Sometimes a Cancelled Flight Can Be a Good Thing

During our recent trip to London, we received an email from United at 11:40PM on New Years Eve.  Our 9:20 AM flight from London to Houston had been cancelled.  Well that sucks.  A few minutes later, we received an email informing us that we had been re-booked on the 11:40 AM flight.  That was good news but now we were going to have a super tight 1:10 connection in Houston.  There wasn't much we could do so we enjoyed the rest of 2013, set our alarms for two hours later, and "slept in" a bit.

Our flight to Houston was fine (review coming) except for the fact that Emily has a gluten allergy and I had requested a gluten free meal.  But that meal was sitting on our originally scheduled flight...back in Houston.  So she was kind of out of luck in terms of food.  Thanks to Global Entry, we somehow made our connection even with checked bags.  The flight from Houston to Denver was on an internationally configured 767-300 so we had lie flat beds for the two hour flight.  Pretty sweet...except the entertainment system didn't work and had to be constantly reset by the crew.

None of these things by themselves were really that big of a deal.  The basic point of flying is to get from point A to point B safely and that happened.  But it was kind of annoying to receive word so late on NYE that our flight had been cancelled.  So I fired off a quick note to customer care about our experience and received the following response:
 
"Dear Mr. Evan:

 

Thank you for contacting United Airlines.  I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience you experienced when your flight from London was cancelled and you were rebooked on a later flight allowing you to make your original connection out of Houston.  I regret we were unable to accommodate your wife's special meal request and I apologize for the issue you experienced with the entertainment system.

 

As a gesture of goodwill, I have requested a deposit of 15,000 MileagePlus miles to each of your accounts. Please allow 3-5 days for processing.

 

Mr. Evan, it is never our intent to inconvenience our customers and I am sorry your expectations were not met while traveling with us. We appreciate the time your took to share your thoughts with us and the opportunity to apologize for any inconvenience.  We appreciate your business and loyalty as a Premier 1K customer and look forward to welcoming you and your wife on board a future United flight."   

Goodwill points already posted to my account

Definitely more generous than I had expected.  I value United miles at two cents each so this was like getting $600 in compensation for a few things that weren't that big of a deal.  Always nice when an airline exceeds your expectations in terms of service.  And always worth spending a few minutes to tell an airline/hotel company about your experience.  You might be surprised with how they respond.