Karelia

I was googling about UA's policy when the flight was delayed/cancelled due to weather. I saw this thread on a train forum. Can this story possibly be true?


"My GF just returned from Europe on a Cheapie ticket on SAS (Copenhagen-EWR) and United (EWR-IAH-ABI.)

When she reached Houston her connecting flight from IAH to Austin was Canceled due to the plane not arriving from SFO due to bad weather!

United put the 100+ stranded pax up in Airport Hotels (hers was a Marriott/Breakfast included) took them in shuttle buses to/from the Hotels and the next morning flew a Charter flight for them to Austin!

I was astounded and so was she! Normally she would have been offered her choice of an airport chair or floor for the night and an attempt to book her on one of the very busy 5 times a day shuttles IAH-ABI the next day!"

http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/inde...ed-by-weather/

mherdeg

Maybe one UA agent said "let's get them hotels" and no other agents contradicted them, even though none of them really wanted to handle 100 hotel rooms … a real http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox

eghansen

Whether to give hotels or not is entirely up to the station. If the delay is due to mechanical or crew scheduling, then the cost of the hotels is charged back to the maintenance/crew scheduling departments. If the hotels were provided for a cause (weather) that the airline does not normally provide hotels for, then the station is charged for the cost.

Often, if it is eight in the evening and the hotels are not booked up, they will call the station manager and tell him "we have 150 rooms empty tonight that will let you have cheap for $45 (or similar) per night". So the station takes advantage of the opportunity to placate 100 angry passengers at a low cost. This is more like to happen in Houston where there are a lot of hotels and they compete on rates. This is also more likely to happen when only one flight is cancelled instead of the thunderstorm situation where dozens of flights are cancelled and the hotels are booked solid.

Also, this delay probably was not considered as weather. IAH is a huge hub and if UA cannot find another narrowbody and crew to make the trip, it is really the airlines fault, not the weather. A cancelled flight out of SFO means they had four hours warning to solve the problem and they didn't.

If she got something extra from normally stingy United, why exactly are you fuming? Sounds great to me.

Karelia

me fuming? not at all! I was just amused.


Oh wow! That's precisely what happened to me several years ago.
The whole family went on a 2-day trip to Paris(France, not Texas)
and only several months later did we realize that NONE of us
wanted to go. Each of use only went along because we thought
the other all wanted to go and did not want to be the party pooper.

Now I finally have a name for that disastrous trip! (which burned
over 200,000 miles in 3 days and 2 nights)

Thanks!!!

Madone59

Maybe the weather blew somthing over and caused a MX

djp98374

There may be some clause in the rules that in order to claim a weather delay it must be on the specific plane/route the delay occurs on flights leaving from an airlines' hub airport because they should have spare crew and planes to substitute if anything did happen.

MSPeconomist

Not Paris, Kentucky?

26point2orbust

I'm confused.
Why would they put the passengers on a flight to Austin if they wanted to go to Abilene?

flyingnosh

That's the Abilene paradox!

AtlanticX

IAH to AUS? That's almost worthy of just arranging ground transportation. Surely half the passengers would've gone for that over a hotel.