United Airlines is running a normal service from London Heathrow today (3 April) after cancelling a number of flights yesterday when it grounded its entire Boeing 777 fleet for maintenance checks.
A spokesman told ABTN the carrier expects all 11 flights to depart the London hub today, having cancelled 41 of 84 departures yesterday across its worldwide network.
Not all of its 52 777s have been checked however, and it is not clear whether there will be further service disruptions in the US today.
”We worked very hard on our customers needs, rebooking them on flights - some on other airlines - and putting them up in hotels if couldn”t rebook them,” said the spokesman. ”We moved mountains for them.”
The airline said it had discovered - ”as part of a regular review of maintenance records” - that the ”functional test that checks the firing system on one of the five bottles in the cargo fire suppression system on the Boeing 777 was not performed.”
This was voluntarily disclosed to the Federal Aviation Administration, but the carrier confirmed that ”this system is regularly tested as part of the pre-flight safety checks.”
Asked if the aircraft had therefore been dangerous to fly, the United spokesman told ABTN, ”No, there was no danger.”
The tests to each aircraft take around 90mins.