Help needed! Flight fiasco!

pjrea

Hey forum,

So just back from holidays to the USA, great time had bar the flight fiasco we had initially back on the 17th of June.

We booked the flights all through United on one ticket (some of the flights were on other airlines but through their grouping Star Alliance).

We rocked up 75 minutes before check in closed and 2 hrs/15 mins before flight left so plenty of time. The initial flights were through Air Canada (as we were flying Dublin to San Fran via Vancouver, so we get up to desk (after extended wait) and assistant says she's having issues, so we go to another (the supervisor). She turns round and says 4 of us have to on and one has to stay because she can't find his seat, otherwise we would all have to pay for new tickets. So we all have to leave one of the party in Dublin to head onto San Francisco without knowing what time they'll be coming out.

We got into San Fran at 4.30pm local time, bar for an understanding Air Canada colleague in Vancouver, we wouldn't have known when the single party would arrive in San Fran due to data protection, even though we asked the supervisor in Dublin to pass on a message to us on landing in Vancouver.

The single party eventually got into San Francisco at 10.21pm local after further delays from a planned arrival time of 8.22pm. The most frustrating thing was that there was an empty seat on our planned flights. Under these circumstances, would we be able to claim flight delay compensation or would this be a complaint handled on its own circumstances.

Caz3121

they need to look into Denied Boarding Compensation
There should be information on the airlines website re denied boarding
I expect that the flight was probably overbooked and when you turned up at the airport there were insufficient seats left for the group as majority will have checked in online and only drop bags at the airport

pjrea

Caz3121 wrote: »

they need to look into Denied Boarding Compensation
There should be information on the airlines website re denied boarding
I expect that the flight was probably overbooked and when you turned up at the airport there were insufficient seats left for the group as majority will have checked in online and only drop bags at the airport

Thank you, there was actually a seat free in between the four of us who got on both the flight to Vancouver and then onto San Francisco, which made it worse!

Caz3121

frustrating though that it, it may have been someone that was checked in but did not board (late to airport or delayed connecting flight) they would not know this until boarding was complete by which time it was likely too late to do anything. I have seen airlines in the issue standby boarding passes and tag bags as standby and allow passengers to go to gate in case this happens but don't think this is standard across all airlines/airports

Geoff1963

I think the difficulty is the hold luggage ; because even since 9/11, some people seem to think it is ( more ) unsafe to let a person's luggage fly without them.

Perhaps the solution is more sending on of luggage ahead ( which also saves the stress of carrying it, or wondering if it's lost ). That way, standby passengers could queue at the door of the plane until the last second, like we do for a bus. Airlines could sell only 90 % of the seats as guaranteed ( so no throwing people off ), and yet have planes which were more full.

I once arrived for check-in so early, that the airline bumped me up to an identical flight which was leaving earlier. That presumably allowed them to sell my seat to any standby / late applying passenger, on a flight that was otherwise full. More of that would encourage people to arrive earlier at the airport.
I might even have accepted being bumped up to a flight which had a plane change, providing it still got me earlier to the destination. If your flight is in the evening, but you have nothing else to do all day, you could arrive at the airport in the morning with a good book and a packet of sandwiches, and have a fair chance of getting sooner to your destination.

Vauban

Your friend should claim under "denied boarding", for which there is almost no defence under the regulation (assuming there were no irregularities with the ticket). Hopefully United will pay up - since your options are otherwise limited (UK courts won't have any kind of legal jurisdiction, since the flight was from Dublin).