Originally Posted by
no more lurking
In brief, I purchased an award ticket to Milan and onward connections in Europe. The MXP flight had multiple delays and finally the flight was "cancelled" and a the gate agent said a new plane would be coming at 11:30PM and if we did not receive a message on the app we could not board and would have to go to CS and rebook. The 3 people I were with all received the message. I went to the lounge and was told that there was space on the new flight but they could seem to book me on that flight. Multiple CSRs tried to do this and they stayed past the 10:30PM closing time (on their own nickel) to assist me. Finally they were able to reroute me the next day on flight via Frankfurt. They also did gave me a voucher for a taxi home. the next morning I checked the UA App and I noticed an email message sent the previous evening at 10:30PM on the App that said "My flight to Milan was ready for boarding".
I wrote to customer care and the response received was the flight was cancelled and all they could offer was $200 travel certificate. I view it as I was bumped from the replacement flight and it was not a cancelation. I wrote back to customer care and asked them to escalate my complaint. I received a prompt reply from another Customercare Rep (it didn't seem like my complaint was escalated) who stated that I choose to reroute my flight so UA has no responsibility. There was no. flight the next day via Milan I had not choice but to take what the UA CS in the lounge offered.
Incidentally, the morning of the FRA flight I checked the app and it showed that my luggage had been re-routed from Milan to Frankfurt, but not onward to my final destination,. When I called UA CS I was advised to get to airport as early as possible reclaim my luggage and recheck it in on the new Itinerary. I got to the airport at 11AM for 6:30 PM flight and baggage claim would not release my luggage so I spent the next 6 hours at the airport. Of course my luggage got delayed in FRA and I received it 4 days later.
Last summer my flight from AMS to EWR was cancelled. I not only received the EU261 compensation. but received an additional 300 Euros to cover expenses. Now I realise my flight from the USA does not fall under EU261. But I feel I should receive some sort of additional compensation similar to the 300 I received for the AMS-EWR flight or a redeposit of my miles for the outgoing award flight into my milage plus account.
Any thoughts?
While inconvenient, your expectations are out of line with their compensation guidelines, and using your experience from AMS-EWR is not a good barometer, specifically because that was an EU261 case (and the additional 300 in expenses you were reimbursed also would have likely fallen under the purview of EU261).
What it sounds like happened, is your flight was cancelled and then a recovery segment built in, for what sounds like an equipment downgauge due to the fact they said some passenger's wouldn't be rebooked on that recovery segment. While I understand you feel like it was a "bump" that is not how the airlines nor the DOT see it, as the DOT guidance specifically carves out this situation (
Aircraft Change - A smaller plane is substituted for the larger one the airline originally planned on using due to operational or safety reasons). When a recovery segment is scheduled day-of with a passenger limitation the flight is loaded with no available inventory, as a dedicated team in United's network operation center is generally responsible for handling the rebooking of passenger's onto the recovery flight which is why the lounge didn't have access to that flight. Given you later got a boarding notification, it seems you went to the lounge too soon and were eventually protected on that recovery flight. Personally I would have waited for that recovery flight to depart as it's possible and highly likely people who were initially rebooked onto it were going to change to something else due to missing downline connections and not wanting to be stranded at the connection point.
Regardless the way UA is going to look at this, is your flight was delayed and your bag was delayed. The voucher they offered generally appears in line for the delay you experienced. The bag delay you might be able to get reimbursement for reasonable out of pocket expenses, but that needs to be attached to your delayed baggage claim you opened at your final destination.
Originally Posted by
no more lurking
past the 10:30PM closing time (on their own nickel) to assist me
I assure you, they weren't staying on their own nickel, they were being paid for that time even if it was past closing time.
Edit: If this was 12/13 (last time I see UA19 took a cancel), then what I said above was what happened. The flight cancelled and they created a recovery segment as UA3027 on a plane with less capacity.