hamachitoro

Speechless. Yet another united #FAIL. 6/29 Newark to Dallas 9pm flight supposed to arrive by midnight. It's 1am and we are sitting on the plane waiting for the food to be loaded so we can takeoff.

That after having walked across all 3 wings of the airport following two gate changes, and 8 emails/voice messages notifying me the flight is delayed, technical failure and a plane change.

with any luck we might take off soon and might get in to Dallas by 4am.

Seriously united?

pigx5

If they dont load the food, how can they sell you bob and get more revenue?

demkr

Guess you should have flown AA!

weirdlyndon

Once again, while it sucks that you were in this situation, this is not exclusive to just United. This could've happened to you on AA or any other carrier. The random thunderstorm that happened early Friday morning, created a ripple effect in a lot of airline's flight schedules.

Next time consider having them push your ticket over to another carrier whose flight is operating on time. If an agent won't do it for you at the airport, call up reservations. Never had an issue with them doing it over the phone as they usually understand the extenuating circumstances.

Continental250K

Stupid post, Cases like this aren't exclusive to UA

channa

There's a lot more pushback and resistance now. I was told by a res agent that they won't push to AA, only *A partners, which we know is not correct.

There was a recent post on UA's FB page where someone couldn't get pushed to QR on one of UA's Middle East tag flights and was SOL.

Reservations, especially legacy CO reservations, is not always in compliance with the Star Alliance rebooking rules.

Thunderroad

Agree with your first paragraph; disagree with the second. I called UA reservations a couple of months ago when I was due to fly on a UA flight that was canceled due to mechanical problems; both at the United Club and on the phone, UA could not find any alternative UA flights that day. Even though I'd found availability on AA and the phone CSR could see it on the screen, she explained she could not rebook me on AA. She certainly understood the extenuating circumstances. (I ended up flying out on UA 24 hours later.)

I guess I could have done the usual call-again-and-try-another-CSR approach, but it was one of those days when I'd been on hold for a very long time just to get through to this one and she sounded like she knew what she was doing...or not doing, in this instance.

In contrast, when I had a mechanical cancellation on AA its phone CSR was able to rebook me on a US flight during the time it took for me to walk from one gate to the other.

Jorgen

While a four-hour delay is certainly a most annoying occurrence when you're in the middle of one, it is, as Tom Jones would no doubt assure us if he were here, not unusual.

Do the other airline forums acquire threads every time a plane gets delayed? Or do other airlines' passengers suck it up and acknowledge that these sorts of snafus happen from time to time?

channa

The issue is not the delay. As you point out, these things happen. The issue is the airline's handling of it. After a lengthy delay such as this, to have to wait further due to catering can be frustrating (why couldn't they be ready when the plane got in)?

Similarly, if the airline was refusing to rebook or reroute customers, then that could compound the frustration.

JeffS

It wasn't like there was any severe weather on the east coast last night .... Oh wait.

DFWFairy

it's been 12 hours and we haven't heard back from OP, guess he'd arrived DFW by now...

JONEZY00

Had a flight two weeks ago, inbound was delayed which was causing me to miss a connection. GA did not hesitate and immediately rebooked me on a direct DL flight. So it is possible

JFKSFOLAX_friend

Yeah, what happened to the OP?

channa

Yes, they do it.

The airport is less of an issue than the call center, where they seem to think they're not allowed to.

flymonthly

While the problem isn't exclusive to UA, they do seem to be having a LOT more delays than DL/AA/US. I've been monitoring flight cancellations and delays over the last week at flightstats and UA is far behind the other legacy carriers. UA has been at less than 70 % on-time since I've been watching (8-9 days) while the others are usually far above 80%. And UA seems to cancel more than twice as many flights as the others. So basically your chances of getting delayed or cancelled have been twice as great on UA as they were on DL/AA/US. I'm curious to see what the stats look like for the entire month and my hunch is that it isn't going to look pretty for UA.

Why is UA having so many problems?