Originally Posted by
dmaneyapanda
I don't know what "access to small planes" means. I doubt United had any planes with unassigned crew just sitting around not being used for anything, though if they did ORD is the most likely place for them to be.
Charter is often contracted days or weeks in advance, so there's no guarantee or even likelihood of availability at the last minute. And if it is available, it is prohibitively expensive.
Obviously, in retrospect, even prohibitive expense would have been better than what they now have, but as far as I know no one can yet see the future. They made the decisions that they thought were right for themselves and the airlines at the time they made them.
Welcome to Flyertalk.
I think the term "prohibitively expensive" needs to recalibrated in this case. I suspect this may cost them a triple-7s worth by the time this is all said and done. Maybe several. While the stock did bounce back, the initial drop was a fleet worth. I think the problem came down to thinking they could save the company a few hundred bucks at the expense of a customer to make up for the companies mistake.