United Airlines

We booked flights to send two employees from Toronto to Salt Lake City on

United Airlines.

The flight from Toronto to connection point Chicago was late leaving. The

explanation was that the flight's crew had been late getting in the night

before, and could not take the 8:00am flight out until 9:15am. The flight

in fact didn't leave until 10:00am.

As a result, our employees could not catch their connecting flight in

Chicago. They were promised a flight to Salt Lake City leaving at 7:45pm

that night. They wasted a day puttering around near the Chicago airport,

and returned to the airport in plenty of time for their promised flight.

At 10:00pm, two hours and fifteen minutes after they should have taken off

for Salt Lake City, they were advised that their flight was cancelled. They

could not get a first officer to fly the plane! They were told it was

because of bad weather, and as a result the airline refused to pay for

accommodation. Our employees spent the night in the airport.

The following morning, our employees found that all flights to Salt Lake

City were booked until a 7:45pm flight that night. Since they would at that

point have lost two days (and $6,000 in billing) they decided they should

return home, and they flew back to Toronto.

We have been advised by our travel agent that the best we can hope for from

United is a refund of the cost of the unused flight from Chicago to Salt

Lake City. Several attempts to call United directly have resulted in a

message indicating that they are "too busy" to take our call, we should call

back later.

Is there anything we can do to recover some of our losses from United?