When does cancellation appear?
 

It is odd: It has been almost one hour since I spoke with an agent who confirmed that flight 407 (EWR to DEN) was cancelled. And yet on the UA website and on Flightaware, this flight is still scheduled to depart. Nor did I ever receive an email stating the flight is cancelled.

But how many passengers might still be making their way to the airport thinking that this flight is gonna go?

If it is cancelled, I would have thought that this fact would appear more quickly.

I have had luck with doing this in these cases by simply telling the agent "the purpose of my trip will require the full number of days originally scheduled, can you please also change my return trip to account for my delay in departure?" When taking rerouting into an alternate airport for IRROPS I have also had success in changing my return trip to depart from the same alternate airport (useful when you originally booked a less desirable airport to save money on ticket cost).

Why would they cancel EWR - HNL on Sunday 2/10 doesnt make sense unless they are starting to cancel flights on Sunday now but I just checked and the flights to Miami are all looking ok as of now and looks like the aircraft are coming from Chicago Orlando Etc so they dont have an EWR leg in them until our departure on 2/10

Was booked on LAX-EWR-BDL r/t to depart LAX on Saturday night with a return on Monday (was attending an event in the Hartford area on Sunday night). When I called to cancel the agent said the flight was still on and tried to convince me not to cancel. I've had enough experience to know that after these events, even if WX conditions are back to "normal", with all the previous days' cancellations and delays, aircraft and crews are in the wrong places and it takes at least a couple of days for there to be organizational catch-up. I would've been lucky if I got to attend the event at all. He relented and let me cancel.

i picked up a weekend flight for saturday - monday EWR-YYZ. got a notification this morning my saturday flight was canceled, rebooked on sunday.

i just called the premier desk. no hold, instantly someone picked up. said because of the wavier i can rebook, get an ETC or just cancel and get a refund, all options with no fees. i asked for a full refund. took about 30 seconds, no drama. looks like everyone's getting different experiences, mine was painless. guess i got lucky.

I was able to change a cheap EWR-XXX-EWR Fri-Mon r/t ticket to LGA-YYY-HPN, returning on a different day. This worked smoothly online, though it took some trying to get the desired YYY-HPN segments. So, yes, one can change return dates (destinations too) if you do it online.

I'm not sure about what a phone agent would do.

UA cancelled my Friday ORD-PHL flt about 2pm on Thursday. Finally at 230pm Friday they got around to sending me an email. Fortunately I checked my reservation yesterday to rebook.

I think I have an answer to my question
 

As the snow continued (and continues still) to fall in upstate NY, I kept returning to the UA website and to Flightaware. Despite what a telephone agent told me, the website and Flightaware did NOT show flight 407 (EWR to DEN) to be cancelled. How could this be? And where was my refund??

So I called UA again. The flight, originally scheduled for a 2:45 departure, has in fact left the gate and is on the runway but is delayed because of weather.

But why did the original telephone agent, with whom I spoke at 12:40, say that the flight was cancelled? Well, flight 407 has "multiple segments," one of which was a flight from Ft Lauderdale to EWR. That segment was cancelled, but not the EWR to DEN (the plane for the EWR to DEN is not the same plane as that used for Ft. Lauderdale to EWR!). So I imagine the agent just read the first segment and then proceeded to process the refund.

I shall return to the snow. Safe travels to all!

United will restart operations in NYC around noon tomorrow. There may be extra segments from China (PVG, PEK, HKG) to EWR, but I'm unclear where the planes would come from.

What's frustrating, tho ... the cities on the list do not match up. I have a friend coming to visit; she is flying via PHL. If she were on UA, she could reschedule. However, since she is booked on US, they will not allow a change.

Keep in mind ... it's all a domino effect. You have to remember, if you are flying AAA to BBB, and the weather is clear in both of those cities, from where is the inbound coming before it lands in AAA? And even the normal "from" city can change during the next few days, as planes get shuffled all around.

From Facebook

Update: We've extended our policy to allow flight changes through February 11. If you're traveling to, from or through the Northeast, please see our Important notices. http://bit.ly/Yb0zTC

Do you think this latest update is becuase of how hard Boston is going to get hit and EWR will open tomorrow as scheduled or pretty close to it or should I start Alt Route through another airport

Overreaction on UA's part?
 

My sense is that UA ops panicked. My first cancellation occurred Thursday morning for a flight late Friday afternoon; the second, Thursday evening for an early afternoon flight.

I checked random AA and US flights into PHL and all seemed to be OK. UA, OTOH, appears to have cancelled everything into PHL from mid-morning on.

My sister told me that there is nothing going on there with the weather - and she lives north of the city! :confused:

I don't think UA ops panicked. I think they had a plan to rather be safe than sorry. Every other airline cancelled flights, like UA, just some probably didn't do it as early as United. Plus this way they could reposition their aircraft out of the affected airports to better cities which helps speed up the operational recovery once it's clear to resume ops.

I live in the city and it's snowing and piling up...so there's definitely something going on.

I have to say in my case UA's handling of the cancellations almost felt like the old days (in a good way).

At first I was none too happy that my Friday late afternoon flight from YYZ to ORD was cancelled at noon on Thursday, but I called UA, got through right away, and they moved me to an AC flight without me having to push.

The AC flight was still showing on time when I went through security and customs at YYZ, but by the time I got to the Maple Leaf Lounge, it was cancelled. AC was less than useless, saying they would not help with changes in the lounge, and that I had to go back out to UA customer service to fix things. Not correct, since they were the carrier than cancelled, but I dialed up UA and UA again answered right away, and rebooked me on a different AC flight Sat morning (we shall see if it actually takes off).

I received an email with the new flight right away. I thought I was back in 2011.

Of course, the real challenge was figuring out how to get out of the secure area on the US side once the flight was cancelled. AC was less than useless in this regard, but that was another adventure.