As I type, my wife and kids are sitting on a runway on a United Express/Mesa flight at IAD. They were supposed to leave at 6PM. It is now after 11 PM. Last call said they were due to leave at 10:45. of course, the United web site says that the plane is scheduled to depart at 10:10. Right.

Called United and it took a very diligent agent about 10 minutes to find out that the plane has left the gate and is somewhere on the runway.

United should have code ahre partners unless they can get accurate status. This is completely unacceptable.

Worse, I had to use 120K miles for these tickets. The flight down to IAD was late by 40 minutes and this one is late by at least 5 1/2 hours. Will United do anything? Right!

Any wonder people hate airlines!