Originally Posted by
theflyingguyblog
I've looked around a bit online, and found a few threads on this topics. It seems to me that the general consensus was a no in almost any scenario. The main reason I found was that since airlines are only designated to fly the planned route, they therefore can't let passengers use a diversion city as their final destination. Seems silly to me.
-The Flying Guy
Yes, that does seem silly. Take the example yesterday. 582 got to ORD at 9:19 PM. If there was an STL passenger who missed his original connection, their only option would have been UAL 4665, scheduled to depart at 10:30 PM, but that was canceled. If it was not possible to de-plane in STL, anyone bound for STL would have been spending the night in ORD. I guess United could say that it was weather and it's not their problem. But if the initial diversion was due to MX, and there wasn't a later ORD-STL flight, they'd be on the hook for a hotel room all because of a stupid policy like that.