When airlines cancel empty flights and lie about it

I went ahead and complained to the FAA, to spike United Airlines'
complaint statistic. Experienced this ruse in a small Midwestern
airport.

How many others here have experienced lying claims of mechanical
problems until, several hours later, some clerk brightly pronounces,
HEY, we found out you angry people can all fit on the last flight of
the night?

WHY do they insult our intelligence like this?

Will there ever be a way to make airlines stop pulling this
money-saving, passenger-killing crap?

United or United Express? Or UAx / Air Wisconsin to be more specific?

I've had so many problems with United Express / Air Wisconsin lately that I
won't even fly with them anymore as their ORD operations in terminal 2 leave
a lot to be desired. I've done the Terminal 2 concourse F "dance" one too
many times, have had flights cancelled without valid reason (lack of pax),
and my last 12 of 12 flights have been severely delayed and/or cancelled.
I guess they don't call it the F concourse for nothing

Mainline UA, OTOH, has been decent lately, other than delays because of ORD
wx. I primarily fly NWA and partners, but decided to give UA / UA express a
chance recently for a few trips -- needless to say they've all been
disasters because of UAx / AWAC operations at ORD. Initially, I blamed it
on "ORD", but it seems AA Eagle manages to get their ORD-SDF flights out
timely on a regular basis..

Steve

"abdul rahim" wrote in message
om...
I went ahead and complained to the FAA, to spike United Airlines'
complaint statistic. Experienced this ruse in a small Midwestern
airport.

How many others here have experienced lying claims of mechanical
problems until, several hours later, some clerk brightly pronounces,
HEY, we found out you angry people can all fit on the last flight of
the night?

WHY do they insult our intelligence like this?

Will there ever be a way to make airlines stop pulling this
money-saving, passenger-killing crap?

wow, air wisconsin must suck if you pulled that out of thin air. yeah,
it was they. how does one force them up to clean up their act? i
don't travel often enough to make a personal boycott matter.

abdul rahim wrote:

wow, air wisconsin must suck if you pulled that out of thin air. yeah,
it was they. how does one force them up to clean up their act? i
don't travel often enough to make a personal boycott matter.

Drive to a larger city to fly out of? I used to drive from Grand Forks
to MSP to get a decent choice of airlines because of NWA...funny thing
is that even if the service quality hasn't really increased on NWA, the
other airlines are making NWA look like one of the better choices as
service quality seems to keep going downhill on many of the other
airlines.

It appears Air Wisconsin is starting to feel the problem if they are
canceling flights due to lack of pax. Next time write a thank you note
to air wisconsin, after returning on a competitor airline, and state how
pleasant it is to finally find an airline that doesn't cancel flight for
ridiculous reasons.

United or United Express? Or UAx / Air Wisconsin to be more
specific? I've had so many problems with United Express / Air Wisconsin
lately that I won't even fly with them anymore as their ORD operations in
terminal 2 leave a lot to be desired.

I don't fly them either. It's a joke. I fly NW, but when I have friends
coming in on UA to MSN I sit comfortably at home checking the website as the
delays increase from 30 to 40 to 90 minutes, etc. If you look at the
arrivals board at the airport the UA arrivals are lit up in red with flights
that are well delayed, but are still arriving EARLIER than the flight from
Chicago that was scheduled to leave two hours BEFORE them. It's practically
a scam.

Though it's not always entirely UEx's fault--it's also that ORD is so
congested that you sit on tarmac for at least 40 minutes and are in the air
for 20 minutes even if the flight is on time. But if they have strong
winds, ORD cuts down to one runway, and then all flights are backed up all
day. But the number of "mechanicals" United Express seems to have is also
pretty substantial.

"Douglas W. Hoyt" wrote in message
...
I don't fly them either. It's a joke. I fly NW, but when I have
friends
coming in on UA to MSN I sit comfortably at home checking the website as
the
delays increase from 30 to 40 to 90 minutes, etc. If you look at the
arrivals board at the airport the UA arrivals are lit up in red with
flights
that are well delayed, but are still arriving EARLIER than the flight from
Chicago that was scheduled to leave two hours BEFORE them. It's
practically
a scam.

Though it's not always entirely UEx's fault--it's also that ORD is so
congested that you sit on tarmac for at least 40 minutes and are in the
air
for 20 minutes even if the flight is on time. But if they have strong
winds, ORD cuts down to one runway, and then all flights are backed up all
day. But the number of "mechanicals" United Express seems to have is
also
pretty substantial.

While wx and winds at ORD can wreck havoc, I think a lot of the blame goes
onto UAx. I fly NWA as well, but took a series of trips on UAx/UAL after
getting a status match. The UAx bit is such a headache, I can't deal with
it and won't. When they say "you have a choice", that's damn right, I do,
and UAx / AWAC won't be seeing it. I'll fly SDF-DTW-ORD on NW mainline
before flying the UAx / AWAC non-stop to ORD if ORD is my final destination.

It seems to be a daily occurance for UAx / AWAC --- delayed 20, 40, 60, 90,
messed up departure/arrival boards, etc. On the other hand, I've found AA
Eagle operates some competive routes such as to SDF -- AA Eagle can have a
near pefect schedule on a day when everything on UAx / AWAC is either
delayed 1 hr + or cancelled. Plus AWAC ops over in terminal F are a
complete disaster and customer service non-existant. On my last trip I
voiced my 2 cents to the AWAC agent at the gate about the delays and how I
almost killed myself rushing from one gate to another because of inaccurate
information --- the UAx / AWAC employee tells get lost and threatens to call
CPD. I've seen them call CPD on other pax for nothing other than being
upset after being screwed around with things such as invol bumps and then
getting screwed with compensation (or lack thereof).

After my recent stint with them, I just can't see how they stay in business,
let alone how other passengers deal with it (or put up with it). NWA may
not be perfect, but flying them is a walk in the park and usually a relaxing
experience (plus they operate mainline a/c here and I get my free EUAs to
FC)... Even if I have to use Mesaba or Pinnacle (NW Airlink), I find them
reliable and typically service oriented. Mesaba also operates RJ-85s,
which are similar to the UAx BAe-146's, but Mesaba has a 69 seat layout with
a first class section -- nice planes...

Steve

(abdul rahim) wrote in message . com...
I went ahead and complained to the FAA, to spike United Airlines'
complaint statistic. Experienced this ruse in a small Midwestern
airport.

How many others here have experienced lying claims of mechanical
problems until, several hours later, some clerk brightly pronounces,
HEY, we found out you angry people can all fit on the last flight of
the night?

WHY do they insult our intelligence like this?

Will there ever be a way to make airlines stop pulling this
money-saving, passenger-killing crap?

I'm not saying this doesn't happen, but be careful, the money
saving aspect isn't necessarily obvious to the casual observer.
Some commuter/feeder airlines get paid when the flight goes, with
passengers or not, so they will fly if they can. Furthermore,
for many airlines, the plane is needed at its destination, so
there is little money saved by canceling a flight outright.
The plane has other work to do and if it just stays there, it
can't do it.

The one scenario I was in where I strongly suspected this
happened was where there was a plane that just flew back and
forth all day long. Even the crews just flew back and forth.
There was a specific flight pair which I suspected was regularly
lightly loaded and one day it was canceled, BOTH WAYS. Can't
prove it, but it was fairly suspicious.