Confirmed -- our flight from IAD down to SXM on United was canceled due to "weather" in SXM, as were all others being operated by United from EWR and ORD. These were all operated on 737 MAX 8s which were then swapped (not published for sale) to much smaller 737-700s at each of those three airports for the outgoing and return legs today.
My guess is that United must operate with much stricter protocols for operations out of SXM than any other carrier -- as no other airline made this adjustment. Air France and KLM had larger widebodies that are far heavier and more runway hungry coming in today as scheduled, and both jetBlue and American Airlines were operating as normal today. In fact, American Airlines was operating the same 737 MAX 8 that United was originally scheduled to use on this route today.
For whatever reason, only United pulled the plug on flights today, and we clearly pulled the short straw in whatever algorithm they use to determine which passengers to bump from the downgrade to the smaller capacity 737-700.
Regrettably, the next available flights (with multiple connections) were not until Tuesday. After frantically rerouting ourselves to SXM from our original SJU route in order to bypass the Tradewind cancelations and hop over on the ferry, coupled with the ongoing power situation and water challenges, we threw our hands up and just opted to cancel our entire trip for the first time in 20+ years of coming here. Super disappointing, but I am glad we stopped trying to salvage the trip after 48+ hours of stress with rerouting flights, ferry tickets, calls to hotels, rental car companies, etc.
