Originally Posted by
fairviewroad
What they "can" do and what they are actually doing aren't necessarily the same thing.
A relative of mine is at a Latin American city (not posting specifics for privacy reasons). She is scheduled to fly to Canada via IAH tomorrow. United offers once-daily service from that location to IAH, and does not offer service to any other city. The only other airline with non-stops to the US is American, with a daily flight to DFW.
With tomorrow's flight to IAH clearly not an option, at this point UA is only offering her a seat on the Thursday flight to IAH. They refused to put her on the AA flight, even though there is space available on Tue and Wed (at least, according to AA.com).
What is somewhat perplexing is that the Thursday flight that UA rebooked her onto arrives into IAH prior to the currently-scheduled re-opening of the airport. So I fear that she won't actually fly on Thursday after all.
Obviously my relative's situation is not dire compared to what some people are experiencing, but nevertheless it seems as though United is taking the cheap way out rather then getting her back home in an expeditious manner.
Might be worth HUCA - I got a great agent when I called earlier who made the changes without batting an eye and I imagine would have been happy to re-route on OAL if that had been necessary (it wasn't since DEN and ORD were both available connection points with 2 seats together).
Also depends on when your relative called - things change quickly and it's possible that when she called CSR she spoke to wasn't aware that the airport closure had been extended.