Furious about United Airlines incidents assaulting passengers
To: oscar.munoz@united.com
Cc: lauramandile@united.com sharon.grant@united.com jessica.rossman@united.com
Dear Mr. Munoz:
I remember when I was a kid and everyone knew Rhapsody in Blue not because a famous person composed it, but because it was United Airline's theme song in the ads about flying the friendly skies.
I've been your customer for over 25 years by now. While it's true that I don't fly as much as business people do, I fly with your company once a year to visit my dad in South America for his birthday every July.
I like it when the flight attendants are nice to the passengers and the pilot and crew make me feel safe flying. I hate it when I take a plane with other companies where the crew is surly and mistreats the passengers not only because that's the company culture, but also because they are super stressed out and take it out on the passengers.
So, for 25 years I've been choosing United as often as I can, so I can avoid stressful situations (international travel is already stressful without airline companies adding to it), and I can just reserve my seat, give you my credit card number and be sure I will have my reserved seat at the date and time I chose, not some other person. I need to arrive safely and in a timely fashion to visit my dad for his birthday without any incidents.
Now, imagine how irate and upset I am (and was) when I see your company's name in the press not just once, but twice this past month.
Once because some poor girl was wearing leggings.
Once because your own bad policies overbooked a flight and then you had the gall to assault a paying passenger, so your employees could deadhead.
Let me start by saying that I don't think there is any situation where a passenger who is wearing clothes that are "street legal" (that is, no police officer arrested them on the way to your company for indecent exposure) should be kicked out of a plane, whether or not they "represent" United because they got a free or cheap ticket.
And I shouldn't have to add, but apparently now we do, that no passenger should be assaulted in a plane unless they are doing something illegal and need to go to jail, and, last I checked, booking a ticket and paying for it is not putting any passengers in a illegal position.
I don't really care what your "Contract of Carriage" says, even if it has legalese saying that you are allowed to overbook flights and strand passengers.
It's been over 30 years that airlines have consistently overbooked flights because they claimed "people cancelled flights" and they wanted the flight to be full. Over the last 30 years computer systems and website reservations, to say nothing of the change to default to non-returnable tickets has consistently shrank the number of people who reserve then cancel their flights at the last possible minute.
And I'm pretty sure that if you have a decent system, you know those 4 crew members that need to deadhead do that consistently.
You are doing a bunch of pretty bad things if your reservation system does not save those 4 seats for your crew automatically and tells the system "do not overbook". I understand that one might every once in a great while (by which I mean not consistently) provide "incentives" like 800 dollars in vouchers for people to give up their seats. You (United) should understand, however, that most of the time people who made a reservation, particularly the ones that reserved months in advance do not have the "flexibility" to accept travel vouchers in return for giving up a seat in a reserved, scheduled flight.
And to be honest, I am at a loss of what to do here.
It's getting close to the time I need to make a reservation to go see my dad for his birthday again.
What assurances do I need from you to make sure that if I'm wearing shorts or t-shirt or sweatpants, for example, I won't be kicked out your flight for not being well dressed enough?
What assurances do I need from you to make sure I will be able to board and fly to see my dad and back so I'm not bumped by your irrational overbooking policies or worse, crew who needs to deadhead and you know about but refuse to reserve a seat for each one of them?
Are you going to force me and other customers to fly with other, non-friendly companies because your operations are completely at odds with the image you so carefully built and will cost an awful lot more to repair than the extra 2-bucks profit per seat?
Please let us (your customers) know what we need to do before we book another ticket and get mistreated like those poor, unfortunate people.
And please don't be fooled by the general lack of swear words in this email. If you have a check box in the trouble ticket you should be logging that says "Customer is Furious", please check it for me.
Where is my beloved United Airlines so I can continue to fly the friendly skies?
How are you going to solve those problems, instead of just telling a PR person to say something inane and ineffective in their next press release? Or should I cancel my account and rip out my frequent flyer card?
Thank you in advance for your help,
-- Paulo Ruffino.