They do have contingency plans.
Every major airline has extra crews on call at their major hubs, ready to send whenever an additional fresh crew is needed.
Kentucky isn’t a major hub. They don’t have a spare set of crew there. Chicago is a major hub. They had to send the crew from Chicago to Kentucky cause something happened. That’s the contingency plan.
Their contingency plans are inadequate. That seems very clear. Again, if you expect to stay in business, your conduct must reflect a sincere attitude of placing the customer first. While “policy” may have been followed, it was poorly executed. This wound was self inflicted by incompetence. The results do matter. What United now has is images of a bloodied passenger, physically assaulted by numerous uniformed and armed police. The optics are devastating. You can cite all of the rules and regs until the breath leaves your body, but the vision is permanent.
Except United?
Last Thursday I had a flight out of Newark (United Hub) that was delayed two hours due to weather. It was severe clear at the originally scheduled departure time, but I could understand that the crew for my plane might have been delayed. Then, they delayed the flight for another two and a half hours. So you would think the great schedulers at United had a crew for a plane they scheduled to leave three hours later at their hub. Then they moved the departure time UP an hour and made us walk three quarters of a mile to a different gate. Fifteen minutes after this departure time, the finally started loading us all onto the plane. Half an hour after that they kicked us off the plane. They said the crew had "timed out."
It was still severe clear (for five hours now) but United said the flight was canceled due to "weather."
ML/NJ