United Employees Had Never Seen Anything Like This Before

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When people have travel problems, they tend to vent on social media, often in real time. We have plenty of friends who travel so when I see a story so unbelievable that even I doubt what happened, I feel compelled to ask for the details. Fortunately, we have friends who trust us to share their experiences. Here is what happened to one of our friends on a United Airlines flight from Newark to Orlando.

I followed her travels on Facebook, confirming the details about her flights as the day progressed. After the fact. I asked her to describe the details. To an outsider they seemed unbelievable, but all of these things actually happened.

I was going to try and describe what happened but when I asked, she provided a better description than I could ever write. Here’s a play-by-play of what happened.

I was flying a direct flight from Newark to Orlando (I find Newark to be an easier airport to get to from Manhattan than either of the NYC airports). I was about an hour and a half early for the flight. I had just made it through security and was halfway to my gate when I got a text from United telling me my flight was cancelled and to rebook using the app.

I confirmed that the flight was canceled via FlightAware.

So I attempted to rebook on the app but it told me there were no more flights from Newark to Orlando that day. I happened to know there were at LEAST 4 more flights after mine so I knew something was off. I kept trying for another 15 minutes or so when finally the next flight out showed up in the app. I immediately rebooked. Then as any good airport traveler on a delay would do, I went to get coffee.

She followed all of the rules when you’re on a canceled flight. Be proactive and try to rebook on the app instead of calling or waiting for a representative at the airport.

After I picked up my coffee I double checked the app because I wanted to check what seat I was in. But when I pulled up my flight it said I was rebooked on a flight at the exact same time that my original flight was supposed to leave. I was confused and worried that I was rebooked onto the cancelled flight. So I headed to customer service where the line was astronomically long. I waited for about 20 minutes and barely moved when a man from the airline started going down the line passing out card with the phone number for customer service. I called and much to my surprise got an agent right away. I gave her my account information and she too was confused by what she saw and put me on hold. When she finally returned she told me that my original flight WAS cancelled because there was a problem with the plane. But immediately upon cancelling they found another plane. So they created a new flight at the exact same time as the original and rebooked me automatically on that.

I too have had the experience of being booked on a “mystery” flight, when my original flight was canceled because of a crew timing out. But I never have seen a flight canceled and rescheduled at the same time.

United “mystery” flight 3040 was scheduled to leave Newark 20 minutes after flight 1508.

Why was the flight canceled and rescheduled with a new flight number? Because it was now on a different plane.

Why didn’t they just rebook everyone in the first place? Apparently the 2nd plane was smaller and not everyone got rebooked. I was one of the lucky ones. The customer service agent told me she had never seen this happen before where a cancelled flight had a new one rescheduled at the same time. Just before boarding something else I’ve never seen before- One of the flight attendants addressed the crowd of passengers before getting on the plane. She also said that in 35 years of flying she had NEVER seen a flight created at the exact same time as the cancelled flight. She asked everyone to be patient.

The biggest problem was that passengers were attempting to board the new flight with their boarding passes from the canceled flight.

When it came time to board it was a MESS. Half the passengers were trying to use the boarding passes from the original flight. So loading took FOREVER. Once finally in the air we were rerouted no less than 3 times due to weather and flight traffic. We made a literal loop over Georgia. Then instead of flying down the east coast as is normal with these flights we were routed way out over the middle of the Gulf of Mexico and then had to fly south of Orlando and turn around and fly in from that direction. At one point, after the 3rd reroute, the pilot came on the intercom and literally said “Well folks…. You can’t make this stuff up.” We finally landed a couple hours later than our original arrival.

I confirmed her story by checking the flight path on FlightAware. It’s a flight path I’ve never seen before from EWR to MCO.

I’ve never been on a 4-hour flight from New York to Orlando, except for the one time when we needed to divert to Philadelphia for a medical emergency.

Thanks to Jamie for sharing her unique experience flying with United from Newark to Orlando.

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary