TROUBLE IN CHEYENNE
The saga of two United Express flights that left passengers stranded:
Dec. 20
• 7:20 a.m.: United Express Flight 7529, with 59 passengers, departs Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for Denver.
• 8:23 a.m.: United Express Flight 7705, carrying 51 passengers, leaves Columbus, Ohio, for Denver.
• 9:32 a.m.: Cedar Rapids flight lands in Cheyenne, Wyo., after diverting from Denver because of snowy weather.
• 10:08 a.m.: Columbus flight lands in Cheyenne after diverting from Denver.
• 4 p.m.: Passengers from both jets leave Cheyenne airport for local hotels.
Dec. 21
• 5:15 a.m.-11 a.m.: About 100 passengers arrive at Cheyenne airport expecting to board United Express jets.
• 12:47 p.m.: Jet from Columbus takes off from Cheyenne for Indianapolis, without passengers.
• 1:44 p.m.: Jet from Cedar Rapids takes off for Kansas City, without passengers.
• 1:44 p.m.-4 p.m.: Many passengers leave Cheyenne airport. Some return to hotels. Others book rental cars or make travel arrangements out of Cheyenne.
• 4 p.m.: An official of Shuttle America, the airline operating the United Express flights, calls Cheyenne airport to inform passengers that a bus will pick them up the next day and take them to Denver.
Dec. 22
• Noon: Two buses arrive. Only a few passengers are left to board.
Sources: United Airlines, United Express passengers
By Gary Stoller, USA TODAY
Tears filling his eyes, Roger Barbour watched in disbelief as two United Express jets took off without him just before Christmas at the Cheyenne airport in Wyoming. He wasn't the only one left behind.
Two planeloads of passengers — 110 people — whose flights had been diverted to Cheyenne after a blizzard hit Denver's airport on Wednesday, Dec. 20, were shocked the next day when the pilots and flight attendants boarded the aircraft and flew to other cities without them.
Some in the airport cried as they were left behind. Others were furious or stunned at the move, which U.S. Department of Transportation officials later called highly unusual. "I couldn't believe they were actually leaving us," says Barbour, who was going to his wedding in Canada after attending his father's memorial service in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Airline officials say the jets flew without passengers to Kansas City and Indianapolis on Dec. 21 because the jets were needed for other routes. Buses arrived the next day to take passengers to Denver, but Barbour and other passengers say many were not aware that buses were on the way.
The incident, which has gone largely unpublicized until now, comes to light at a time when airlines are under increasing scrutiny over a series of customer-service miscues that have raised calls for the U.S. government to do more to protect air travelers. The Cheyenne episode is among at least three weather-related airline fiascoes this winter.
BACKGROUND: Spotlight on passenger rights
Last week, hundreds of JetBlue passengers were forced to sit in grounded jets for up to 10 hours, the result of a breakdown in the airline's operations system that led to the cancellations of about 1,000 JetBlue flights and apologies from the airline's leadership. On Dec. 29, a similar thing happened to those aboard a grounded American Airlines jet in Austin.
Together, the incidents are bound to fuel calls for Congress to establish a "bill of rights" for air passengers, industry analyst Michael Boyd says. Most of the discussion on such a measure, though, has focused on giving passengers the right to deplane if an aircraft is on the ground for more than three hours, not the situation faced by the travelers left in Cheyenne.
The Cheyenne incident reflects what can happen when a trimmed-down, post-bankruptcy airline has to deal with a ferocious storm such as the one that hit the Rocky Mountains before Christmas.
Chicago-based United shed 20,000 workers during a three-year bankruptcy reorganization that ended last year. Like other struggling U.S. carriers, it has moved aggressively to make sure nearly every seat is filled on every flight. At Christmastime, United was running flights at near-capacity, limiting its ability to rebook those knocked off course by the blizzard.
For the passengers left in Cheyenne, being stranded by United — and perhaps more important, the airline's lack of communication about why it sent the jets away without them — amounted to a promise broken. United says the weather forced it to make decisions that were bound to displease many.
United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy says various factors led the jets to leave Cheyenne without passengers. Among them: "We had customers at other airports."
The airport at the Cheyenne passengers' original destination, Denver, remained closed the next day, she says. Airline officials considered taking the passengers to Kansas City and Indianapolis but decided against it. With Christmas a few days away, many United flights from those cities already were booked, McCarthy says.
But "the main issue," she says, was that United had no personnel in Cheyenne, so it couldn't draw up a list of passengers as required by government security screeners. The government needs to know the identity of passengers on each new flight, and because some of those who landed in Cheyenne left the airport after several hours, the original list wouldn't suffice.
Scott Hinderman, manager of Cheyenne's airport, says United could have hired an aviation company there or used its own flight attendants to put together such a list.
Instead, the airline sent buses to take the travelers to Denver. By the time the buses arrived on Dec. 22, most of the stranded passengers had found their own ways to proceed with their trips.
After the jets left without them on Dec. 21, many passengers stayed at Cheyenne's airport for a while, trying to figure out what to do. There weren't enough rental cars for everyone, but some who got them carpooled with others and drove up to six hours to the Salt Lake City airport, which was open.
Others drove two hours to Denver and waited at least another day for the airport to open. Some called relatives or their companies to rescue them. Others checked back into Cheyenne hotels and waited for bus service the next day.
At the time, United didn't pay their expenses. Some passengers who complained later were offered a $150 credit for a United ticket.
The airline's stance changed Monday night, when it learned USA TODAY planned to publish this story. United decided to pay hotel and meal expenses of all passengers left in Cheyenne, McCarthy says.
U.S. Department of Transportation spokesman Bill Mosley says he didn't know of another case in which a diverted flight left its passengers behind. Hinderman says he was "flabbergasted" when the jets took off without the passengers, whose flights had begun in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Columbus, Ohio.
"I've been in aviation since 1984," he says, "and I've never heard of such a thing."
Confusion in Cheyenne
The blizzard that forced the jets to be diverted dumped more than 20 inches of snow on Denver's airport and closed it for 45 hours, stranding about 4,700 passengers there Dec. 20. Both jets that went to Cheyenne were in line to land in Denver, but pilots and airline dispatchers decided it was safer to go to Wyoming, McCarthy says.
The pilots worked for Indianapolis-based Shuttle America, one of several carriers that fly United Express routes for United, the USA's No. 2 airline. Shuttle America did not return calls by USA TODAY. It decided to let United comment on the incident, McCarthy says. United declined a USA TODAY request to interview the pilots.
On Dec. 21, the day after the United Express jets landed in Cheyenne amid swirling snow, it was sunny and clear when the jets left without their passengers.
"They abandoned us so they could make more money with others," says Barbour, 28, a graduate student at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada, who says he has hired a lawyer and is considering action against United.
After the two jets left Cheyenne, Barbour and five others rented a minivan and drove to a Denver hotel. When the airport there opened the next day, Dec. 22, Barbour says he waited in line for six hours to speak to a United ticket agent.
Flights to Edmonton, where he was getting married on Dec. 29, and those to Calgary, a two-hour drive from Edmonton, were canceled. He says he was put on a waiting list for a United flight to Calgary the next evening and was told he might have to wait until after Christmas to get a guaranteed seat.
Concerned about missing his wedding, Barbour booked a flight to Toronto on Air Canada and then a connecting flight to Edmonton.
Barbour says United agents wouldn't transfer his United ticket for travel on Air Canada. He was carrying only $600 his parents had given him for tuition. He had to use nearly half the money to buy the new ticket and to pay other expenses. Barbour says his cellphone carrier charged $784 for calls he made trying to reach United agents.
Other passengers recall confusion at Cheyenne's airport the day they arrived. Passengers on the flight from Cedar Rapids say they were told to get off the jet and go into the terminal. They later were told to reboard. The weather "deteriorated quickly, and the pilots determined they could not depart safely," McCarthy says.
Most passengers eventually followed the pilots and flight attendants to local hotels.
Travelers 'in total despair'
Barbour and other passengers who stayed at a Holiday Inn say that the next morning, Dec. 21, pilots at the hotel told them to go to the airport, where they would be flown elsewhere.
Later, at the airport, the pilots got on the jets without talking with the passengers and flew away, Barbour and other passengers say.
When one of the jets began moving to the runway, passenger Patrick Houlihan asked a security screener whether it would pick up the passengers. "He said, 'No, they left you high and dry.' "
Passengers were in "total despair," says Brian Box, who runs a travel agency at Cheyenne's airport and shuttled many passengers to local hotels. "It was horribly cold to leave those people here."
"I was speechless," says Andi, a passenger who is a restaurant manager in Columbus and goes by one name. "Everyone said, 'What the heck are we going to do?' "
Andi returned to a local hotel for a second night. The next day, Dec. 22, he was among just a few passengers still in Cheyenne when the buses sent by the airline arrived. Just three boarded his bus, he says.
Cory Anderson, 19, a student at Kenyon College in Ohio who was headed home to Petaluma, Calif., says it was "a bizarre experience."
Anderson "is not a wimpy traveler," says her mother, Sue, "but she was in tears when she called and said, 'Mom, the plane took off without me.' I scolded her for missing the plane, but she said, 'Mom, it took off without anybody!' "
Passengers say they got little guidance from the pilots, flight attendants or United telephone agents after their flights were diverted. They had to book their own hotels and transportation from Cheyenne's airport.
"It was very stressful," says passenger Ann Kinney, a photographer in Cedar Rapids. She says she paid $356 for a two-night hotel stay in Cheyenne, meals, a taxi and a bus ticket to Denver. She says a United telephone agent initially told her she was owed nothing because she had made it to Denver. She later was given a $150 United voucher, which she says is unacceptable.
Passengers say they called United repeatedly to try to find out what they should do after arriving in Cheyenne but say the airline's telephone agents were not helpful and sometimes hung up on them.
United says a customer-service manager from Shuttle America called five hotels and left a phone number for passengers with questions. Several called the number, McCarthy says.
But several passengers say they didn't know about a contact number. Bob Harman, general manager of the Holiday Inn where 36 passengers and 11 flight crewmembers stayed, says his hotel wasn't called by Shuttle America. He says a pilot gave him a toll-free number passengers could use to contact the airline, and he passed it on to some.
Mike Wines, whose wife, Charlotte, was on the flight from Columbus, says he couldn't reach a United agent for 18 hours. When he finally succeeded, the United agent, who was in India, wasn't aware the jet had been diverted and asked how to spell Cheyenne and what state it was in, Wines says.
"We are sorry customers did not get help when contacting United," McCarthy says. "Wait times were long because agents were rebooking customers on the 2,000 flights canceled during the snowstorm."
Mosley, the DOT spokesman, says that when flights are diverted, the government requires airlines to provide transportation to get passengers to their destination. If that's not possible, airlines must provide a partial refund. United and Shuttle America were responsible for abiding by those terms, DOT spokeswoman Lori Irving says.
The government does not require airlines to pay for hotels or make other provisions for those on diverted planes.
United "treated us like baggage: dropped us off and took off," Andi says. "We're not. We're humans."
'They left you high and dry'
Why would USA Today sit on this story for 2 months?
The saga of two United Express flights that left passengers stranded:
Dec. 20
• 7:20 a.m.: United Express Flight 7529, with 59 passengers, departs Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for Denver.
• 8:23 a.m.: United Express Flight 7705, carrying 51 passengers, leaves Columbus, Ohio, for Denver.
• 9:32 a.m.: Cedar Rapids flight lands in Cheyenne, Wyo., after diverting from Denver because of snowy weather.
• 10:08 a.m.: Columbus flight lands in Cheyenne after diverting from Denver.
• 4 p.m.: Passengers from both jets leave Cheyenne airport for local hotels.
Dec. 21
• 5:15 a.m.-11 a.m.: About 100 passengers arrive at Cheyenne airport expecting to board United Express jets.
• 12:47 p.m.: Jet from Columbus takes off from Cheyenne for Indianapolis, without passengers.
• 1:44 p.m.: Jet from Cedar Rapids takes off for Kansas City, without passengers.
• 1:44 p.m.-4 p.m.: Many passengers leave Cheyenne airport. Some return to hotels. Others book rental cars or make travel arrangements out of Cheyenne.
• 4 p.m.: An official of Shuttle America, the airline operating the United Express flights, calls Cheyenne airport to inform passengers that a bus will pick them up the next day and take them to Denver.
Dec. 22
• Noon: Two buses arrive. Only a few passengers are left to board.
Sources: United Airlines, United Express passengers
By Gary Stoller, USA TODAY
Tears filling his eyes, Roger Barbour watched in disbelief as two United Express jets took off without him just before Christmas at the Cheyenne airport in Wyoming. He wasn't the only one left behind.
Two planeloads of passengers — 110 people — whose flights had been diverted to Cheyenne after a blizzard hit Denver's airport on Wednesday, Dec. 20, were shocked the next day when the pilots and flight attendants boarded the aircraft and flew to other cities without them.
Some in the airport cried as they were left behind. Others were furious or stunned at the move, which U.S. Department of Transportation officials later called highly unusual. "I couldn't believe they were actually leaving us," says Barbour, who was going to his wedding in Canada after attending his father's memorial service in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Airline officials say the jets flew without passengers to Kansas City and Indianapolis on Dec. 21 because the jets were needed for other routes. Buses arrived the next day to take passengers to Denver, but Barbour and other passengers say many were not aware that buses were on the way.
The incident, which has gone largely unpublicized until now, comes to light at a time when airlines are under increasing scrutiny over a series of customer-service miscues that have raised calls for the U.S. government to do more to protect air travelers. The Cheyenne episode is among at least three weather-related airline fiascoes this winter.
BACKGROUND: Spotlight on passenger rights
Last week, hundreds of JetBlue passengers were forced to sit in grounded jets for up to 10 hours, the result of a breakdown in the airline's operations system that led to the cancellations of about 1,000 JetBlue flights and apologies from the airline's leadership. On Dec. 29, a similar thing happened to those aboard a grounded American Airlines jet in Austin.
Together, the incidents are bound to fuel calls for Congress to establish a "bill of rights" for air passengers, industry analyst Michael Boyd says. Most of the discussion on such a measure, though, has focused on giving passengers the right to deplane if an aircraft is on the ground for more than three hours, not the situation faced by the travelers left in Cheyenne.
The Cheyenne incident reflects what can happen when a trimmed-down, post-bankruptcy airline has to deal with a ferocious storm such as the one that hit the Rocky Mountains before Christmas.
Chicago-based United shed 20,000 workers during a three-year bankruptcy reorganization that ended last year. Like other struggling U.S. carriers, it has moved aggressively to make sure nearly every seat is filled on every flight. At Christmastime, United was running flights at near-capacity, limiting its ability to rebook those knocked off course by the blizzard.
For the passengers left in Cheyenne, being stranded by United — and perhaps more important, the airline's lack of communication about why it sent the jets away without them — amounted to a promise broken. United says the weather forced it to make decisions that were bound to displease many.
United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy says various factors led the jets to leave Cheyenne without passengers. Among them: "We had customers at other airports."
The airport at the Cheyenne passengers' original destination, Denver, remained closed the next day, she says. Airline officials considered taking the passengers to Kansas City and Indianapolis but decided against it. With Christmas a few days away, many United flights from those cities already were booked, McCarthy says.
But "the main issue," she says, was that United had no personnel in Cheyenne, so it couldn't draw up a list of passengers as required by government security screeners. The government needs to know the identity of passengers on each new flight, and because some of those who landed in Cheyenne left the airport after several hours, the original list wouldn't suffice.
Scott Hinderman, manager of Cheyenne's airport, says United could have hired an aviation company there or used its own flight attendants to put together such a list.
Instead, the airline sent buses to take the travelers to Denver. By the time the buses arrived on Dec. 22, most of the stranded passengers had found their own ways to proceed with their trips.
After the jets left without them on Dec. 21, many passengers stayed at Cheyenne's airport for a while, trying to figure out what to do. There weren't enough rental cars for everyone, but some who got them carpooled with others and drove up to six hours to the Salt Lake City airport, which was open.
Others drove two hours to Denver and waited at least another day for the airport to open. Some called relatives or their companies to rescue them. Others checked back into Cheyenne hotels and waited for bus service the next day.
At the time, United didn't pay their expenses. Some passengers who complained later were offered a $150 credit for a United ticket.
The airline's stance changed Monday night, when it learned USA TODAY planned to publish this story. United decided to pay hotel and meal expenses of all passengers left in Cheyenne, McCarthy says.
U.S. Department of Transportation spokesman Bill Mosley says he didn't know of another case in which a diverted flight left its passengers behind. Hinderman says he was "flabbergasted" when the jets took off without the passengers, whose flights had begun in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Columbus, Ohio.
"I've been in aviation since 1984," he says, "and I've never heard of such a thing."
Confusion in Cheyenne
The blizzard that forced the jets to be diverted dumped more than 20 inches of snow on Denver's airport and closed it for 45 hours, stranding about 4,700 passengers there Dec. 20. Both jets that went to Cheyenne were in line to land in Denver, but pilots and airline dispatchers decided it was safer to go to Wyoming, McCarthy says.
The pilots worked for Indianapolis-based Shuttle America, one of several carriers that fly United Express routes for United, the USA's No. 2 airline. Shuttle America did not return calls by USA TODAY. It decided to let United comment on the incident, McCarthy says. United declined a USA TODAY request to interview the pilots.
On Dec. 21, the day after the United Express jets landed in Cheyenne amid swirling snow, it was sunny and clear when the jets left without their passengers.
"They abandoned us so they could make more money with others," says Barbour, 28, a graduate student at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada, who says he has hired a lawyer and is considering action against United.
After the two jets left Cheyenne, Barbour and five others rented a minivan and drove to a Denver hotel. When the airport there opened the next day, Dec. 22, Barbour says he waited in line for six hours to speak to a United ticket agent.
Flights to Edmonton, where he was getting married on Dec. 29, and those to Calgary, a two-hour drive from Edmonton, were canceled. He says he was put on a waiting list for a United flight to Calgary the next evening and was told he might have to wait until after Christmas to get a guaranteed seat.
Concerned about missing his wedding, Barbour booked a flight to Toronto on Air Canada and then a connecting flight to Edmonton.
Barbour says United agents wouldn't transfer his United ticket for travel on Air Canada. He was carrying only $600 his parents had given him for tuition. He had to use nearly half the money to buy the new ticket and to pay other expenses. Barbour says his cellphone carrier charged $784 for calls he made trying to reach United agents.
Other passengers recall confusion at Cheyenne's airport the day they arrived. Passengers on the flight from Cedar Rapids say they were told to get off the jet and go into the terminal. They later were told to reboard. The weather "deteriorated quickly, and the pilots determined they could not depart safely," McCarthy says.
Most passengers eventually followed the pilots and flight attendants to local hotels.
Travelers 'in total despair'
Barbour and other passengers who stayed at a Holiday Inn say that the next morning, Dec. 21, pilots at the hotel told them to go to the airport, where they would be flown elsewhere.
Later, at the airport, the pilots got on the jets without talking with the passengers and flew away, Barbour and other passengers say.
When one of the jets began moving to the runway, passenger Patrick Houlihan asked a security screener whether it would pick up the passengers. "He said, 'No, they left you high and dry.' "
Passengers were in "total despair," says Brian Box, who runs a travel agency at Cheyenne's airport and shuttled many passengers to local hotels. "It was horribly cold to leave those people here."
"I was speechless," says Andi, a passenger who is a restaurant manager in Columbus and goes by one name. "Everyone said, 'What the heck are we going to do?' "
Andi returned to a local hotel for a second night. The next day, Dec. 22, he was among just a few passengers still in Cheyenne when the buses sent by the airline arrived. Just three boarded his bus, he says.
Cory Anderson, 19, a student at Kenyon College in Ohio who was headed home to Petaluma, Calif., says it was "a bizarre experience."
Anderson "is not a wimpy traveler," says her mother, Sue, "but she was in tears when she called and said, 'Mom, the plane took off without me.' I scolded her for missing the plane, but she said, 'Mom, it took off without anybody!' "
Passengers say they got little guidance from the pilots, flight attendants or United telephone agents after their flights were diverted. They had to book their own hotels and transportation from Cheyenne's airport.
"It was very stressful," says passenger Ann Kinney, a photographer in Cedar Rapids. She says she paid $356 for a two-night hotel stay in Cheyenne, meals, a taxi and a bus ticket to Denver. She says a United telephone agent initially told her she was owed nothing because she had made it to Denver. She later was given a $150 United voucher, which she says is unacceptable.
Passengers say they called United repeatedly to try to find out what they should do after arriving in Cheyenne but say the airline's telephone agents were not helpful and sometimes hung up on them.
United says a customer-service manager from Shuttle America called five hotels and left a phone number for passengers with questions. Several called the number, McCarthy says.
But several passengers say they didn't know about a contact number. Bob Harman, general manager of the Holiday Inn where 36 passengers and 11 flight crewmembers stayed, says his hotel wasn't called by Shuttle America. He says a pilot gave him a toll-free number passengers could use to contact the airline, and he passed it on to some.
Mike Wines, whose wife, Charlotte, was on the flight from Columbus, says he couldn't reach a United agent for 18 hours. When he finally succeeded, the United agent, who was in India, wasn't aware the jet had been diverted and asked how to spell Cheyenne and what state it was in, Wines says.
"We are sorry customers did not get help when contacting United," McCarthy says. "Wait times were long because agents were rebooking customers on the 2,000 flights canceled during the snowstorm."
Mosley, the DOT spokesman, says that when flights are diverted, the government requires airlines to provide transportation to get passengers to their destination. If that's not possible, airlines must provide a partial refund. United and Shuttle America were responsible for abiding by those terms, DOT spokeswoman Lori Irving says.
The government does not require airlines to pay for hotels or make other provisions for those on diverted planes.
United "treated us like baggage: dropped us off and took off," Andi says. "We're not. We're humans."
'They left you high and dry'
Why would USA Today sit on this story for 2 months?
