Flying Buccaneer, you had a bad travel experience during the worst single-day blizzard in New York City history. I'm not surprised.
I also recognize that you're writing in the throes of anger and fatigue. But I still don't think you're being fair. You expect perfect knowledge and total courtesy from B6 during a gigantic operational meltdown in which perfect knowledge did not exist and the staff were probably working double or triple shifts. And you ascribe nefarious motives to B6, as if they set out to deliberately hurt you, when you were almost certainly a victim of 80 percent circumstance and 20 percent poor planning.
She was probably telling the truth, though.
Ditto. If Ops hasn't assigned a gate, and/or the agent wasn't working the TPA flight, what do you expect?
How is any of this B6's fault?
Actually, a very good sign. He went out there and faced his customers. I've been in plenty of situations like this where the crew hides in silence.
They don't fill the tanks full every time. They fill them with enough to get to the destination plus a reserve. Considering the unanticipating ground time you had owing mainly to the Turkish Airlines accident, this isn't odd at all.
What do
you think should have been done at this point? When you pushed back Ops figured you were gone and put other aircraft at the gates. Should they have broken off another flight's turn process and evacuated that aircraft from the gate to move you in? Now you've got
another busted flight.
What motive would they possibly have for lying? They should have made more announcements to prevent conspiracy theories from taking hold, but chances are there wasn't any news to pass on.
If you honestly believe that this level of Machiavellian plotting and conspiring against customers really takes place at the height of blizzard ops -- when the whole system is in meltdown mode and plans -- make that "plans" -- change on a minute-to-minute basis, I have no sympathy. You're interpreting chaos as dishonesty.
Oh, come on.
Are you turning your story into a screenplay?
You had a rotten time and probably have a refund coming. But as near as I can tell, the only thing B6 did wrong in this whole episode was fail to clear a gate for you when you had to come back and top up the tanks. Towards the end of the wait, toward breakfast time, the crew went illegal. So, flight cancelled. They tried. Stuff happens. There was no conspiracy against you. It was just... the way... things happened.
Any UA flyer who's spent four hours in the ORD penalty box, or waited 90 minutes to deplane at EWR while they find a working jetway, knows stuff happens.
Next time don't try to fly during the worst blizzard ever.