Message deleted by OP

As I'm waiting at CAE for my supposedly delayed flight with a looooong line at the gate I call 1P CS and fin out the flight has been CANCELLED - no announcement at airport. Next available flight, which I just barely get a seat because is now 5 HOURS later than departure.
It apparently is NOT time to fly

If you fly a lot, this stuff happens and you have to expect it. Bummer, it's all at one time but that's life. If you were going to miss your meeting, you could have declared "trip in vain" and just went home again. MXs do happen, and part of the East Coast has been having some wx issues the past couple of days, so it's to be expected on top of the fact that we all know UX is a delay-prone mess.

People are too quick to expect compensation, that said if you call and complain, you might get something out of it but I don't think you're due anything.

I understand things change but 5 HOURS delay without any notice.....Have we just become sheep??

GoingAway gave you a good answer.

If you fly often, you get used to the possibility of delays and either plan to arrive in a city far enough ahead of a meeting so that reasonable delays of the type you encountered are built into the planning or you risk missing the meeting.

There are many reasons for cancellations and delays. The weather is causing havoc with crew scheduling and plane delays. Thus, numerous flights have been canceled today.

Stuff happens.

You deserve at least $1,137.63.

Does anyone have any documentation on trip-in-vain? I've seen a lot of third party references, but nothinh in the UA contract of carriage, nor have I found anyone at the 1K desk to admit to have ever heard of it.

Trip in vain, RCC membership, 500-milers.

I agree; stuff happens...

Interestingly, we had two similar situations happen this year with our regional, Skywest, but with two different airlines, UA an DL. Upon polite request, their solution was to endorse over to the other airline, in the case of UA, to DL, and DL, the opposite. Both were mx/crew delays of about two hours which would have wrecked transcon connections. All it took was a simple "got any ideas?", along with some informed suggestions of my own (thanks FT), none of which included compensation or were delivered with a raised voice.

The three items at the top of my post are what I would have mentioned, where I would have gone and what I might have asked for. My experience has been that UA does take care of their status fliers (and even non-status ones) if approached correctly.

Good luck and safe travels!

Pat

I think we should leave it up to the UA board compensation expert--an honors student with a 3.9 GPA!

If you have a very important meeting at X o'clock, the time to arrive is not X-1 o'clock or even X-3 o'clock.

If it's that important, show up a little earlier so that delays (heck, the place could get hit with snow) will not prevent you from missing such a very important meeting. @:-)

Gee, thanks for all the support.

It;s not enough to fly faithfully, pay full fare, arrive two hours early, not question why when weather is fine and there is no apparent reason that UX almost constantly cancels and delays flights.

I don't have this experience with United mainline flights.

We should all just gulp and say thanks sir, may I have another??

Snow, in Columbia, South Carolina???

It's 70 degrees and blue skies........

Well, this honors student says $0.01 trebled (for the tremendous pain of missing a connection)

Snow as an example of bad weather.

Can you honestly say you've never been delayed on a flight that was not the airline's fault? And, with that in mind, wouldn't it make more sense to be better prepared for contingencies of any kind, regardless of fare paid?

Yeah, I like cutting it close too. And Columbia, S.C. would not be my first choice of places to spend an extra day in the event of delay-free travel. I guess it all depends on how important that meeting was.

Most ppl on this board go out of their way to avoid the UX flights and stay on mainline because we know UX operations are suspect and their schedules seem to be the first ones to be compromised if anything goes wrong anywhere, and even when its not going wrong they just seem to delay the flights anyway.

While it's obviously not wonderful, based on the cofc terminology and the realities of the airline and travel industries today, there is no true recourse available, and for the record you getting "compensation" isn't going to make the UAX flight get there any earlier the next time you need to fly. When you have a route that requires UAX, try another airline to see if you can get mainline flight instead -- that's one solution that seems like it will make you happier based on your responses.