[EastCoast]

Hey everyone,

I had a flight with my family on Sunday from the west coast to the east coast. When we got to the airport we learned that our flight wasn't just delayed because of bad weather but it was canceled completely. They pointed us to a line and said that we would have to wait on a line for four hours, maybe five hours maximum to get more information. We stood on that line for eight hours! The information that they gave us was that we would have to wait until Tuesday for another flight. The main issue with that is that my son was leaving on Monday night with his church to help poor schools in Brazil so he had to get home to get his things and then get back to the airport. United airlines said that it's not their problem. We had to go to Virgin America(who were very helpful) and buy a $800 ticket to get my son home in time. United said that if we submitted a request then they would MAYBE refund HALF of my sons ticket if we were lucky. So we had to spend extra nights in a hotel and we missed three extra days of work/school. To make things worse, the flight that they got for us heading home was to an airport that was far away from home so we had to pay $200 for a cab just to get home from the airport to our house. A family member or friend could have picked us up if we were able to land where we planned to.

So In addition to missing three days of work and school we had to spend a lot of extra money.

$300 for the extra nights in a hotel
$100 for food
$200 cab ride to get home
$800 for my sons ticket
$250 wasted on my son's original ticket(assuming that we DO get the half refund)

So we had to spend over $1500 extra in addition to the lost days of work. Is this how all airlines operate or was I just a fool for trusting United Airlines?