Thank you for your detailed report ,which corrorbates to a fuller extent the story that I was receiving from my nephew, much of it via texting. Since I was the one who PAID for the ticket, I have as much right as anyone to comment on the service that was not provided. It is evident from PointWeasel's report that the UA contracted staff were disinterested, poorly trained, offered little in the way of information or apologies, and, in effect, could have cared less for the AC pax...and this is not new....CP handled ML in their 1 year of Canadian service in 1990, and the attitude was the same. I have yet to see a ground handling contractor provide seamless service...I see posts on other threads within this board which indicate that even within the same company, if the station is staffed by their commuter affiliate rather than mainliners, that a different level of service is proffered. So, shuttlerider, the apologist for contracting out, is free to provide examples of exemplary handling on the part of contractors. I am not asking them to go above and beyond...but it is clear that UA treated the AC pax as second-class citizens, providing them with a level of service lower than if they were on UA...just like CP made the ML pax climb the airstairs to the DC9 in the middle of winter rather than assign a gate with a jetway.

Everything that PointWeasel states directs itself to a situation of implosion, since there was little coordination, little communication, and confusion on reprotects and baggage handling upon arrival at YYZ, a situation that they had practically 24hrs by that time to get a handle on.

The only people who were professional the whole day were the crew, and it is heartening to see PointWeasel give them their due. Maintenance screwed up, operations screwed up, UA in MEX and the arrivals handling into YYZ were screwed up too. Watch the YouTube video where Calin talks about the empowerment of people...based on the performance of yesterday/today, I would say that I do not envy his job, because everyone except the flight crew acted as if Bryce Mackasey was still in the Executive Suite. And providing $125CAD in future flight credits that takes one 60-90 days to receive back via YWG Refunds after giving them the cash to help their cash flow problems is adding 1 more hoop to jump and is not competitive given the 9+hrs of delays...compared to DL's $200USD electronic vouchers issued on delays of 4+ hours and that are instantly applied to reservations on their website and which are transferable to anybody of one's choosing, considerably more customer friendly.