Hello,
my sister in law was flying MCO - BHX today. Flight from MCO to EWR just landed as it had to divert to Stewart?
She just missed the BHX flight and I tried calling CO to get her on the LHR flight at 10pm. Agent said flight is full, so is MAN one. SHe is travelling by herself with 2 small children and they were on the MCO flight for over 5 1/2 hours. She is standing in customer service line but she said there has to be 40 people in front of her!
any suggestions?

Is she in Business Class? If so go to P-Club. If the delay was weather she should start looking for a cheap hotel before everyone else gets them.

no she is in economy - they said they cant get her out and hotel is her responsibility due to weather

You can try to get her on CO100 EWR-MAN. It's delayed 1hr 20min at this point, departs at 2321EDT estimated and arrives into MAN at 1035. It is showing economy full, but others may misconnect as well.

Otherwise, see if they'll get her on CO18 EWR-LHR in the AM.

**********
Re-reading your post, I realize you already tried the MAN flight. So that doesn't help.

BA has EWR-LHR coach seats for sale for tonight's flight.
CO has EWR-MAN business seats for sale for tonight's flight.

See if they'll put her on one of those.

removed

If Business is still open, that means that they should OP-UP people to open up Coach. Don't know how many people are currently standing by to get on the flight but it's worth getting on the list, just in case. You can always head to the hotel later.

Please forgive me if I appear at all callous...I do not mean to be, and I feel for the OP's family. They are in a rotten spot.

This is yet another teachable moment. It appears that the family booked CO1493 connecting to CO26. That's a 1:56 late afternoon connection at EWR. If anything goes haywire, there is a very good chance that you will be hosed with that tight a connection. It simply isn't prudent when you are connecting internationally to the only flight to your destination.

There were four earlier MCO-EWR flights. All arrived in plenty of time to make the connection to BHX, including one that arrivd in EWR 3:11 late.

Ok, I'll get off my high horse now, but if my continued patronizing rants save anyone the problems that this poor family is having, I will consider my mission accomplished.

You are so right. I would rather waste my day sitting in the EWR airport and make my connection than sitting on the plane checking my watch every few minutes.

If you're at your magic keyboard, could you get a flight for this unfortunate family? Flights to the UK look booked tomorrow. Maybe they could snag one of the IAH-LHR flights. They are both Y8. OMG...every EWR-IAH flight tomorrow is F0 Y0 save CO51, which is F1.

CLE-LHR is Y9. There is plenty of availability EWR-CLE.

EWR-BRS tomorrow is J7 Y0...that might work.

I'm not at work tonight. This suggestion should be brought to the attention of any agent working tonight or perhaps Reservations can make an exception to rebook EWR-CLE-LHR, due to weather issues.

I would hope that they can get rebooked EWR-CLE-LHR (tomorrow, of course) in situations like this...in your experience, would it be reasonable to expect that such options would be available?

+1

Nobody should be booking a flight through EWR with less than a 2.5hr connection during the summer. 3 hours is even better. You can get away with a lot more through IAH, but for EWR - you absolutely must pad your connection time to the maximum allowable for your routing or you're playing Russian roulette with your trip plans.

Sure...but tell that to the guy where his mother switched to the earlier flight and STILL didn't make the connection due to a diversion (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/conti...st-excuse.html).

The fact is that EWR is a mess on just about every afternoon and connecting through there is a miserable mess, regardless of how much a buffer you give yourself. I'm glad I originate here. If I didn't I would not be flying CO. The connections are simply too unlikely to work out well.

I read the first two posts. Looks like that was primarily a mechanical en route. Not too much you can do about that when you get diverted to a station like Norfolk, eh?