the long and appalling saga of flying united airlines
And why this should be a lesson to us all that one can never hope to fight Murphy's Law.
Recently I went to DC (via SF and NYC). We had initially planned on a 2.5 day stay in NYC which would give us ample time to go shopping and whirlwind-sight-seeing before we headed off to the great capital of democracy (or so they called themselves). The east coast was literally melting in the 40+ heat but it was all for a cool change by the time we arrived. Our relatives happened to be in town and dropped us off conveniently at the airport. Everything was going to plan, and whenever that thought pops into one's head, it is time to beware.
Chapter 1: It begins in Sydney
We arrived in good time, 2 hours and 45 minutes before our plane was due to fly out. The line was not long, the queue only coiling around two aisles out of about five. An hour later we had moved about ten metres. Each group at the counter was taking close to 20-30 minutes. That was when the murmuring started: apparently our flight now read "Cancelled" on the screens and on the airport website. It was still open when we first began to line up, and the counter staff showed no inclination to address us regarding this issue. They were still serving passengers, albeit slower than a snail's pace, so perhaps there was a solution.
As we finally arrived second in line to be served, two hours later and about 15 minutes from scheduled departure time, a stern looking woman informed the anxious crowd that the plane was held up in Melbourne with a damaged wing and there was absolutely no way it was going to leave ground that day. Apologies were briskly made regarding the delay in informing us, the reason cited being "the information that came through was changing every minute, they were going to fix it and then they couldn't, and now we know they can't". She suggested that they would try to fit as many people as possible onto the LA flight.
There were a whole crowd of people who were originally booked onto the LA flight stuck in line for two hours because the SF crowd couldn't be sorted. One of the counter staff called them forward and spent the next half hour sorting them out while the two others continued at a snail's pace to process the SF passengers. Then, finally when the LA crowd was gone, the woman stood up and asked "is there anyone else going to LA?" and when no one answered, she walked off, leaving another 50 passengers stranded in the queue. Really fed up at this point (especially standing second in line and there was a chance we could actually get on the LA flight) I went up and asked her if the LA flight was full, and she nodded solemnly as she continued to edge away.
Completley resigned, I returned to the queue and waited until we were served by one of the other staff, who said SHE COULD BOOK US ONTO THE LA FLIGHT. The only issue following that was there were no more connecting services available that day to NYC, the next one being 6am the next morning, which would constitute an 18 hour wait inside the airport. She also said that the airline would not provide a hotel for that stay. Aghast at having to be stranded for 18 sleep-deprived hours inside LAX (of which I have no fond memories), we resigned to rebooking our flight out of Sydney for the next day and asked about a hotel stay for Sydney. She denied they provided it. I reminded her that the woman who made the announcement had reiterated about three times that they did. She did not know how to organise it and sent us blindly to customer service desk, which had another crowd of about fifty. Fortunately we saw the woman who made the announcement wandering around the hall, and she was able to sort it out for us very quickly.
The stay at the Mercure was probably the highlight of our trip to NYC. It's a very nice place with wonderfully soft linen and the staff were courteous and helpful. By the way, UA stipulates that it only provides $10 for breakfast, $15 for lunch, and $20 for dinner. Which is complete bollocks because you can't get any decent meal at the hotel restaurant or pub under $25 for dinner. However, breakfast buffet was an amazing $10 and had a very hearty selection.
Chapter 2: It continues on the plane
I remember a long time ago I used to like UA inflight food. The proportions are heartier than China Airlines (Taiwanese) but they seem to be getting smaller by the year.
But my chief complaint wasn't so much about the inflight service or the food or any of what the staff did, but I had the great misfortune of sitting behind two off-duty flight attendants. The one in front of me had a clearly broken chair that reclined to a luxurious 50 degrees. This made the female FA next to him extremely jealous and she kept rocking the back of her chair to make it recline more, even though it should be blindingly obvious that no one else's chair reclines quite that far and honey, you work for this airline, you should know that economy only reclines 15 degrees and is yet magically capable of crushing the patella of the person behind you. She kept fishing stuff out of overhead bins and on one occasion dropped her gigantic bag that missed me and two other passengers each by about 5cm. Also, the two of them never straightened their seatbacks during meals and the on-duty staff never reminded them until we requested them to. I don't know if it's forgetfulness or bias.
Honestly, though, if you work for any airline, you'd think you'd know to straighten your seatback when people are eating because you make that announcement every flight.
Chapter 3: and crap continues in SF
Now, when we checked in on the 2nd attempt, I made sure to ask the counter staff whether or not there was enough time to make the connecting service. Looking mildly affronted, he said "you have 1 hour 40 minutes, of course you do".
Bullshit. It takes 30 minutes to get off the plane on an average day. Then you need to make it through customs and it has never taken less than 1 hour for US customs in my experience. However, I remembered a time long past when there was a fast-track corridor between international and domestic at SFO, and now I wonder if I might have been flying Qantas that time.
In any case, we took his word for it because the flight number for our connecting service to NYC was exactly the same and on our ticket it said Stopover. Often that would mean the same aircraft, and we thought hopefully that perhaps we would go through customs in NYC.
That was not the case. In fact, when we asked, the crew on our Sydney flight had never heard of the connecting service's existence. We were to go through customs like everyone else. Unsurprisingly, we finally reached the customs desk at 12:25, 15 minutes after our flight started boarding and 25 minutes before it was due to leave. The customs officer optimistically said we might be able to make it.
Then the computer system crashed =_________________=
I know this is not UA's fault, but somehow it's hard not to feel that they added unnecessary stress by booking a connection that was not logistically possible. And we were told the day before that the domestic flights were all very booked, and if the UA staff hadn't said that it was possible to make that connection, we would have asked for a later flight because at least it would ensure we had a confirmed seat.
By the time we got the customer service counter, the only flight free was 10:50pm that night, 10 hours later. We were placed on stand-by for the 2pm and 4pm flights. Not having much hope, we trundled along to the terminal and found out that both of them - by this point no longer surprising - were delayed by 2 hours. I actually got called forward for the 2pm flight, but when I told her we were a party of three, she looked extremely irritated. I asked her to rebook me for standby for 4pm, which she agreed to.
By the time the 4pm flight came around, I discovered that my name was down the bottom of the list and my parents were at the top. Extremely pissed off and extremely emotional at this point, I asked them to rectify the situation, especially since we had seen our luggage go with the 2pm flight. The woman looked pained and said she couldn't change the stand-by list. I pointed out to her, as kindly as I could muster at that point, I had declined my seat on an earlier flight and that there was no logical reason for me to end up on the bottom of the list. She checked my name. And asked again whether I had a confirmed seat. I told her yes, I had one at 10pm. She frowned and tapped at the keyboard. After a long five minutes she told me that she had not only sorted out my stand-by position, she had also fixed up my initial confirmed flight because the chick who had given me the 2pm flight had cancelled my seat without rebooking me in when I opted not to fly. AND she hadn't told me.
I really, really, really wanted to strangle someone at this point. If I hadn't noticed our names on the stand-by list, if I hadn't told her that I had a confirmed ticket at 10pm, I would've been stuck in SFO at 10pm with no confirmed flight, forever.
The feelings were slightly mollified by fortunately making the 4pm flight, and the rest of the journey went without a hitch (including the luggage, which by this time I wouldn't have been surprised if it got lost in transit), but I was so fed up with UA I had vowed never to fly with them again.
Chapter 4: There is more...
The rest of this didn't happen to me, but it happened to two family friends who were booked with us, except that their return journey commenced 2 days before ours.
...But we met them wandering aimlessly around SFO by the time we made it there (after a 3-legged plane trip from east to west coast). Apparently their adventures were far from finished.
On the 16th they left for DC Dulles airport and immediately they hit a glitch. Because they had also been on stand-by for the 4pm flight on their journey to NYC, some clever counter staff had cancelled their booking for the return flight to Sydney. By the time that was sorted, they got their boarding passes and headed for the plane. As soon as the queue got to them for boarding, they were apparently informed that the flight had been swapped to a smaller plane and they could not fit any more passengers even though they were booked and checked in AND their luggage had been ported out.
They had an overnight stay in a DC hotel before trying again the next day. The flight out to SFO was delayed. Not only that, by the time they finally arrived in SFO, they were told that the Sydney flights were fully booked until Friday and they were placed on stand-by. They did not make the flight that night and the counter staff left as soon as the flight did, so they waited around 3 hours to be served at the main customer service desk, who told them that all their partner hotels in San Francisco were booked out. They ended up spending the night in the airport with just a blanket each. They tried 3 times to check where their luggage was, but some helpful counter staff had forgotten to give them the luggage number ticket at DC, and the wonderfully enthusiastic staff at SFO told them that it was too much trouble to look up and they should just do it in Sydney. And when they finally arrived in Sydney...the luggage had not come with them. Nor on any earlier flights. It was still stranded in SFO, like those of about 15 other customers recently arrived from the US.
I think possibly the biggest flaw with a large national airline like UA is it thinks it can always rebook customers onto the next flight, in particular because they have such frequent domestic flights to larger stops. If it begins to see that it is unacceptable to whimsically delay customers 24hrs to 48hrs to more, then perhaps it would make greater effort to facilitate people being flown out. Finding out that a flight is fully booked doesn't frustrate people as much as finding out a flight has open seats but being unable to fly because of administration or logistical inefficiency.
PS: In the scheme of things this is probably insignificant, but there was a strawberry jam on the breakfast tray on UA. This was a tray that otherwise included only a salty scrambled egg, a salty meat patty, a salty cheese pastry, and a few cubed melons. My mum asked the flight attendant if they had bread. Sounding for some reason extremely offended, the woman said, "EXCUSE ME??" and "NO, I don't."
WTH was the strawberry jam for.
Recently I went to DC (via SF and NYC). We had initially planned on a 2.5 day stay in NYC which would give us ample time to go shopping and whirlwind-sight-seeing before we headed off to the great capital of democracy (or so they called themselves). The east coast was literally melting in the 40+ heat but it was all for a cool change by the time we arrived. Our relatives happened to be in town and dropped us off conveniently at the airport. Everything was going to plan, and whenever that thought pops into one's head, it is time to beware.
Chapter 1: It begins in Sydney
We arrived in good time, 2 hours and 45 minutes before our plane was due to fly out. The line was not long, the queue only coiling around two aisles out of about five. An hour later we had moved about ten metres. Each group at the counter was taking close to 20-30 minutes. That was when the murmuring started: apparently our flight now read "Cancelled" on the screens and on the airport website. It was still open when we first began to line up, and the counter staff showed no inclination to address us regarding this issue. They were still serving passengers, albeit slower than a snail's pace, so perhaps there was a solution.
As we finally arrived second in line to be served, two hours later and about 15 minutes from scheduled departure time, a stern looking woman informed the anxious crowd that the plane was held up in Melbourne with a damaged wing and there was absolutely no way it was going to leave ground that day. Apologies were briskly made regarding the delay in informing us, the reason cited being "the information that came through was changing every minute, they were going to fix it and then they couldn't, and now we know they can't". She suggested that they would try to fit as many people as possible onto the LA flight.
There were a whole crowd of people who were originally booked onto the LA flight stuck in line for two hours because the SF crowd couldn't be sorted. One of the counter staff called them forward and spent the next half hour sorting them out while the two others continued at a snail's pace to process the SF passengers. Then, finally when the LA crowd was gone, the woman stood up and asked "is there anyone else going to LA?" and when no one answered, she walked off, leaving another 50 passengers stranded in the queue. Really fed up at this point (especially standing second in line and there was a chance we could actually get on the LA flight) I went up and asked her if the LA flight was full, and she nodded solemnly as she continued to edge away.
Completley resigned, I returned to the queue and waited until we were served by one of the other staff, who said SHE COULD BOOK US ONTO THE LA FLIGHT. The only issue following that was there were no more connecting services available that day to NYC, the next one being 6am the next morning, which would constitute an 18 hour wait inside the airport. She also said that the airline would not provide a hotel for that stay. Aghast at having to be stranded for 18 sleep-deprived hours inside LAX (of which I have no fond memories), we resigned to rebooking our flight out of Sydney for the next day and asked about a hotel stay for Sydney. She denied they provided it. I reminded her that the woman who made the announcement had reiterated about three times that they did. She did not know how to organise it and sent us blindly to customer service desk, which had another crowd of about fifty. Fortunately we saw the woman who made the announcement wandering around the hall, and she was able to sort it out for us very quickly.
The stay at the Mercure was probably the highlight of our trip to NYC. It's a very nice place with wonderfully soft linen and the staff were courteous and helpful. By the way, UA stipulates that it only provides $10 for breakfast, $15 for lunch, and $20 for dinner. Which is complete bollocks because you can't get any decent meal at the hotel restaurant or pub under $25 for dinner. However, breakfast buffet was an amazing $10 and had a very hearty selection.
Chapter 2: It continues on the plane
I remember a long time ago I used to like UA inflight food. The proportions are heartier than China Airlines (Taiwanese) but they seem to be getting smaller by the year.
But my chief complaint wasn't so much about the inflight service or the food or any of what the staff did, but I had the great misfortune of sitting behind two off-duty flight attendants. The one in front of me had a clearly broken chair that reclined to a luxurious 50 degrees. This made the female FA next to him extremely jealous and she kept rocking the back of her chair to make it recline more, even though it should be blindingly obvious that no one else's chair reclines quite that far and honey, you work for this airline, you should know that economy only reclines 15 degrees and is yet magically capable of crushing the patella of the person behind you. She kept fishing stuff out of overhead bins and on one occasion dropped her gigantic bag that missed me and two other passengers each by about 5cm. Also, the two of them never straightened their seatbacks during meals and the on-duty staff never reminded them until we requested them to. I don't know if it's forgetfulness or bias.
Honestly, though, if you work for any airline, you'd think you'd know to straighten your seatback when people are eating because you make that announcement every flight.
Chapter 3: and crap continues in SF
Now, when we checked in on the 2nd attempt, I made sure to ask the counter staff whether or not there was enough time to make the connecting service. Looking mildly affronted, he said "you have 1 hour 40 minutes, of course you do".
Bullshit. It takes 30 minutes to get off the plane on an average day. Then you need to make it through customs and it has never taken less than 1 hour for US customs in my experience. However, I remembered a time long past when there was a fast-track corridor between international and domestic at SFO, and now I wonder if I might have been flying Qantas that time.
In any case, we took his word for it because the flight number for our connecting service to NYC was exactly the same and on our ticket it said Stopover. Often that would mean the same aircraft, and we thought hopefully that perhaps we would go through customs in NYC.
That was not the case. In fact, when we asked, the crew on our Sydney flight had never heard of the connecting service's existence. We were to go through customs like everyone else. Unsurprisingly, we finally reached the customs desk at 12:25, 15 minutes after our flight started boarding and 25 minutes before it was due to leave. The customs officer optimistically said we might be able to make it.
Then the computer system crashed =_________________=
I know this is not UA's fault, but somehow it's hard not to feel that they added unnecessary stress by booking a connection that was not logistically possible. And we were told the day before that the domestic flights were all very booked, and if the UA staff hadn't said that it was possible to make that connection, we would have asked for a later flight because at least it would ensure we had a confirmed seat.
By the time we got the customer service counter, the only flight free was 10:50pm that night, 10 hours later. We were placed on stand-by for the 2pm and 4pm flights. Not having much hope, we trundled along to the terminal and found out that both of them - by this point no longer surprising - were delayed by 2 hours. I actually got called forward for the 2pm flight, but when I told her we were a party of three, she looked extremely irritated. I asked her to rebook me for standby for 4pm, which she agreed to.
By the time the 4pm flight came around, I discovered that my name was down the bottom of the list and my parents were at the top. Extremely pissed off and extremely emotional at this point, I asked them to rectify the situation, especially since we had seen our luggage go with the 2pm flight. The woman looked pained and said she couldn't change the stand-by list. I pointed out to her, as kindly as I could muster at that point, I had declined my seat on an earlier flight and that there was no logical reason for me to end up on the bottom of the list. She checked my name. And asked again whether I had a confirmed seat. I told her yes, I had one at 10pm. She frowned and tapped at the keyboard. After a long five minutes she told me that she had not only sorted out my stand-by position, she had also fixed up my initial confirmed flight because the chick who had given me the 2pm flight had cancelled my seat without rebooking me in when I opted not to fly. AND she hadn't told me.
I really, really, really wanted to strangle someone at this point. If I hadn't noticed our names on the stand-by list, if I hadn't told her that I had a confirmed ticket at 10pm, I would've been stuck in SFO at 10pm with no confirmed flight, forever.
The feelings were slightly mollified by fortunately making the 4pm flight, and the rest of the journey went without a hitch (including the luggage, which by this time I wouldn't have been surprised if it got lost in transit), but I was so fed up with UA I had vowed never to fly with them again.
Chapter 4: There is more...
The rest of this didn't happen to me, but it happened to two family friends who were booked with us, except that their return journey commenced 2 days before ours.
...But we met them wandering aimlessly around SFO by the time we made it there (after a 3-legged plane trip from east to west coast). Apparently their adventures were far from finished.
On the 16th they left for DC Dulles airport and immediately they hit a glitch. Because they had also been on stand-by for the 4pm flight on their journey to NYC, some clever counter staff had cancelled their booking for the return flight to Sydney. By the time that was sorted, they got their boarding passes and headed for the plane. As soon as the queue got to them for boarding, they were apparently informed that the flight had been swapped to a smaller plane and they could not fit any more passengers even though they were booked and checked in AND their luggage had been ported out.
They had an overnight stay in a DC hotel before trying again the next day. The flight out to SFO was delayed. Not only that, by the time they finally arrived in SFO, they were told that the Sydney flights were fully booked until Friday and they were placed on stand-by. They did not make the flight that night and the counter staff left as soon as the flight did, so they waited around 3 hours to be served at the main customer service desk, who told them that all their partner hotels in San Francisco were booked out. They ended up spending the night in the airport with just a blanket each. They tried 3 times to check where their luggage was, but some helpful counter staff had forgotten to give them the luggage number ticket at DC, and the wonderfully enthusiastic staff at SFO told them that it was too much trouble to look up and they should just do it in Sydney. And when they finally arrived in Sydney...the luggage had not come with them. Nor on any earlier flights. It was still stranded in SFO, like those of about 15 other customers recently arrived from the US.
I think possibly the biggest flaw with a large national airline like UA is it thinks it can always rebook customers onto the next flight, in particular because they have such frequent domestic flights to larger stops. If it begins to see that it is unacceptable to whimsically delay customers 24hrs to 48hrs to more, then perhaps it would make greater effort to facilitate people being flown out. Finding out that a flight is fully booked doesn't frustrate people as much as finding out a flight has open seats but being unable to fly because of administration or logistical inefficiency.
PS: In the scheme of things this is probably insignificant, but there was a strawberry jam on the breakfast tray on UA. This was a tray that otherwise included only a salty scrambled egg, a salty meat patty, a salty cheese pastry, and a few cubed melons. My mum asked the flight attendant if they had bread. Sounding for some reason extremely offended, the woman said, "EXCUSE ME??" and "NO, I don't."
WTH was the strawberry jam for.