Originally Posted by
uberkelly
OP here. Wow, thank you for the thoughtful responses!! It's so helpful to hear from your experience.
I am going to recommend to her, when she submits her story to United, to remove pretty much everything about Juneyao. It seems like the only relevant details for United will be the too-short connection and that her delayed flight caused her to miss her connection. That's it.
Some more info:
She does have travel insurance. I don’t know anything about it, but she will submit a claim.
Unfortunately, I don't know. Is there a way to find out the reason a flight was delayed? I suppose she could call and ask....
Purchased with cash, not points, on UA.com.
I don't think it's worth trying to get anything from them, do you? Because China.
English
Wow, thanks!!
As you might imagine, she went through a LOT of turmoil that I deleted. She Whatsapp'ed me from the hotel as it was happening and I know she didn't eat or sleep pretty much the entire time in Shanghai. She's only traveled in Europe before and as a young woman alone in a Chinese airport for the first time, unaccustomed to Chinese customer service, I think it was stressful and scary. She also didn't want to miss her trip in Thailand.
OOH this is interesting. I was not aware of MCT. This might be her strongest argument for some compensation. Thank you!!
I noticed this, too. Good eye!
I'm not sure if she mis-remembered/mistyped here....but I guess it doesn't matter since she's not going to get anything from Juneyao.
I'm not really sure what kind of a claim your friend really has against anybody:
She got rebooked and was provided a hotel. I suppose that A food voucher or two would have been nice, but that seems to not too much of a big deal.
So, she can file with UA, but UA will report that it has no responsibility and already provided her a courtesy beyond its responsibility.
She can claim with HO, but as you note, that is not worth the postage.
She can claim with her travel interruption insurance, but she needs to find a specific covered loss. If there is one, by all means file the claim. Otherwise, forget it.
Larger issue here is that even if this was an adviseable connection when booked, just because the new connection was within MCT did not make it sensible when the change ocurred. While UA had no duty to rebook when the change ocurred as the new departure was within MCT and the arrival time did not change, UA might have been more helpful if the friend had asked.