Plane ticket canceled for woman going to see dying mother

In a hospital in Minnesota, Carrol Amrich’s mother was dying. In Pueblo, Colo., a thousand miles away, Amrich was frantically trying to get there in time to say goodbye.

Holding a United Airlines ticket purchased for her by her landlord, she probably would have. But minutes before departure, already buckled into her seat, she was ordered to leave the plane. The gate agent told her that her reservation had been canceled. Traveler Help Desk, the online agency that sold the ticket, had rescinded it because the landlord made a change directly through United — even though United had assured the landlord that it was not a problem to do so.

Unable to fly, Amrich drove through the night, but she was too late. Her mother was dead.

“I cried the whole way from Pueblo,” Amrich said.

Carolyn Gallant, customer service supervisor at Traveler Help Desk, confirmed that the agency had voided the ticket after it saw that a change had been made to the reservation. She said that the intention had been to protect Amrich against possible fraud and that a representative had tried “numerous times” to contact Amrich first.

But Amrich and her landlord, Ines Prelas, said they had heard nothing from the agency before she was removed from the plane.

The episode unfolded over a few hours Jan. 16, after Amrich learned that her mother, Dixie Hanson, had been hospitalized. She could not afford a plane ticket, so Prelas bought one for her, using Traveler Help Desk. At that point, there was no indication that Amrich’s mother was dying, so she chose a flight for the next day.

But soon after, Amrich learned that her mother was in heart failure and was not expected to survive the night. It was around 2:30 p.m., and Prelas called United and had Amrich switched onto a flight leaving Colorado Springs at 5:15 p.m. That flight would go to Denver, where Amrich would make a connection to Minneapolis.

Amrich checked in: no problem. Her boarding pass was scanned at the gate: no problem. She buckled her seat belt.

Minutes later, the gate agent came on board to remove her.

When Amrich pleaded, saying her mother was dying, the agent responded that her ticket had been refunded and that “nobody flies for free.”

In the airport, Amrich called Prelas, sobbing. Prelas got on the phone with the gate agent and offered to pay for another ticket.

“I said: ‘Take my credit card. We’ll straighten this out later, ’” Prelas said. The agent, she said, responded that Amrich could not get back on the plane.

Prelas said she was given no explanation at the time, but United told the Times that the plane had already left by the time Prelas made that offer.

Gallant, the Traveler Help Desk supervisor, said that when Prelas contacted United to change Amrich’s flight, all Traveler Help Desk saw was that the reservation had been modified.

“We had no way of knowing this was a change by Ms. Amrich directly with the carrier,” she said in an email. “We voided the ticket to protect Ms. Amrich.”

“I am just so sorry for Ms. Amrich’s loss,” Gallant wrote.