February 17, 2020   Cuba , flight review , ground transportation , How we did it , United

United almost made us miss our flight (twice). Here’s how they made it right.

The night before our big trip to Cuba, I started checking our flights. We were supposed to fly from Albany to Newark and then onto Havana....

The night before our big trip to Cuba, I started checking our flights. We were supposed to fly from Albany to Newark and then onto Havana. Around 8pm I noticed the inbound aircraft for our Albany-Newark leg in the morning was delayed more than four hours, but it was still going to run. I did the math in my head and realized if the same crew was scheduled to work my flight, they wouldn’t get the legally required 10 hours of rest. Still, United showed my flight would be on time.

Initially, I thought Commutair must be using a different crew, or perhaps they had added a crew base to their maintenance facility in Albany when I wasn’t paying attention. Around 10pm I started having doubts. Commutair didn’t open a new base and I figured out there were three crews staying the night. Only one crew would be legal to fly early enough in the morning. I (correctly) guessed they would fly the 6:30am departure, not our 7:30am flight. Still, United showed my flight would be on time.

I started getting ready for bed around 12:30am. This time when I refreshed the United app the flight was delayed “because your crew arrived later than scheduled.” The app said the flight would get in at 9:46am. I was skeptical because my experience has been those departure estimates can be off by a lot, especially for crew rest issues. I also know 29 minutes to get from Terminal A to Terminal C in Newark is cutting it way too close because you need to wait for a shuttle bus. Technically, the connection time drops to just 14 minutes if the gate agent decides to remove our seats 15 minutes before departure and there’s only one flight a day to Havana so we couldn't miss the flight.

I took a minute to calm myself and called United. I got through to Joyce right away. She agreed there wasn’t enough time to connect. The earlier Newark flight was sold out, so she offered to put us on an American flight leaving later in the day and casually mentioned it would arrive at 8am the following morning...meaning we’d spend the night in Miami at our expense and lose a day of our trip. It was a non-starter. 

I asked to get on a Delta flight that had seats, but Delta doesn’t play nice at re-accommodating United passengers, so Joyce nixed that idea. She then offered us United flights out of Hartford or Syracuse, but I told her if I’m going to drive 2+ hours, it’s going to be toward Newark and our connecting flight. I also asked if she would upgrade us to Economy Plus since it was almost completely empty anyway.

Joyce put us on hold for about 25 minutes to make the changes. When she returned, she said our confirmation number would remain the same and we were set for the trip. I asked her to hold while I checked on my end and noticed we were still showing "booked" on the delayed Albany-Newark flight. Joyce claimed she left the leg in there so we could file a refund online, but it wasn’t active and promised we wouldn’t have any problems.

I then went to bed -- grabbing whatever little sleep I could since these changes meant instead of a 20-minute drive to the airport, we were facing a 2.5-hour drive in the middle of the night. 

When I got up, I noticed the reservation still looked the same, but we got in the rental car and headed south. Around 5am, I got a text from United with information about "boarding our delayed Newark flight" from Albany and realized something was wrong. Tara used my phone since I was driving, and called United. After a short hold, we were connected to Nidia and explained what happened. She listened and asked to put us on hold to work with the international support desk. We waited. And waited. And waited. 

After about 30 minutes we started getting nervous. Tara decided to try calling United from her phone while we were still on hold. The system asked her something about making a payment and she quickly hung up. We took it as a sign that Nidia didn’t abandon us. Sure enough, a few minutes later we received an email with just the Newark-Havana flight. 

Nidia returned to the phone to let us know she reissued the tickets, that we were good to go, and asked if there was anything else she could do before she disconnected. I was happy to know there was a solution but had to ask why this happened. Nidia hesitated and explained the ticket just needed to be reissued. I was reading between the lines and pressed whether Joyce made a mistake. Again, Nidia paused and admitted Joyce hadn’t done things correctly. In fact, to her, all it looked like Joyce did was upgrade our seats.

She explained that had we not called when we did, Albany staff would have put us down as a no-show and our reservation would have been canceled. I want to believe United staff in Newark would have been able to see the notes from Joyce and reinstated our tickets. However, my experience is that it's always easier to deal with this before the reservation is canceled.

We checked in to Havana with plenty of time and decided to use our Priority Pass at the lounge in Terminal B for breakfast. After a much-needed cup of coffee, I filed a claim with United and sent along receipts for gas and tolls. Hertz didn’t charge us any extra fees to drop off our car in Newark instead of Albany, so I didn't think it was right to try to claim the rental car that we were going to have regardless.

A few days later, we received a response from Customer Care. They agreed to send us a check for $20 in expenses (as requested), refund the portion of our reservation from Albany to Newark (roughly $23 each) and issued us vouchers for $150 each toward a future flight, which is more than we paid to get to Havana.

This isn’t the first time United has made a mistake and then made it right, which is one of many reasons why I keep flying them. Certainly, I think United should have handled this correctly the first time. Joyce added a lot of unnecessary stress, aggravation and frustration to the start of our trip. 

Arguably, the system could have noticed we had an “illegal” connection time and offered self re-booking options on the app that would have made the process faster. That said, United didn’t put up a fight to make this right.

Oh, and FWIW, the flight from Albany arrived in Newark at 10:06am...almost exactly when we pushed back for Havana.