Phillies

Ok, I'll try to make this somewhat simple and pity...

Monday afternoon, 5/16 me and the wife are in MCO waiting for our return flight back to EWR after a Disney vacation. We had a 3:20 flight scheduled to arrive around 6pm. The weather forecasts were calling for very bad storms for the entire NJ/NY area. We were hoping to get out in time before the storms. Well, we get on the place and right before leaving the gate we are told me have to deplane. No further flights being allowed in the NJ/NY area. As we waited in the club lounge over the next few hours, the new few flights back to EWR started to get cancelled. Then finally our flight is cancelled too. Unfortunately by then everyone on the other 2 cancelled flights booked all the remaining seats back home for the next day. The nice lady at the lounge was able to get me a flight the next morning out of Tampa. Only option I had. We booked one of the last 2 rooms at the MCO Hyatt hotel and made arrangements for an uber ride to take us to Tampa the next morning.

Then shortly before midnight when I should have already been getting some sleep I decide to check the app for other flight options for the 100th time that night. Well, a 6am flight the next morning out of MCO pops up. So of course I got all excited and immediately changed my Tampa flight to it. Well, to my incredible disbelief it was a flight that was already cancelled ! I swapped out a plane that was going to take us out of Florida to a plane that was cancelled that evening ! Why and how did the app allow me to even make that change ? After making the change on the app I got an immediate text alert from UAL saying my new flight was cancelled. So now I had my wife freaking out that we no longer had any means to getting back the next day. After a long sleepless night I finally found a legit opening on a 9am flight out of MCO, non stop to EWR, in the first row of coach. The flight actually had 38 people on stand by by the time I boarded. Oh, and I forgot to mention my wife has severe travel anxiety so it wasn't fun...

I guess with so many flight cancellations, the app wasn't able to keep up, but it never should have allowed me change my flight out of Newark to a flight that no longer existed. I know I'm not as big of a traveler as many on here, I'm only a Silver Elite most years, but I never experienced a flight cancellation or a de planning in my life. So this was all new to me. Any of the most experienced people on here have any insight ?

Oh, and the bad storms never really panned out either... although I can't blame UAL on that one...

jhayes_1780

I have a co worker like that. I learned NEVER to change anything on the fly with them, or keep them in the dark if there were IRROPS.

Phillies

Ironically that is partly was caused my situation. We got to the airport very early and there was time to change to a flight leaving 45 minutes earlier. But I knew my wife would have severe anxiety if I made a change like that on the fly. As it turns out, that was the last flight out to EWR that day...

goodeats21

I posted some about this in another thread, but I was flying OUT of Newark on Monday afternoon. It was crazy.

We boarded on time and pushed back, but ATC closed all the air routes used to depart Newark. I was listening to ground and tower radios, and watching the mess on airport viewer. Planes were parked everywhere on the taxiways, and even runway, in long "conga lines". When they thought they could get someone out, by the time everyone started engines and maneuvered around to get them to the runway...the route would close again.
It was chaotic. Multiple flights were declaring DOT 3 hour rules, but trying to get back to an open gate was a nightmare.
By the time I finally took off, they were stacking arrivals on the opposite side of the runway because there were no gates for them to get into.

Really sorry that we both had to deal with it...but it was a really bad day, even by Newark standards.

Phillies

Wow ! That look rough ! Before I made my post I looked to see if there was another one but I guess I didn't see yours. At least I know I wasn't the only person to have had weather issues that day...

HNLbasedFlyer

With so many displaced passengers - my first reaction was do not touch the reservation and keep the confirmed seats from Tampa.

Phillies

That's the lesson I learned the hard way and what my wife said (aka yelled). But I think I unlearned it when I found that 9am flight that wasn't cancelled...

jsloan

If a flight has been cancelled, it's normal for inventory to be zeroed out, making it impossible to get onto it. It sounds like what happened was that their inventory control system messed up as the flight twas in the process of being canceled, and mistakenly opened inventory (likely only for a moment). My guess would be that UA was in the middle of moving people off of that flight, and I bet that somehow triggered empty seats until someone went back in and zeroed it out again.

UAFAM

To get out of Florida during storm season you should always have a Plan B.

RobOnLI

This is why I ALWAYS check what options appear in the app first and before ever selecting one I back all the way out and check the flight status of it. I have no idea why a cancelled flight would show up as available; that's a horrible bug or some system gone awry. Sorry, OP.

Ironically I was scheduled out of Florida through EWR on Monday the 16th and saw the weather coming. I wound up getting a non-stop to my destination on Sunday using a change (not SDC since I changed the arrival airport) and they didn't charge me a fee for it even though I inquired about weather waivers for EWR and they said there wasn't one. If I had kept my original flight on Monday I would have been the only CPU'd person (happened on Sunday) and the flight left on time and landed on time. My connection, OTOH, departed the gate 35 minutes late but landed 2.5 hours late so I saved myself sitting on a hot plane in a conga line for 2 hours

-RM

prestonh

The first trip up was booking a 320pm flight. You can set your watch for a 3pm tstorm. Book the early morning flights to mitigate some of the tstorm issues.

dmurphynj

May I ask approximately what was your departure time?

I originally was booked EWR-DFW on the 3:45pm. That flight cancelled about 4am that morning, and UA rebooked me proactively EWR-IAH-DFW at 3:20pm. When I woke up at 5am, I saw the changes and instead found myself a seat on the 11:58am direct to DFW.

SO glad I did. As we were taxiing out, we stopped in the bullpen so the pilot could reprogram his route around the storms. I was listening to ATC and they said a storm cell was about 15 miles west of the runway. Once programmed we taxied out right quick and in a hurry, got off the tarmac at 12:30, and I suspect we were one of the very last before chaos erupted.

That EWR-IAH that UA rebooked me on? Yeah, that had a 15+ hour delay.

Yikes.

Bad weather day for sure. As congested as NY airspace is, days like that just have horrific ripple effects. Sorry you were both wrapped up in them.

goodeats21

It was 3:35 departure to CVG. I had arrived at Noon (delayed from 11AM) from London and was supposed to be on the 9PM flight to allow some time in the local office. But when I saw the weather coming, I was able to move to the 3:30PM flight. Thankfully, as that was the last flight of the day to make it. Even got a battlefield upgrade after boarding.

The radio traffic was crazy. Poor guy on ground freq was just about losing it. Can't tell you how many times planes were shutting down and starting up engines. Heard at at least 3 planes declare Dept of Transport "3 hour rule" and try to get back to gates...which itself was a mess. Hard to find routes among all the stacked up planes, and no gates available anyway. When they thought a flight route was opening up, by the time planes started engines and tried to maneuver a way to the runway...it would shut down again. And then planes started asking to get back to gates for more fuel.

I ended up taking off about 6, which was absolutely one of of the better outcomes of the day. Not sure how I got so lucky.

dmurphynj

Luck indeed! I felt exactly the same way getting off the ground when we did before the chaos started. Must've passed each other on the taxiway -- we were moving out as you were coming in from LHR.

I'm going to check out the liveatc archives just for amusement. If anyone ever doubts how good ATC is, days like this are proof positive. To manage all that is a yeoman's task.

Meanwhile, on my return last night... We had a DYKWIA in the F cabin actually call United to complain -- extremely loudly -- about having to wait an extra whole 5 minutes because our gate was occupied ...... I found it comical that they were still complaining while we were deplaning.

I can't even imagine how tough it is to be in dispatch. Talk about the most under-appreciated job in the whole system!

walkerci

I left Northern NJ 17 years ago. Definitely do not miss EWR at all. EWR needs 4-5 additional runways.