Originally Posted by
IAH-OIL-TRASH
You seem to have proof by your assertions that you could identify a block of rooms UA could have gotten. Did you provide UA with this information? UA certainly doesn't dictate road condition or gov't restrictions on travel.
My suspicion is that UA was only looking for "a block of rooms" instead of just "the required number of rooms". We got the "royal" treatment in one group instead of being sent to catch multiple shuttles to multiple local hotels. Given the well-predicted weather situation the next day, going to the other end of Chiba Prefecture was a bad choice.
Originally Posted by
craz
1- UA had no control over road closures or the bus or its driver. I might have sided with you if someone called UA and informed teh proper person that hey if you dont get the driver moving within the next few mins we will miss our new flight. Seems that wasnt done = UA out of the loop.
They chartered the bus. Unlike in the hotel in which we were free to roam, the bus represents restricted movement--even during our 2-hour wait at the hotel when we couldn't wander far. We tried to get the hotel to call UA. Nobody had a way to call UA Japan reservation (no money, no phones). And the situation was not yet desparate--by leaving the Okura at 0955 we still could expect to get to NRT for the 1200 flight which was delayed to 1342. Once on board, and in the traffic jam, we were trapped.
Originally Posted by
mitchmu
So, your main point, then, is that the weather was fine, no flights were cancelled except these UA flights, and they were cancelled for MX.
The Dreamliners from DEN and LAX were late due to the usual mechanical check-ups. They kicked the ~25 of us over to the next GUM flight, which was canceled due to GUM weather.
NRT weather was OK Tue night. Shutting down air traffic for 3-4 hours Wed morning had some limited impacts for afternoon flights, and there were little impacts for expressway traffic between Tokyo, Chiba and Narita. South of Chiba (where we were) was where it went bad.