United Airlines ruins holiday travel and then says its everyone elses fault.

There is an impending dread every year as the holidays approach. Sure, extra-close 'quality' time with the inlaws plays a part, but the real dread comes from the anticipation of air travel. We live too far to drive to my parents house, so the unavoidable plane trip is a yearly source of stress. Until this past holiday, the sum of our complaints has been long security lines, crowded airports and delayed flights. This year, we foolishly believed we had escaped the drama. Our Air Tran flight out to D.C. from Denver went smoothly, despite the transfer through Atlanta with only a 30 minute lay-over. We truly thought lady luck was on our side. For a flight home, we arrived at the Washington-Reagan airport two hours before our flight was scheduled to depart. The check-in lines at United were short and the airport was relatively uncrowded for a holiday weekend. Then, the chaos began.

As we entered the main terminal, we asked a baggage claim attendant if we could weigh our bag to make sure it wasn't too heavy. He asked which flight we were on and we told him 'United 663 direct to Denver, departing at 5:55pm.' He gave us a confused look and told us that flight had left D.C. at 10:00am that morning. We both smiled at him and told him he must be mistaken. There is no way our flight would have taken off without us being notified. We made our way inside the terminal as we heard the baggage claim attendant tell the family behind us the same bad news. We all lined up in front of the United ticket counter, laughing at the possibility of the man's statement actually being true. Flights may be delayed, but there was NO WAY they would depart 6 hours earlier.

As we waited in line, the possibilty of our situation became more real. Groups of passengeres lined up behind us with similar concerns regarding the same flight. A friendly United service agent sorted out the line, asking passengers on other flights to step into a faster-moving line, while confused passengers of flight 663 remain in another line. As my husband and I approached the ticket counter, we listened to conversations taking place between passengers and ticket agents. It was now a fact that our flight had been changed to depart at 10:00am that morning, but the debate was-who was at fault.

As we awaited our turn to discuss solutions, we stood in awe as we listened to the various conversations. The customer service director, Corwin Jeffers, was telling a family of four that they were at fault for not calling the airline the day before to ensure their flight had not changed. He also told them that a message had been left for them on December 21st, at the number designated on www.united.com. I quickly checked my cell phone (the number I had entered when purchasing the tickets on www.united.com) to see if I had missed any unknown numbers on the 21st. My call log didn't show any such calls, nor did my email account show a message from United (neither in my Inbox or my Junk Mail).

One passenger had actually checked-in online at 11:00am www.united.com for the 5:55pm flight and was allowed to do so. Surely if there had been a broadcasted change, he shouldn't have been able to check-in. Another group of men, had actually bought their tickets that morning on priceline. com and the flight was listed to depart at 5:55pm.

When it was finally our turn to approach the ticket counter, we were assisted by the most friendly face United could boast-Patricia. Even though she had worked all day, with no lunch or snack break, she was all smiles and all apologies. She could not offer any explanations or, try as she might, solutions. Patricia spent 45 minutes looking for every possible solution to get us from D.C. to Denver (or anywhere within up to 10 hours driving distance from Denver) before Monday, Dec. 29th (this all occurred on Saturday, Dec. 27th). She couldn't find any flights with United or other airlines that had available seating. At the last minute, however, Corwin Jeffers, swept over to Patricia's computer and gruffly asked what our problem was. She explained that we were one of the many passengers that had missed flight 663. He impatiently commanded us to follow him back to his computer while he tried to look for a solution. As we were waiting, he said 'bring your bags over here now.' A 'please' would have been nice. We grabbed our bags and placed them on the scale as he tagged them. He then handed us two boarding passes and instructed us to run, speaking to no one, through security to a gate where the plane would be departing in 30 minutes. No explanation, no apology, just 2 boarding passes. So, we ran to catch a flight to Denver (via Chicago) that had been delayed since 2:00pm that afternoon and happened to have 2 vacant seats.

In the end (after some quality delay time in Chicago), we did make it to Denver. That was the good news. The bad news was that no one at United claimed accountability for the mishap. We, and approximately 30 other passengers, never received a phone call or email informing us of the flight change. Rather than acknowledging the probable fault and apologizing for the inconvenience, the United Customer Service Director aggressively placed the fault on the passengers. For the past 3 days, since arriving home, we have been unable to reach anyone at United's customer service department. If nothing else, we have resolved to check one more airline off our list for air travel.