Help! Compensation question
 

Basic facts:

LAS-IAD-HPN

LAS-IAD departs late: “Schedule change due to Customer Service”. FLIFO says 31 min late, actual pull-back closer to 40 min late.

Scheduled IAD connection time is 41 min

Arrive IAD 28 min late

When running from terminal C to G, no mention of the HPN flight on any monitor, and see the Saab 340’s props already spinning. We arrive at the gate PRIOR to the scheduled departure time. Told flight is already gone, go to customer service to leave in the morning. Cannot get enough of those IAD UX agents.

IAD-HPN left at least 15min EARLY. It was also the last HPN flight.

We got on a IAD-LGA which was running late.

LGA is a zoo and not the environment we wanted at the end of our vacation, which was the whole reason we chose HPN in the first place. No cabs or car services available at 12.30am and only one rental company had cars. End up driving a rental to HPN to do an after-hours return and retrieve my car. Out-of-pocket $100 (rental, gas, toll).

What galls me is UX’s disregard of people’s time. Do they not monitor connecting passengers? Why leave so early when they know (or should know) where confirmed passengers are (arriving from another flight). It is totally unacceptable to force my wife and I to overnight for their convenience. I arrived home at 3am vs. midnight and am out $100.

Taking a different flight out of LAS would not have worked. Connecting in DEN would only get me to LGA, and there was no late evening ORD-HPN.

What compensation would you expect? Thanks.

I would expect no compensation. Why did you make such a tight connection knowing where you were flying in/out of especially during the holiday and winter when "normal operations" are oftentimes out of sync? I don't mean for this to sound harsh or anything but sometimes (most times) these days stuff happens. Also, why didn't you ask at the gate, at the customer service center in IAD, at the time of it happening for something?

You have to be at the gate 20 minutes before departure time if you want to be on board. In general for UX flights, they will wait until 10 minutes before departure before they close the door in an effort to get the flight to push back on time. If you saw the SF3 props spinning, you were too late.

As for compensation, since you were late into IAD because of UA, I would expect some token gesture. They still got you there that night. If you wanted to get to HPN and not LGA, then you could have got the first flight out in the morning and UA would have comped you meals & a hotel. I'd be surprised if you got more than a $100 CS cert, but stranger things have happened.

Myself, I wouldn't bother asking for compensation and would just remember not to book such a tight connection onto the last flight of the night. If you get anything from this experience, let's hope it was an education. ;)

$0. You booked a 41 minute connection. You also probably paid about $125 for the return LAS-HPN flights. Do you really think United should give you $100, which means that United is making only $25 to fly you over 2000 miles?

Per the United Contract of Carrige, HPN and LGA are consideded to be the same point. As such, a destination change from LGA to HPN is not considered an involuntary reroute. Hence, UA owes you $0 for that.

UA may give you something for being at the gate and not being let on the flight. 15 minutes early is excessive, even for UAX! The line has to be drawn somewhere. If you do contact UA, focus on the DB and not on the "reroute". It would help to have some proof of being at the gate ontime (next time this happens, have someone take a picture of you at IAD with an airport clock in view ;) )

If it were me, I'd drop it. Than again, I will not fly on a flight in or out of IAD.

First of all, none of your times add up.

If you arrived 28 minutes late for a 41 minute connection, then you arrived at terminal C 13 minutes prior to the IAD-HPN scheduled departure. You couldn't possibly have seen the plane leave terminal G at least 15 min. EARLY. It took you at least 10 minutes to chnage terminals and so you naturally arrived right as the flight was departing on-time.

Now, as for compensation, they could have put you up for the night and perhaps offered to do so. It sounds like you didn't want that and requested instead to be taken to LGA. Why would they owe you further compensation?

If you do call or write to customer service, I'll tell you that you'll get nowhere with the idea that they should have held the HPN flight for you. They don't compound late arrivals by making other flights late except in extreme circumstances (mostly international).

I can't for a moment imagine LGA without cabs at any time of the day or night, so that probably was an option, but I don't know the legalities of city cabs taking you to suburban destinations, etc.

Thanks for the replys.

In my outbound HPN-ORD-LAS we purposely went 1 hr early simply to avoid problems on a 45 min connection. No such option was available on the return. Waste my time to fly UA? Only because I have too many miles to spend.

LAS did not seem (to me) to be prone to departure delays. If there were arrival delays into IAD, it would very likely impact my connection as well. Instead, the opposite happened. Weather was not a factor in the LAS delay.

Colin, fare was 40k miles standard award each. Not chump change for a backup itin ~ $370 on US/Southwest. The trip benefitted UA more than it did me.

robb, I am quite familiar with LGA and cabs. Anyone who travels through LGA realizes that the cab situation is typically a joke. A line 100-150 people deep and 1-2 cabs/minute is not an option at that time of night. Why? Because there is no reason to take a cab TO LGA at 12.30am, thus no cabs leaving the airport. NYC cabs are required to take you to any NYC destination, but not beyond. Fare is to destination plus distance back to city limit. Not an option as previously stated.

Car services either not available or wanted $130+. A 1-day compact rental including taxes is >= $80 easy, pick any company. One-way has no impact on pricing. Advance reservation has no impact on pricing. No other option as previously stated.

No hotel was offered even after asking/demanding (goons at UX: "not our fault"), so it was spend $100-200 out of pocket and arrive late for work, or spend for ground transportation and sleep in my own bed. Obviously the latter is better.

IAD: never again.

When I lived in ORD or SFO, UA was a good option. Out of NYC/vicinity, UA sucks. Lesson re-learned.

It wasn't UX's fault; they operated an on-time flight. UA Customer Service at IAD should have offered you a hotel for stranding you at a connection point and gotten you out on the am flight. If you accepted or requested a trip to LGA instead then they fulfilled their end of the bargain.

Did you demand a hotel at IAD or at LGA? If at IAD, did you make this demand at the UX gate or at the customer service counter?

Couple Of Things
 

You might have better luck at IAD main line United customer service, rather than the G gates customer service. Also next time when this happens, go to the baggage service office at LGA or wherever you are arriving. Baggage service offices have the facilities to issue taxi and probably hotel vouchers, they can rebook flights, and do any number of other things. They don't have ticket stock though.. Sometimes at smaller stations they as a matter of procedure send pax to baggage service to get these vouchers printed out. I might have asked at LGA baggage service either for a cab voucher to HPN, a car service, or if it was really that bad, a hotel at LGA and then ground transportation in the morning. Or again perhaps the hotel at IAD and then flight out the next day to HPN.

I am confused as to why people put the burden on the pax not to book these tight connections. The airlines sell these connections. Sure we all know they are tight, but I don't understand the idea that if the airlines sells you that connection that they should not provide the same ameneties as say on a 3 hour misconnect. Now mind you if I really had to be somewhere that night or the next morning, this might not be the best connection to book, but the airlines all sell notoriously tight connections and technically they are legal connecting times. How is a once a year flyer to know about connection logistics, times, etc. If the airlines sell these connections then they should have the procedures in place to provide ameneties in the likely event that these connections will often be too tight.

You may get a $100 voucher if you write to customer service. That is pretty much standard compensation for almost anything. But I would agree, next time try like heck to deal with it at the airport so you don't have to be writing letters and hoping on a prayer they send you something.

As stated above, I too would like to know how the plane left at least 15 minutes early if you only arrived in IAD 13 minutes before departure?

I don't put the burden on the passenger to not book tight connections, because 9 times out of 10 they work out fine. I do exepct passengers to not have unreasonable expectations of perfection in travel at all times.

I also agree that any through-ticketed misconnect should be handled the same whether it was a 3-hour connection or 30 minutes.

I believe that the airlines do provide options to deal with these things. In this case, they reaccommodated the passenger on another flight to a nearby destination, which he accepted or requested. They delivered him to the acceptable destination within a few hours of the original time (surely you don't think that every delay requires compensation?).

If IAD refused a request for a hotel and a ticket on the next flight to HPN, then all bets are off. They screwed up and are responsible. But, if he asked "Isn't there any way to get me home tonight?" or worse demanded to be flown home that night and they said they could fly him to LGA then that's the end, though.

IAD. Both at the UX gate and customer service. Do not know if the Terminal G CS counter is UA or UX. There was a long line of people mis-connected. We were not the only ones.

The more I think about it, IAD is like stepping back in time. And that is not a good thing.

In that case, you are right, they were supposed to give you a hotel and food overnight and put you on the next flight to HPN in the morning. My apologies.

I know/deduce this as the HPN flight was not listed on the Departure terminal monitors adjacent to the arriving gate. I probably de-planed within 3 min (TED; standard award = E+). Surely the monitors are not updated to the nanosecond. If not 15 min, then 12.



My travel in 2006 will probably be similar to 2005: spend miles on UA, spend $$$ on Song nonstops.

The monitors are not always accurate so you can't count on that. Plus, given that you came in on Ted and left out of G, a good agent could realize that even if you arrived 15 min before your HPN flight departed, no way could you make it to the G "Terminal" (used lightly) in 5 min- if everything went perfectly, it would have taken you at least 9 or 10. And, if you were the only passengers missing and the doors close at 10 min before departure, they could easily see that you would be misconnecting and dispatch the flight.