tl;dr: should i negotiate for more comp; crazy story
Just got finished UA's inaugural flight EWR-CMN!
Upon approach to RAK (actual destination) we circled a couple times and couldn't land due to weather (poor visibility) so pilot rerouted us to land at CMN (all planes for previous 2 hrs did). There we sat on the tarmac...almost 7 hours. They wouldn't let us get off. It sounded like the problem was more on the CMN side, the pilot was clearly frustrated. He said in 28 yrs flying he never encountered something like this. They were trying to get fuel but no one was communicating and they were upset about the fact that UA has no presence at CMN unlike the other rerouted flights, and immigration stuff for passengers.
Finally
- our plane's whole team timed out
- they had to fly in what was supposed to be today's RAK-EWR crew (they cancelled that flight completely) in as passengers on Royal Air Maroc
- ~2 hrs while they figured out how to process their passports, since they arrived CMN as passengers, but flew out as crew
- they just threw caution to the wind and bussed everyone to the terminal, no real checks, told us to get something to eat bc they ran out of food/drinks. I think a couple people left the airport completely but most stayed to fly back.
- we got back on the plane but it started pouring rain so we had to sit on the tarmac again
The passengers and crew were awesome and stayed calm/laughing throughout. Eventually we got into RAK a full 12 hours late.
UA offered me $225; should I try to argue for more? I'm 1k if that helps, and this was in Y. The flight was actually pretty expensive bc last minute and I was trying to get an eligible upgrade fare.