United Airlines suspends flights between São Paulo and Washington and 6 more routes due to lack of planes

United Airlines stopped flying on seven routes, including the connection between Washington and São Paulo (Guarulhos), information from the Cirium aviation data intelligence platform shows.

The reason for the suspension declared by the company is the unavailability of aircraft, presuming that the Boeing 767-400ER, which were on the route to Brazil, for example, had been allocated to other segments.

One of the main problems for the company’s network is the absence of 52 Boeing 777-200 and 777-200ER, which have been idle since last year. This occurred when the model aircraft suffered an uncontained engine failure, leading to all examples being withdrawn from operation until an investigation concluded the reason and defined a remediation plan.

The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration of the USA) has already issued, on March 11, an airworthiness directive regarding the model, indicating what must be done to make it fly again.

However, the airline has not yet put it back on the grid and this directly impacts fleet planning.

The routes affected so far are:

From Washington:

• Washington – Sao Paulo
• Washington – Geneva
• Washington – Honolulu
• Washington – Dublin

From Newark:

• Newark – Maui
• Newark – Honolulu
• Newark – Tokyo