docbert

With all due respect to your friend, what does he expect that United could have done otherwise?

An unfortunate fact of the US-AUS flights is that if there's a problem with them, by the time they realize it's almost always too late to move anyone to another flight on another airline. With curfew restrictions in SYD, it's also almost impossible to delay the flights until the next day without delaying them for a full 24 hours. By 1am the very simple fact is that the quickest way to get there is most likely going to be the rescheduled flight ~24 hours later. United "customer care" did all that they could here.

As far as the SYD-MEL flights, this is clearly UA saving him from even more problems. He suggests that he could have been moved to an 8am Virgin flights, despite the fact that Virgin leaves from a completely different terminal, and the time to clear customs/immigration, collect luggage (if any) and get between terminals is at least 1 hour, often more. As a regular on these flights I'd say that staying on the UA flight SYD-MEL is almost certainly the best option. United Customer Care did the right thing here.

Various other points simply don't make sense "When I got on the plane I asked attendant , Jay Williams how many first class seats there were. His answer : 12". Well, yes, there are 12 first class seats - but how many were free? (Anyone ever seen a p.s. flight completely empty in F?)

Could United have done better? Probably. Is "United Airlines is to blame. 100%."? I'd say no... This is simply an unfortunate combination of a terrible point in the passengers life, along with unplanned issues with 2 UA flights. From a customer service point of view, United ended up stuck between a rock and a hard place - they obviously didn't want the passenger to miss his mothers funeral, but at the points that they had a chance to do anything there was almost certainly little or nothing they could do.