riversair

Hi All:

First, this question is about my mother-in-law and not myself. I am a very frequent international traveler, and I never heard of this, so I decided to turn to the experts.

Yesterday, my in-laws (who rarely if ever fly anywhere), were on a United itinerary. (#429)PIT-ORD-OKC (#6029).

The Pitt leg was 4 hours late leaving, and of course they missed their connection in ORD.

Now, when she called me, she had stated that United would only pay for her hotel if they shared a room with another passengers???? So United paid for a double bed room in Chicago for my inlaws and a woman and her child....who were complete strangers??!

Now, I am am a business class world traveler but I just never heard of an airline agreeing to pay for a room after their delays only if you shared with a stranger. I just wanted to double check in here before writing to customer service...

Anxious to hear your thoughts? thanks in advance, Bob

MatthewLAX

I've never heard of such a thing. Completely unacceptable to me.

SFflyer123

Can you imagine if they put some psychopath in and some crime occured? What criminal, legal, and civil liability is UA exposing themselves to? That is crazy.

sfozrhfco

Wow, the new cost cutting measures are getting pretty intense. You can have the room between 2AM and 4AM, the next passenger will be taking the next shift. They could get a whole plane load in just a handful of rooms if they staggered the shifts correctly.

VWGuru

Unacceptable, I was on a ABQ-LAX UX flight that went MX and got my own room at an airport hotel as a GM nobody with UA.

Fredd

This wasn't an uncommon practice before hotels were more-or-less invented in the 19th Century, but then that was also before flying machines were invented.

I can't imagine anything like this happening in other than some major natural disaster. United in a hotel room with a stranger? No way!

username

What was the nature of the delay? Mechanical or weather/ATC?

What happened? Did she do it?

hobo13

How were the roommates assigned? In my younger days, I could see some upside to this..... (ok, just kidding - this is one of the most ridiculous things I've heard lately)

Guizo

About 10 years ago I was flying LAX-ORD on AA (possibly was UA but really think it was AA) and summer thunderstorms forced diversion to Peoria along with several other planes. After sitting on the runway for hours we were bussed to hotels in downtown Peoria and somehow I happened to be in the very back of the check in line at hotel, and they were down to one room, and there were exactly four guys left, all strangers.

We shared the room, two in the beds and two on the floor. But it was well after midnight and not something I would have done if I had had any notice/other options.

iluv2fly

Call the local Chicago media on this. They wll have a field day. They love anything lately to do with UA, and this is so far off the charts that they will salivate.

honmani2

Okay, it's not April 1st so this is no joke, right?

Hard to fathom how and why this happened.

tom911

Maybe UA could save even more money and open their own hostel at ORD (remember the one that's in an old 747 at Stockholm Airport?). Surely there must be an old airplane about that they can add a couple bunk beds to versus parking it out in the desert. Imagine all the money they'd save there versus farming passengers out to hotels to share rooms. UGS passengers could even get first choice as to accommodations on the plane.

Fredd

Those aren't pillows.

ESPECIALROB

Totally unacceptable! I won't share a room with people I know, yet alone with another stranded passenger from my flight.

weero

That sounds impossible ... even for good ol'UA. Could it just be an ugly misunderstanding?
As they must all be pax ... isn't it the TSA's job to filter those out ?

No seriously, how could hostels operate if such was the liability?