Today's weather, which involves large quantities of falling snow, reminds me of one of my "Why I like United Airlines" stories:
When I was an undergrad in California, I often took my winter breaks in New Jersey. One year I also decided to pop over to England to visit a friend studying in Cambridge. It was a fun trip: first we spent New Year's Eve with others in his program, and then we popped over to France for a few days. Once back in England I caught a tedious bus service to Heathrow for my flight back to New Jersey, where I was planning to spend a few more days before my return flight to California.
I got to Heathrow and went to check in. I was plenty early and there was only one other woman in line with me. She started saying, though, how her daughter in New York said there was a big storm coming and she'd be surprised if we'd be able to get there without delay. But this was the first I'd heard of it (although, granted, it might have been because it wasn't exactly a big story in France…) and the weather in London was so benign that it was hard to conceive of it being otherwise anywhere else. And the airline was going ahead and checking us in anyway.
In Heathrow the wait usually seems to involve a series of waiting rooms - you don't end up at the gate all at once. But all morning we kept getting called to the next location, until finally we were called for boarding. Upon reaching the gate, however, we were confronted by an airport staff member who said, "What are you doing here? This flight isn't going anywhere."
He was right. It, along with every other flight to the United States east of the Rockies, had been cancelled. But we'd already gone through security and immigration, so it wasn't quite clear what would happen to us. We wandered back in the only direction we could go - to the transfers room. Immigration officials then demanded our landing cards. "We don't have any," we explained. "We never landed, because we never took off." Confused and blustering, the officials nevertheless backed off and let us through.
The airline then rounded us up and put us on buses to go to a nearby hotel which happened to have a United reservations desk in the lobby. We lined up to get rebooked the next day.
At first some of the business people on line were very grumbly. "You don't understand," they complained. "I have to be at some Very Important Meeting tomorrow." But later that day, as the pictures of Manhattan being completely shut down started to come in, they stopped grumbling and started enjoying their time off, since it was apparent that their meetings would have been cancelled anyway.
The only people who were not able to relax were the people with destinations in places other than the US. One woman was trying to get to Japan, where it was not snowing, and where they would not be sympathetic to her missing work as a result of it. So the airline ended up rerouting her eastward to get her out quicker.
Meanwhile, everyone else kicked back for the duration. Our rooms were taken care of, and the airline gave us vouchers for our meals in the hotel restaurants. After the first day they moved us to another hotel that was even better - this one had a swimming pool.
But it did become a little tedious after a while. (And a little claustrophobic: part of me was inwardly screaming, "Just get me off this damn island!") The flights for the next day had all been cancelled, and they refused to rebook for the day after so they could make sure the flights we got on would actually leave. All the airlines were also running into problems now with having more flights out than aircraft back in, so it would take them some time to get this all sorted. My problem, though, was that by the time I would have gotten back to New Jersey I would have missed my flight to California. So I decided that rather than asking them to return me to New Jersey, I'd ask them to send me to the other side of the continent. "Can you just get me to California?" No problem, they said, and put me on a Virgin flight to Los Angeles. The problem was that I had a suitcase left behind in New Jersey, but they agreed to waive the excess baggage fee for when my mom came out to visit in a few weeks and could bring it.
So all in all, I had a very nice time, and was very impressed with how well United had taken care of us. My only costs for the whole thing were for phone calls back home. But lest I feel guilty about their expense, shortly thereafter they announced record profits. And I've been a loyal customer ever since.
Still, it's now the benchmark I hold United to. They've performed marvelously before; I expect no less from them now.