From the Blighted United files

I do not like United Airlines. I haven't liked air travel in general ever since airports became a Fourth Amendment-free zone.  But I especially do not like United Airlines.

I was supposed to spend part of this week in Virginia touring Civil War battlefields (because Civil War battlefields are awesome). The flight was originally supposed to leave at 6:15. Crazy bad weather forced United Airlines to cancel my flight after about three hours of delaying it in thirty-minute increments.  This is, so far, par for the course for America's premier jerkweasel airline.

This is how I learned that Blighted United had cancelled my flight:

I looked at the monitor and saw that my flight status was now:

Delayed until 9:15 (Cancelled).

Shortly thereafter the monitor began displaying information about a flight to St. Paul that would be leaving from that gate later that evening.

There was no PA announcement.  There was no agent at the gate counter to help the legion of angry passengers find alternative arrangements. There was an agent further down the terminal at the gate for flight to Washington; he promptly bolted.

At the front ticket counter there was one supervisor overseeing a bunch of trainees.  Now, granted, this was really late at night, but that's still just f*cking aggravating.

Again: there was no PA announcement, and there was never during the entire three-hour delay an agent at the gate counter.

What the utter hell, United?