Expat Community > Panama

StanLeeee
Joined 2021
Posts: 725

Heads Up! United Airlines strikes again

3 years ago

If you have reservations on a United Flight out of Panama City I suggest that you check the schedule.

I just received a message informing me that they have changed the flight schedules to the USA and the change would allow me exactly -3 minutes to make the connection from the Copa flight out of David.

They didn’t seem to think that would be a problem but I do. It wouldn’t work even if Copa accidentally happened to be on time that day.

So I logged into the United app, where I followed the confusing instructions until I was told that changing our flight would cost over $2000.

They proposed to give us a break if we just wanted to fly out of David a day earlier... only about $1000 additional fee.

Obviously this is ridiculous. I could just throw my Copa ticket in the trash and buy a new one for about $100.

So are they really that incompetent or are they hoping someone might be dumb enough to pay the extortion?

After a couple of hours of sweating and swearing I finally managed to connect online with a semi-literate person who asked questions such as this:

“Can you provide the flight you've saw online?“

“Are yo flexible to fly into a different date?“

Eventually they agreed to allow us to fly out of David a day earlier without any additional charges... of course we will have to pay for a hotel room in Panama City and another one in Springfield because we won’t be arriving there until very late and I don’t want to ask anyone to spend half the night driving to pick us up.

I suggested that they might like to pay for these additional expenses as well, or at least arrange for a discount with one of their “partners.”

No response to this impertinent suggestion.

So, in conclusion, my opinion of United Airlines was not improved by this annoying episode. I just hope that they don’t change the schedule again after I have made hotel reservations.

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Learn More

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Heads Up! United Airlines strikes again

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