes late...five minutes short of getting a cash compensation.
I also remember the A340s having take-off issues in Bogota because if the altitude.

*taxiing to the runway

JUANTRIPPEJR wrote:

Air France refused any compensation because they said we were 2hrs and 55 minutes late...five minutes short of getting a cash compensation.

2hr 55 late, is that based on landing time at BOG or time to the gate? It should be the latter, and not all
pax know that. If you were waiting for LH for a gate, you might have been past 3 hrs, which would have qualified for compensation.

JUANTRIPPEJR wrote:

I also remember the A340s having take-off issues in Bogota because if the altitude.

Quads usually perform well at hot and high airports. It’s twins that don’t, at least by comparison.

At hot and high airports, the more engines you have on departure, the better.

In short, of the last 100 flights of Air France 789, they have 83 on time, 16 delayed and 1 canceled. The average delay time if we calculate across the 99 flights that were operated: about 7min 15 seconds. I believe ANY airline would be glad to show such numbers

RCS763AV wrote:

So just from a anecdotic experience, my mother flew AF422 last month (CDG-BOG) and experienced a massive 3h45 minute delay, reason given "they couldn't turn the plane on". Finally they changed gates and the flight was performed by another aircraft whilst the original was left grounded.

Funny enough, my sister was on it today and after a 3h delay AF decided to cancel the flight, reason being again "they couldn't turn on the plane". She's now trying to get reebooked for tomorrow via AMS or MAD (as AF423/422 is not operating daily yet, like it did in pre-pandemic times). I wonder why AF would go through all the mess of cancelling a flight that is not daily having to rebook hundreds of passengers through other hubs and providing hotels for everybody.

Also checked flightaware, the last 5 departures of AF422 have all suffered delays, although none as massive. However, it is surprising to see the lfight hasn't been able to depart on time for a whille.

My question is: What is AF's 789 fleet dispatch reliability like? Are they running a tight schedule and have no spares?

.

If you consider this to be a "massive" delay then you clearly don't fly much.

B737MAX wrote:

2175301 wrote:

The issues you report are more likely to be lack of a flight crew than actually turning the plane on. It would not surprise me if there was at least an informal policy that you don't start the aircraft until you know that you have an aircrew for it. If this is the case; yes they could not turn the aircraft "on" - but only because they wouln't turn it on without an available flight crew. Nice misdirection though...

While not Air France I recall being kicked off of an aircraft that had an intermediate stop; and then being told that the reason they could not fly me to my destination airport was that the aircraft that was supposed to fly there never arrived.... to which I replied that was not true as I was on it... It took me 9 months to get the airline to admit that they rescheduled that aircraft for their convenience and that I was owed compensation.

You don’t need a flight crew to « turn the plane on ».
On the 787 in the airline I work for, it is even a maintenance procedure.

Of course its simple to turn on an aircraft; I never claimed otherwise. My point was that the affected passenger was given a BS reason, which just might have the smallest grain of truth to it - perhaps based on an AF policy that you don't start an aircraft until you know that you will you have a crew for it.

I remember in 1996 my grandmother/aunt/uncle we're flying back to Pennsylvania and the first flight was from Denver to Chicago on a United Airlines Boeing 777. Similar thing they said there was a delay because apparently there had been all the lights left on in the aircraft overnight and the battery was dead so they had to swap it out before they would be able to even start getting it ready to go.

Here in Fortaleza (FOR), the AF 787 have been arriving and departing on-time. No issues, as far as I know.

This reminds me of a flight I had on an AA763 MIA-LAX 10 years ago. We were stuck at the gate at MIA for about 15 minutes past departure. The Captain came on and explained that they were going to "reboot the systems" on the plane. He gave a great explanation, saying that it was just like when your home computer isn't working as it should, most of the time when you "reboot" the computer, everything comes back on as it should. It was a great explanation that everyone understood and could relate to. And... the "reboot" worked, as expected!

N62NA wrote:

This reminds me of a flight I had on an AA763 MIA-LAX 10 years ago. We were stuck at the gate at MIA for about 15 minutes past departure. The Captain came on and explained that they were going to "reboot the systems" on the plane. He gave a great explanation, saying that it was just like when your home computer isn't working as it should, most of the time when you "reboot" the computer, everything comes back on as it should. It was a great explanation that everyone understood and could relate to. And... the "reboot" worked, as expected!

Since the 787s (and other new Gen aircraft) rely so much on electrical power, that’s become even more of a problem. Once had a GPU fail while the pilots were inputting all their flight info, going through their prep etc. Could almost hear the captain cursing from the fed cargo hold. 30 minutes to reboot and catch up.

Same reason air starters are becoming slightly less common. New planes need electricity to jump the engines

ZKCIF wrote:

In short, of the last 100 flights of Air France 789, they have 83 on time, 16 delayed and 1 canceled. The average delay time if we calculate across the 99 flights that were operated: about 7min 15 seconds. I believe ANY airline would be glad to show such numbers

Those numbers are not special, not for fairly new aircraft operating out of a single hub (which simplifies aircraft and crew substitution). What does AF average systemwide on-time, month after month?

ZKCIF wrote:

In short, of the last 100 flights of Air France 789, they have 83 on time, 16 delayed and 1 canceled. The average delay time if we calculate across the 99 flights that were operated: about 7min 15 seconds. I believe ANY airline would be glad to show such numbers

Anything up to include 15 minutes is considered on time, delays are not averaged out the way you have. We don’t know the reason for the delays, could be ATC, weather, loading, does not mean it was the aircraft.

2175301 wrote:

The issues you report are more likely to be lack of a flight crew than actually turning the plane on. It would not surprise me if there was at least an informal policy that you don't start the aircraft until you know that you have an aircrew for it. If this is the case; yes they could not turn the aircraft "on" - but only because they wouln't turn it on without an available flight crew. Nice misdirection though...

While not Air France I recall being kicked off of an aircraft that had an intermediate stop; and then being told that the reason they could not fly me to my destination airport was that the aircraft that was supposed to fly there never arrived.... to which I replied that was not true as I was on it... It took me 9 months to get the airline to admit that they rescheduled that aircraft for their convenience and that I was owed compensation.

That could be an issue yes. The given reason was obviously very abstract in order to be a perfect excuse and get people not to ask many questions. It's funny though that they used the same excue twice, that's what got me thinking

FGITD wrote:

Anecdotal- I’ve worked a fair few AF 787s (every frame, and most likely a few hundred turnarounds) and can count the number of cancellations or delays exceeding 20 minutes on one hand. Very few maintenance issues, overall

Having only 10 aircraft does pose some tight scheduling issues, and definitely doesn’t leave a spare. But most of the routes the 78s operate have early morning arrivals into CDG, so shouldn’t be a fleet rotation question.

Sorry to not be able to provide a better answer

Thanks for your answer! I was also about to point out it must be a scheduling issue bc if they had had a spare they could have sorted out the technical difficulty.

Dufo wrote:

Don't forget to claim 600€ of delay compensation.

Already done!

LifelinerOne wrote:

This is the underbelly talking. Have you looked at the actual number of delayed flights across the fleet? Here’s an overview of the last ten flights per aircraft:

F-HRBA, 7 on time, 2 delayed for over an hour, 1 30 minutes
F-HRBB, 9 on time, 1 delayed for 5 minutes
F-HRBC, 8 on time, 1 delayed for 53 minutes, 1 47 minutes
F-HRBD, 9 on time, 1 delayed 1 hour 17 minutes
F-HRBE, 9 on time, 1 delayed 1 hour 44 minutes
F-HRBF, 6 on time, 1 cancelled, 1 delayed 1 hour 28 minutes, 1 delayed 1 hour, 1 delayed 1 hour 15 minutes
F-HRBG, 10 on time
F-HRBH, 9 on time, 1 delayed 22 minutes
F-HRBI, 10 on time
F-HRBJ, 10 on time

If anything, Air France has a F-HRBF reliability issue, which was indeed the plane that was supposed to fly to Bogota. Rest seems pretty good.

Cheers!

Thanks for the info! So it's that damn F-HBRF haha!

ZKCIF wrote:

In short, of the last 100 flights of Air France 789, they have 83 on time, 16 delayed and 1 canceled. The average delay time if we calculate across the 99 flights that were operated: about 7min 15 seconds. I believe ANY airline would be glad to show such numbers

Thanks for the info.

Flaps wrote:

RCS763AV wrote:

So just from a anecdotic experience, my mother flew AF422 last month (CDG-BOG) and experienced a massive 3h45 minute delay, reason given "they couldn't turn the plane on". Finally they changed gates and the flight was performed by another aircraft whilst the original was left grounded.

Funny enough, my sister was on it today and after a 3h delay AF decided to cancel the flight, reason being again "they couldn't turn on the plane". She's now trying to get reebooked for tomorrow via AMS or MAD (as AF423/422 is not operating daily yet, like it did in pre-pandemic times). I wonder why AF would go through all the mess of cancelling a flight that is not daily having to rebook hundreds of passengers through other hubs and providing hotels for everybody.

Also checked flightaware, the last 5 departures of AF422 have all suffered delays, although none as massive. However, it is surprising to see the lfight hasn't been able to depart on time for a whille.

My question is: What is AF's 789 fleet dispatch reliability like? Are they running a tight schedule and have no spares?

.

If you consider this to be a "massive" delay then you clearly don't fly much.

The depth of this contribution is baffling. Let's help you out and make it something to actually talk about.

For your information, I do fly fairly frequently, both domestic and international.

Any delay over 3h is insane. So much so, that the EU makes the airlines compensate passengers with 600 euros in cash whenever a delay of over 3h happens within the EU, going to the EU or leaving the EU.

I have suffered 16h, 11h delays and a cancelled flight on AA (BOG-MIA) and B6 (BOG-JFK, cancelled JFK-BOG and rebooked me 5 days later) respectively this year, too bad the US has abysmal consumer protection laws whatsoever so I was only offered the bare minimum, forget any monetary compensations.

FGITD wrote:

N62NA wrote:

This reminds me of a flight I had on an AA763 MIA-LAX 10 years ago. We were stuck at the gate at MIA for about 15 minutes past departure. The Captain came on and explained that they were going to "reboot the systems" on the plane. He gave a great explanation, saying that it was just like when your home computer isn't working as it should, most of the time when you "reboot" the computer, everything comes back on as it should. It was a great explanation that everyone understood and could relate to. And... the "reboot" worked, as expected!

Exaclty, seems like a good explanation to ease passenger moods!

Since the 787s (and other new Gen aircraft) rely so much on electrical power, that’s become even more of a problem. Once had a GPU fail while the pilots were inputting all their flight info, going through their prep etc. Could almost hear the captain cursing from the fed cargo hold. 30 minutes to reboot and catch up.

Same reason air starters are becoming slightly less common. New planes need electricity to jump the engines

Thanks for the explanation!

All in al this proved to be an enriching discussion!