Originally Posted by OrangeTiger1998

I was on an international schedule which was supposed to depart on March 6 and arrive March 7: PNH-ICN-SFO-IAD-CLT.

I took UA892 from ICN to SFO on March 7, 2015. The flight arrived a bit ahead of the scheduled arrival time of 11:30 at 11:20. My next flight was scheduled to depart at 13:05 and did so... without me, my wife and my parents. We were stuck in immigration. My wife and I have Global Entry, but my parents do not as they are in their 70's and not frequent travelers.

We missed the connection.

The only available flight was the next day. Of course, the airline is not responsible for that type of missed connection. So we ate the cost of a hotel and rental car and enjoyed the Bay area. (If you would like to know exactly how "courteous" the SFO Director of Customer Service was while explaining this to me, just ask... at the 1K/Permier Counter in front of other customers.)

Unfortunately, the next day, we were on UA 790 (March 8, 2015) which made it out almost to the runway and then turned back due to some grinding noise on the front landing gear wheel. At this point, we were going to miss all connections... again.

This time, UA did nothing to help/rebook in SFO. I was actually told that the auto rebooking process has priority and I have to complete that process before they can do anything. This included three standby flights which would have to be too full to occupy us, before any intervention would occur. I know this isn't true, so I called the 1K number. Luckily, a fine young man from Salt Lake City helped get us on a flight to Chicago that same night. We had to overnight AGAIN, this time in Chicago. UA did pay for this hotel.

Instead of getting back to Charlotte at the scheduled time on Saturday evening March 7, the four of us ended up getting to Charlotte at random times on MONDAY March 9.

My advice for incoming international connections: allow yourself a minimum of 3 hours from the time you arrive until the time of your next departure.