A Quite high priced Thanksgiving flight with United

Dear Travel TROUBLESHOOTER: I booked a round trip flight from Washington, D.C., to Chicago for Thanksgiving. The first flight was supposed to leave from Washington at 10:45 a.m. on Thanksgiving and return on Dec. 2 at 7:30 p.m.

When I arrived at the gate, United announced that a flight attendant did not exhibit up for get the job done that working day, and United had no additional flight attendants on reserve. They could not give us an estimated departure time and reported that the flight was delayed “indefinitely.”

Because it was Thanksgiving morning, I spoke to a ticket agent about other flights likely to Chicago. He place me on standby for the 11:45 a.m. flight, which was whole, and mentioned I was confirmed on the 12:45 p.m. flight in circumstance my primary flight was even now delayed over and above 12:45 p.m., but that I would lose my seat on my initial flight.

I finished up finding on my initial flight and flew to Chicago with a 90-minute delay. When I went to test in for my return flight, United experienced canceled it, simply because they experienced no document of me finding on my preliminary flight from Washington to Chicago. I experienced to pay out $386 for a 1-way ticket from Chicago to Washington.

I emailed a general client complaint and requested for a refund of the complete, but they refunded my initial spherical journey purchase of $317, and not my additional $386. I am in search of payment of the $386 that I had to pay for the a person-way ticket that resulted from them having no report of me receiving on my preliminary flight.

— Catherine O’Connor, Washington, D.C.

Remedy: United Airways need to have saved better documents. You obviously flew to Chicago for Thanksgiving, and you could show it by displaying them your boarding passes. This was a clerical error on United’s element, and United should really have set it as a substitute of charging you for an further a person-way ticket.
If an airline has no history of you boarding an outbound flight, it will cancel the relaxation of your journey. Airways do that to free up empty seats, but also to stop people from skipping legs of their flight, which can charge an airline in lost profits prospect. So United was just following its own policies.

When you asked United to appropriate the mistake, it should have compensated you the difference in between the unique flight and the just one-way ticket. But apparently that was far too complicated for its method. Instead, it just refunded the authentic ticket, leaving you $69 poorer.