[MHonnold]

I had my worst airline experience ever on United on September 13. I am a Premier Executive card holder with about 280,000 lifetime miles. On September 13, I was booked to fly from Washington Dulles to Madrid, Spain on UA 7663 operated by Aer Lingus. The flight was cancelled for mechanical reasons. We remained on the plane for 3 hours while they looked at the mechanical problem. Meanwhile, the flights of other airlines were departing for Europe and we could have been put on those flights instead of being required to remain on the plane. Remarkably, as we were getting off the plane and listening to the mechanics operating loud power tools in the belly of the aircraft, the pilot came on and apologized, saying that his earlier announcement that the flight had been cancelled had somehow not been heard over the public announcement system.

We then were directed to the Red Carpet Club for flight rebooking. This took two hours as the insufficient, but very helpful United staff tried to get passengers on other flights. My flight was rebooked on wait list status for the same flight on September 14. When I then asked for a voucher for a free hotel room for the night, the poor staff said that they had been told to tell the passengers that no free rooms were available and that the passengers would have to pay the cost themselves and send an email claiming compensation later. This was outrageous and demonstrates a total lack of concern by United for its customers, some of whom were foreigners who were left late at night at an airport with no assistance to find a room for the night. United's actions in this regard were an embarassment to America and what I would expect from a 3rd World airline.

As a result of the flight cancellation, I incurred about $1050 in expenses for rebooking of a connection flight from Madrid to Barcelona, the cost of a 1 night hotel stay in Washington, the cost of a 1 night cancellation at a Barcelona hotel, and the cost of taxis to and from Dulles after the flight cancellation.

I demanded compensation for these expenses in cash, not flight credits. The reason for this is that last year, one of my suitcases while in United's custody at Los Angeles Airport was looted by United employees. United subsequently gave me $500 in flight credits, but this turned out to be almost unuseable. The credit could not be used on international flights, nor multi-destination flights, and there were also blackout flights. As a result, I only was able to use about one-half of the credit.

Remarkably, there was a repeat performance by United and Aer Lingus the following day, September 14. The flight was again delayed and then cancelled after a 2-3 hour wait and there was again a long line of customers trying to get rebooked with a completely inadequate number of United service agents available to help them. Obviously no preparatory work had been done by United beforehand to deal with this eventuality, though it was obviously a possibility given what had happened the day before. Fortunately, United had rebooked me on one of its later departing flights that evening, though this flight got me into Madrid about 1 and 1/2 day after my original scheduled arrival time and ruined the first couple days of a long-awaited vacation.