Originally Posted by
hulagrrl210
I appreciate that.
It still seems ridiculous that the first confirmed seat was 3 days away. When I first heard about this, I had no idea the girl had family she could stay with in the DC area, which takes away some of the urgency of her situation, but the again, United didn't know that either.
As soon as there was world of a delay/ cancelled flight her parents were on the phone with United trying to get her home asap, and I'm SURE they asked for her confirmed on a flight sooner than Monday. Because of other circumstances- the family she was staying with was moving this weekend, they didn't want to deal with her being on standby all weekend- that was their choice. There is no way of knowing if she could have got home sooner if she had waited around the airport all weekend for an earlier flight.
So the point here is that while OP's friend's daughter should have been at IAD where UA might have helped to reroute her (not several posts in this thread point to availability which opened up, including the substitution of a 767 for a 757), the family to which her parents entrusted her well-being, "didn't want to deal with her being on standby all weekend."
None of this would have happened if she had been on "standby" because I suspect that had she been at the gate for the 767 flight, she would have been acommodated, whether because she is 16 and alone or simply in standard standby priority.
Every parent has to judge the maturity and responsibility of their children as they grow. Here, her parents saved $100 on the bet that nothing would happen and apparently believing that she could handle the situation. They were apparently wrong.