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Winter Weather Wreaks Havoc with United Flights

By Dan Schlossberg
ConsumerAffairs.com

March 2, 2007

• Customer Satisfaction with Airports Dives • Airlines Hit Seven-Year Low In Satisfaction • Feds Propose Air Travel Improvements • Appeals Court Rejects NY Passengers Rights Law • Feds Unveil New Airport Policy • Newark Delays Trigger Passenger Rights Bill in NJ • Continental Passengers Fume Over New Tarmac Ordeal • American Strands Another Planeload of Passengers • Congress Wary of Airline Promises • Air Travelers Association Opposes Passenger Bill of Rights • Latest Ice Storm Chips Away at Travelers' Patience • U.S. Air Travel System at the Breaking Point • Long Tarmac Delays Still Common • Winter Weather Wreaks Havoc with United Flights • Feds Want Probe of Airline Strandings • Airline Passenger Bill Of Rights Introduced In Senate • JetBlue Sits Out NY Storm While Others Fly • JetBlue Unveils "Passengers Bill Of Rights" • JetBlue Offers Refunds, Free Tickets To Stranded Passengers • Passengers Organize After American Airlines Stranding --- • More about Travel ...

Now it's United's turn. Again.

Still stinging from criticism for twice abandoning planeloads of diverted passengers in recent months, United Airlines compounded the felony by keeping a full plane on the Chicago O'Hare tarmac for seven hours on Feb. 24.

The Boeing 757, carrying 181 people, was de-iced three times but never allowed to take off -- even after waiting in line several times.

United issued apologies and vouchers to passengers of Flight 907, which had been scheduled to fly to San Francisco before pilots cancelled it at midnight. Another 1,500 flights, including all O'Hare departures after 7 p.m., were also scratched.

The Chicago incident, coupled with long tarmac waits by American Airlines passengers in Austin on Dec. 29 and JetBlue customers in New York on Feb. 14, has triggered a probe by Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters and the introduction of passenger-rights legislation in Congress.

Hoping to fend off Congressional intervention, JetBlue has created and enacted its own Passenger Bill of Rights, retroactive to the Valentine's Day problems at its John F. Kennedy hub.

Like JetBlue, United was banking on a small break in a big bad-weather system. Using local forecasts as a guide, the airline believed the 5 p.m. flight could take off before the Chicago ice storm struck. But the storm arrived more quickly than expected.

Just weeks earlier, a United Express flight diverted from Denver to Scottsbluff departed without passengers six hours after landing in Nebraska. That flight, which originated in Madison, Wis., and an American Connection flight from St. Louis, also diverted to Scottsbluff because of fog in Denver, were operated by Trans States Airlines. Passengers were eventually sent to Denver by bus.

The Nebraska incident was not the first for United Express, which also left passengers behind after a pair of Denver flights were diverted to Cheyenne, Wyo. on Dec. 20. The next day, the planes left for Kansas City and Indianapolis with only pilots and flight attendants aboard.

It wasn't until Dec. 22 that buses brought the stranded passengers to the snowbound Denver area. The Dec. 20 blizzard dumped 20 inches of snow, closing the airport for nearly two days and leaving 4,700 passengers on the ground instead of in the air.

Cost-cutting by airlines has caused reductions in fleet sizes and staffing, including 20,000 United employees furloughed during a three-year bankruptcy reorganization. With fewer seats available, rebooking diverted or stranded passengers is often difficult if not impossible.

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