I can relate to Skippy's experience. A few years ago, my wife, granddaughter, and I were travelling from Ontario, CA to Kansas City with a connection in Denver. Our United flight landed in DEN on time, however, there was no gate available. We had to wait on the ground for 35 minutes before a gate opened. This left little time for our connection. As an aside, if you're familiar with the B concourse in DEN, it's about 38 miles from end to end (OK...just a little exaggeration...but it seems that way). When we got to our gate and deplaned, I ran to the gate our departing flight was leaving from and noted the plane was still there, but the jetway was pulled back. This was 5 minutes before the scheduled departure time. I was told the plane had already left. The agent and supervisor were rather rude as if I had done something wrong. The supervisor, without saying a word, gave me another three boarding passes for a flight leaving two and a half hours later. I then mentioned that I felt some compensation was in order. The supervisor said he didn't think so, but I could talk to customer service. I proceeded to customer service and told the lady what had happened. She said, rather rudely, that it was my fault for not being at my gate a half hour before departure. Wrong thing to say to me! I said, "I guess I should have left my seat on the inbound plane, opened the door, jumped out, and ran across the tarmac to the terminal, huh?" Without a word, she printed out $600.00 in vouchers. When we arrived home a week later, I wrote to United and told them of my experience. They replied with another $600.00 in vouchers. From that day forward, when friends and family ask how my flight was, I usually reply, "Awful...just awful...They were on time and friendly...NO VOUCHERS!" LOL. If you fly a lot, you're going to have some bad experiences, but for the most part, I find that I have a good trip when I allow sufficient time to connect and don't plan on arriving at my destination exactly on time. Stuff happens.
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