I want to take your complaint, point by point.
The original flight that was supposed to get us to our connection was canceled due to a "maintenance" issue,
So did you want them to fly an unsafe plane? You were flying from your home airport (Albany I believe) which is not a hub for US Air. They don't just have a fleet of planes sitting there to take you. Planes break down, sometimes bad things happen. Did you get on the phone and computer and try to see what other options were?
What kind of details did you need? The mechanic has determined that the plane was unsafe for flying. Would it have helped to know that the "thing a bob that does the job of XYZ" was broken? Are you mechanic able to repair the problems? You were flying on a very busy weekend and I am sure US Air didn't want to cancel that flight. A plane full of displaced passengers is not what they want, it wasn't a conspiracy against you.
The soonest they could get us out was the next day, and that was going to be 8 hours apart (we were 4 people, two moms each with a daughter) from each other. I spent 4 hours recalling and refreshing the airline website and finally saw seats open on my morning flight, so, due to my time and effort, I salvaged half of the next day.
Flight availability is constantly in motion. You did the right thing by staying on top of it. The airlines do not have an employee that can sit there and continue to search tirelessly for one flight for four displaced passengers. They gave you the only option available at the time on a very busy weekend. They were not going to kick other passengers off of flights due to an earlier mechanical. Unfortunately you lost the game of musical chairs on that day.
So, we lost 1 full day of vacation. That was bad enough, but,
when they changed our outbound flight, for absolutely NO reason, they put their fingers on the return flight for my friend and her daughter. There was no reason for them to touch it, it was confirmed with seat assignments back in August.
You note that your return was on United, which is a Star Alliance partner with US Air. Whenever the outbound is changed the whole ticket needs to be reissued, especially when they need to "pass" the ticket to another carrier. When the two of you were split up on two different PNRs that was a complete reissue.
So, while we got to the airport in plenty of time to get our flight home,
Per your previous post you stated you arrived at the airport 1:15 prior to your flight. You were traveling to a vacation destination on President's Day weekend. How in the world is that enough time for even a "normal" flight? 1:15 is not enough time to safely check bags and clear the zoo of security at a very busy vacation travel airport.
when we went to get our boarding passes, next to my friend and her daughters name it said to see agent. The agents spent a very long time trying to figure out how to reissue the tickets and finally tried to push us through with "departure control" passes, but it was too late.
Actually the United term for the blue cards are called "departure management" cards. If all they issued were DM cards then your friends were never cleared for the flights. You and your daughter should have gone to the gate.
I guess the gate agent didn't believe the service manager at the ticket counter when she called her to say she was pushing us through security. The gate agent gave our seats away and when we got there, they slammed the door in our face and snottily said "well, we can't wait forever - we've been paging you" - she knew exactly where we were!
Had they held that flight they would then be responsible for delayed departure for 150 other passengers who then may miss a flight as well.
So, we missed that flight. Now, this is a mess, there are two airlines involved...I never knew that if your itinerary involves more than 1 airline, the first one, the one whose "stock" the ticket is on, is in control of all of it.
The first one is the one who messed up. After denying responsibility, they finally admitted it was their fault, but only for Christine and Nora..they were of the opinion that, instead of standing at the ticket counter straightening out the mess, I should have ditched my friend and her daughter and checked myself and my daughter in and gone home..since two of the tickets were ok. The second airline wound up taking care of me by getting me to DC, where all four of us had to stay until we could get a flight home the following day.
Those are the details....
You made a choice to miss the flight on a very busy weekend.
