UA Flight Cancellation from HNL to NRT

[Maverick1963]

My wife and I had a wonderful stay at Hilton Hawaiian Village and were supposed to leave on Oct 21, Sat via United. We arrived at the airport 7:30am after retuning a rent-a-car. Make a long story short. The airplane left the gate 10 minutes before the scheduled time. Unfortunately, it stopped on the way to runway. I was sleeping on and off. So it was not difficult for me to kill the time. But the thing is, an engine trouble occurred and the airplane got back to the gate 3.5 hours later. In the end all passengers were requested to deplane at 2pm. And finally a little before 3pm, the flight cancellation was announced.

We were told to move to the luggage carousel and to get detailed information there. We were not told to hurry and do rebooking. And the announcement was like "Please go to the podium between Carousel 4 & 5. if you have questions." In reality, I assumed that those who have paid high price for tickets could have automatic rebooking. Basically most of the passengers should have done rebooking as soon as the announcement was made.

Also I lined up in front of the podium very quickly even though I had never had questions to be answered. It turned out that you got to be there to receive hotel coupons and necessary information. Maybe because of the recent notorious issues around United, they were generous for covering up. They provided a shuttle van to hotel, normal. Hotel was Marriott Waikiki Beach, standard ocean view one bedroom with king size bed. 30 dollar meal coupon per person. Taxi voucher to back to the airport.

In the van to Marriott, I called up UA special Customer Contact Center and got a Hawaiian airlines flight next day while the call was 30 minutes long. Flight cancellation is the last thing you would expect and it was my first experience of stay-over of this kind. In addition to complimentary support, UA gave us 15,000 miles for each. All in all, I did not feel bad at all. I do not want it again but it was a good learning for future as well.

 

[clifffaith]

Other than the 3.5 hours on the runway, looks like they took care of you.

 

[T_R_Oglodyte]

When they are handing out hotel vouchers for a cancelled flight, it's often a good idea to wait until their almost done taking care of people before getting in line. Reason is that they will probably need to use multiple hotels to accommodate everybody, and when they are placing people they start with the cheapest hotels first and work their way up from there. So you can get better accommodations by waiting until the end. Plus, you don't waste a bunch of time standing in line.

Note that you wouldn't do this if it's critical to make alternate travel arrangements immediately - for example, if you want to make the first flight the next morning, you should get in line right away so that that option doesn't get filled before you reach the help desk.

Or instead of waiting in line, you might be able to make alternate arrangements by calling the reservations department at the airline. If you are successful that way, then bide your time waiting for the hotel voucher.

 

[Maverick1963]

Oglodyte, thank you for your expert advise. Just out of curiosity, is there any chance "the best things come to those who wait" strategy might bring you the opposite outcome? What would you say out of your experiences?

 

[Luanne]

We had this happen once on Maui. However, it wasn't a major airline, it was a charter and the FAA had just pulled their operating license. The charter company tried to take care of us all (and I guess they did a pretty good job), but the hotel we were supposed to stay in was a dump. My mother, who was traveling with us, but under a separate itinerary, got a much nicer place. We ended up going back to our timeshare and paying them for a night. We did get out the next day, but it was stressful. Since it was a charter company they gave us nothing. I think we filed for the expenses we paid out of pocket, but I don't remember if we got anything back. People think it must be great to be stranded in Hawaii for an extra day. Not so much when you're not sure when you'll get back and you have to end up taking more vacation days than you'd planned.

 

[slip]

This happened to us once leaving Lihue. It was with United and we rushed to the line and they got us a flight that left in a little over an hour from Oahu. We rushed and got on our flight to Oahu and then rushed to that flight. We made it but DW and I each got center seats in an aisle of five, Oahu to Chicago. Worst flight ever. We swore we would never rush again and would just go back and stay at the timeshare again. If we had to use extra vacation days so be it. The only good thing was we got home about an hour earlier but soooo not worth it.

 

[cgeidl]

We gave up our seats for two passengers delayed a few years ago.
We were booked first class on the next flight out about an hour later. We were also given free vouchers for a round-trip flight anytime in the next year. The flight we gave our seats up for had maintenance problems and was delayed. Our flight went before one we gave our seats up for. Our lucky day.

 

[Luanne]

We gave up our seats for two passengers delayed a few years ago.
We were booked first class on the next flight out about an hour later. We were also given free vouchers for a round-trip flight anytime in the next year. The flight we gave our seats up for had maintenance problems and was delayed. Our flight went before one we gave our seats up for. Our lucky day.

Shows that good deeds are rewarded.