Suspicious Flight Cancelation due to weather
 

Last weekend I was flying EWR/CLT. I get to the EWR, platinum/1k check-in and the kiosk tells me flight canceled due to weather. Auto re-booked on a flight 7 hours later. no email, no next, no phone call from UA informing me of cancelation. Missed by brother's graduation event. Sunny with light clouds in EWR. Great weather in Charlotte. UA supervisor tells me "computer doesn't lie" as explanation for weather. US Air flight that leaves 5 min later and all hourly flights to CLT on time with no issues that morning and afternoon. Call my nephew who is a pilot and he does a flight plan. Says you could fly a single engine no problem on the route. Email United telling them this with a photo of the weather along route, expect they will somehow reimburse the $200 cab fees. All I get is an email saying "flight was canceled due to weather so we do not compensate."
Any thoughts on this?

Maybe the weather was too good so the captain took a day off...

Are you suggesting a lie re:

1. crew
2. mechanical
3. light loads

Possible the aircraft was coming from somewhere else that had bad weather.

Maybe the plane needed for the OP's flight was delayed by bad weather somewhere else in the country. Generally, that's enough to cause airlines to say "weather-related cancellation."

OP - did you try to get UA endorse you over to US? I know EWR doesn't like to endorse over customers, but that should generally be your first approach.

This. Before crying "foul", can you rule out weather affecting your aicraft's schedule earlier in day?

plane was back and forth from Charlotte

they put me on US air the following morning. said they couldn't get me on any of the US Air flights that day

I am curious as to whether this constitutes a valid reason for a weather cancellation (if indeed any body has jurisdiction over such things).

More than once I have had a flight cancelled in a situation where the arriving equipment expected to serve my flight was re-purposed on arrival for a higher-capacity or otherwise more critical route to the airline. In some of these cases, the flight was cancelled for "weather" even though an aircraft had just flown the route, and others were flying back. It seems that the airlines can declare "weather" at will, with little scrutiny.

You are aware of course of the DOT regulations on this? And researched them thoroughly before posting that "airlines can declare 'weather' at will"?

Maybe the DOT should look into this. Not my flight-but something I noticed. 5/13 ewr-gsp flight around 3pm. (Iirc-it was 309). The flight is delayed due to "latearriving aircraft" and the GA in EWR was unwilling to help. It was only delayed ~30 minutes. The killer was-the inbound was scheduled YOW(iirc) to LAND at 340pm.

Now-I am NOT an airline scheduler-but common sense states the plane can NOT take off before it LANDS!! THIS should be grounds for refunds to all pax. I have noticed this done MaNY times w/express jet flights out of ewr.

Sorry to hear that - dollars to donuts there was space. Or space from LGA as another option. If you didn't have access to flight loads (from EF or the like), tough to deal with them. I've had similar issues with not getting endorsed over dealing with EWR agents.

Well, the DOT website says this:
and also
so I'm not quite sure what you're referring to. Of course, there are rules about VDB and IDB, and recent changes in the rules governing things that happen once you're on the plane and it has pulled back.

And there is the almost mythological "Rule 240", covered in this article. But that rule specifically exempts cancellations due to "weather".

But to reiterate and expand what I said: in my years of flying I have observed numerous situations in which there were cancellations labeled as "weather" when other airlines were flying the same route, where the airline in question had just flown the same route, and where the airline had an apparent need or desire to purloin the equipment from that route for another route. Whether there was or was not a true underlying "weather" delay is, of course, essentially impossible to determine, but if the airlines say "weather" they are exempt from more-or-less all rules requiring accommodation.

this is a huge problem with express flights in particular but mainline also.

operations doesn't update delays early, nor frequently, enough in most cases. i'm not sure why. but it really burns you when you are trying to get out or home on the last flight of the night and are flexible for a nearby airport or different connection. IME, agents are often unwilling to look at the aircraft history and objectively assess the probability of a departure at the currently scheduled time -- as such it's hard to get rebooked when it is abundantly clear that the flight will be delayed but stupid UA operations doesn't post it as such.

i went through this recently re: GSO-EWR and it was very frustrating, since it resulted in a 5 hour delay and no willingness to endorse over to another carrier since operations didn't reflect the reality of the delay in a timely manner.

one of the most frustrating things about the new UA, IMO.

Chicago Tribune: THE TRAVEL TROUBLESHOOTER: Are airlines bending the truth about weather delays?Are you?