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April/May 2010 - Volcanic Activity in Iceland and Impact to United's Operations

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April/May 2010 - Volcanic Activity in Iceland and Impact to United's Operations

 
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Old Apr 18, 2010, 9:59 am
  #286  
 
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Originally Posted by skywalkerbeth
Does anyone have any idea if your flight ends up cancelled if you can just request a refund instead of rebooking? Or are you pretty much stuck with endless waiting for the next flight out (or cancel the tix yourself and suck up the change fee).
I was on UA 936 today (IAD-ZRH), they cancelled it, I called, and six minutes later I was all done and had the refund mail in my mailbox.

As another tidbit that might be useful for the folks in here: in chatting with the nice woman on the other end of the 1k line, the earliest she's rebooking people for is Apr 24.

Oh, and she reminded me that the Queen Mary sails on Monday.
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Old Apr 18, 2010, 10:05 am
  #287  
 
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Originally Posted by arma5
I was on UA 936 today (IAD-ZRH), they cancelled it, I called, and six minutes later I was all done and had the refund mail in my mailbox.

...
Holy Bleep that is fast mail!! ^

Last edited by UAL4life; Apr 18, 2010 at 10:14 am
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Old Apr 18, 2010, 10:15 am
  #288  
 
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Why DME (Moscow) route is canceled?

Why IAD-DME is getting canceled?

Looks like Aeroflot is operating SVO-JFK and SVO-LAX.
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Old Apr 18, 2010, 10:17 am
  #289  
 
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Let's just say this carries on awhile, do you think United may want to modify its Travel Waiver?

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6867,53414,00.html

It applies ONLY to tickets booked BEFORE 4/14 (when only British airspace was impacted), yet other cities now covered also have the "ticket by" date of 4/14...

In my case, I booked a ticket on 4/15 to PRG... Does that mean that the travel waiver won't apply to my ticket?
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Old Apr 18, 2010, 10:18 am
  #290  
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Originally Posted by Silver Fox
Total time on the phone was 4 minutes - I may have to go to one of the BA threads where they seem to have to wait 3+ hours in some cases to gloat. I know I shouldn't but ..............................
And make a fool of yourself? UA has maybe 10% or less of its flights affected by this while BA and the other European carriers have 100% of them affected. Considering the tens of thousands of customers affected daily, their phone lines are going to be clogged to a far, far greater degree than UA or any other NAmerican carrier. Even Asian/Pacific carriers with a goodly proportion of their flights going to Europe will be more affected than NAmerican carriers. You seem to have a short memory about how impacted US carriers were with the 9.11 week groundings.
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Old Apr 18, 2010, 10:20 am
  #291  
 
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Originally Posted by arma5
Oh, and she reminded me that the Queen Mary sails on Monday.
Yes and they have space in all cabin categories. It's a leisurely 8 day crossing though.
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Old Apr 18, 2010, 10:24 am
  #292  
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Originally Posted by SAN 1K
IAD - DXB would have been a good option, no?
He was in C, and it was full on IAD-DXB...I was working on his reservation earlier that morning, so that if I couldn't find anything, I could call him up and save him the trip to the airport. KWI luckily had a few seats left in C.
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Old Apr 18, 2010, 10:31 am
  #293  
 
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Originally Posted by boifromtroy
Let's just say this carries on awhile, do you think United may want to modify its Travel Waiver?

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6867,53414,00.html

It applies ONLY to tickets booked BEFORE 4/14 (when only British airspace was impacted), yet other cities now covered also have the "ticket by" date of 4/14...

In my case, I booked a ticket on 4/15 to PRG... Does that mean that the travel waiver won't apply to my ticket?
Yes, the travel waiver as stated doesn't apply to your ticket. I have a similar situation, where on Apr 16 I booked a trip via FRA on May 2.

I'm figuring that if the volcano thing really continues that long, United will issue a new travel waiver. The interesting question will be what new "tickets bought by" date they choose.

Also, you didn't mention if your PRG trip is leaving this week or what. If so, you may be in worse shape. But even so, as a 1k, the usual "try calling several times" strategy should work ok.
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Old Apr 18, 2010, 10:34 am
  #294  
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Originally Posted by Shareholder
And make a fool of yourself? UA has maybe 10% or less of its flights affected by this while BA and the other European carriers have 100% of them affected. Considering the tens of thousands of customers affected daily, their phone lines are going to be clogged to a far, far greater degree than UA or any other NAmerican carrier. Even Asian/Pacific carriers with a goodly proportion of their flights going to Europe will be more affected than NAmerican carriers. You seem to have a short memory about how impacted US carriers were with the 9.11 week groundings.
If they have more passengers, planes, potential customers, routes, etc. then they need to man the call centres accordingly. Simples.
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Old Apr 18, 2010, 10:44 am
  #295  
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Originally Posted by AntonS
Why IAD-DME is getting canceled?

Looks like Aeroflot is operating SVO-JFK and SVO-LAX.
Well just a guess because DME might be closer to the ash than SVO, and they can go further north from SVO to get to the other locations whereas IAD-DME puts them in the soup so to speak? That's just a guess though. The other guess is the plane isn't where they need it to be.

Cheers.
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Old Apr 18, 2010, 10:45 am
  #296  
 
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Originally Posted by SAN 1K
IAD - DXB would have been a good option, no?
Noted he wanted to fly in C.

Also bear in mind this is a way to FLY into AUH. If you're trying to avoid the longish drive, DXB is not an option as you cannot fly from DXB-AUH.

I've flown into KWI before simply because I wanted to avoid said drive. EY has a nice flight from KWI into AUH and you're 15 minutes to downtown.
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Old Apr 18, 2010, 10:47 am
  #297  
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Overreacting?

Apparently several airlines operated test flights through the ash "cloud" and found everything fine. I was wondering about that too. I know flying through the plume of ash from a volcano is very bad, but by the time it reaches the continent, hasn't it dissipated enough so that it would be not such a big deal? Has anyone seen a UA response on any of this?
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Old Apr 18, 2010, 11:01 am
  #298  
 
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Just watched BA test flight (747) taxi and takeoff at LHR. Now watching it's progress on http://www.radarvirtuel.com/.

Keeping fingers crossed
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Old Apr 18, 2010, 11:01 am
  #299  
 
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I would not expect a modification of the travel waiver until tomorrow, when the guys at WHQ are back at work.
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Old Apr 18, 2010, 11:05 am
  #300  
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The problem I (uninformed) see with clearing airspace based on test flights is that the volcano continues to erupt, and airplanes are flying through hundreds of different flight paths compared to the test flight.

Who knows if a test flight conducted 12 hours ago will apply to the same flight path later, or a different flight path, unless it's clear that the ash is only dissipating, and not erupting again? Or will airlines send aircraft through the windows in the ash front, with high enough precision? At night?

And are we willing to bet on the probability of no problems for every aircraft type, when the number of flights per day is > several thousand?
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