Originally Posted by
Baley
Yes, I didn't opt for the SQ routing as arriving home a day later and scheduling IS important to me. I haven't got a day or so to dicker around in an airport.
Baley, take a quick look at expertflyer or some other tool that shows airline schedules. What, other than what United offered you, would have been an acceptable alternative that would have gotten you home nearly on time, on a "higher quality" airline?
Never mind, to save you time I looked it up myself. The answer (unsurprisingly) is NOTHING. There were NO OTHER OPTIONS to get you back to YYT (hardly a mainstream destination as I'm sure you know) once you missed your SQ connection. You were connecting, I believe, to the 1:10AM flight which is the last flight to LHR. No matter how you slice it, if you miss that flight you can't catch up to your LHR-YYT connection, so the only option is to reverse course and go the other way around the world if you want a less than 24 hour delay.
I feel the situation could have been handled better.
This, I agree with. Ideas as to how:
if time is of the essence, don't book a once-every-24-hour flight on an airline flying a short-haul tag, connecting to the last flight of the night on a different airline
if you have a relatively short connection (your connection, even as scheduled, was only an hour and change), be prepared ahead of time with backup options in case your connection goes bust
if you get rebooked to the best possible itinerary which gets you home ASAP, and that's your priority, don't demand something better which doesn't exist. Set your priorities accordingly--SQ and a longer delay, or crummy UA and home closer to on time
Not to be too blunt, and this is not intended as an attack on you--just some suggestions to make it smoother next time. @:-)