6 ms·

United is a mess. I had the misfortune of flying with them a couple months ago. I ended up in a city a 2 hour drive from my actual destination and had to rent a

by imgabe 11y ago

United is a mess. I had the misfortune of flying with them a couple months ago. I ended up in a city a 2 hour drive from my actual destination and had to rent a car on my own to get to where I was going. That was the worst of it, but almost every flight I saw on the way (both ones I was on and other flights at nearby gates) was delayed or overbooked or otherwise messed up in some way.

smackfu 11y ago
Was there a storm or something? Usually there is some motivating reason why flights are screwed up.
- imgabe 11y ago
  Not that I know of. My particular flight was delayed because they had to replace a piece of the navigation equipment on the plane. This delay caused me to miss a connecting flight and that's how I ended up in an entirely different city.
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    This happens with every airline. No airline has magical planes that never break and they all have similar maintenance schedules on the exact same planes running the exact same workload. Blame Boeing for making a crappy plane if they keep breaking down.
    - imgabe 11y ago
      I wasn't so annoyed that the flight got delayed and I got stranded in the wrong city, it was the way they handled it. United's response was: 1. Do nothing. You're stuck here. We'll get you on the next flight. Oh, the next available flight isn't for over a week. Sorry. No, we can't pay for your rental car. 2. Upon renting my own car, and writing to customer service to complain I got a $125 voucher for United. Great. Not enough to buy an entire ticket, so it just ensures I'll have to continue giving money to this airline that failed to deliver what I gave them money for in the first place. 3. After several weeks of emails back-and-forth with customer service finally a manager agrees to issue a reimbursement for the rental car as a one-time exception to their policy of never doing that. (but not the $7 worth of gas. I guess they just have to draw a line somewhere? Oh, and they also rescinded the voucher. No big deal since I'm not too keen to fly with them again anyway) So, yeah. Sometimes shit goes wrong when you travel. Everybody knows that. How airlines act to fix it makes all the difference. If you hamstring all your customer service reps so they can't actually solve someone's problem, it makes something that's already annoying way more frustrating.
boken 11y ago
If I ever listened to horror stories like these, there wouldn't be an airline left I would fly with. This is textbook; replace United with Delta, Southwest, Air Canada, etc., at will. The only company I've used that I haven't heard exactly this type of complaint about is Widerøe, a tiny regional line in Norway with a fleet of prop planes. This is unfortunate, as I live in Pennsylvania and get motion sickness on those little aircraft. And I imagine that if I spoke Norwegian—it seemed to me that while many Norwegians speak English, they don't do much complaining in it when the native language would do—I wouldn't even have Widerøe left.
- imgabe 11y ago
  I've been flying 1-2 times a month for the past year or so, mostly on US Air or American (same thing now) and I never saw anything approaching the level of problems United had on one trip. Obviously, with travel sometimes things go wrong, but the quantity and severity of things going wrong at United makes me think there's something off about the way they're running their airline. For instance, the two times this year that they've had to ground all flights.
- driverdan 11y ago
  Overall JetBlue and Virgin have been great. AA and US Air have been good. United is the worst.
  - ChiperSoft 11y ago
    Pity they don't fly to more places.
  - briandear 11y ago
    AA destroyed a piece of baggage of mine. They denied responsibility. I sued and won. Then I couldn't collect because that judgement was essentially nullified because AA was going through bankruptcy. I have 1k status with United -- I fly internationally with them almost monthly. The problems I've had with United have been when bags have to be interlined to Brussels Airlines and occasionally (surprisingly) Lufthansa. I've also had Lufthansa somehow think it was a good idea for 2 toddlers to sit in scattered seats rows away from their parents (who were also rows apart as well, despite having checked in almost 24 hours before the flight and being Star Alliance Gold.) I've had Brussels Airlines say they were going to "gate check" a stroller only to have it show up days later. I've been stranded in Detroit back in the Northwest Airlines days when aircrews hadn't showed up to work. I've been stuck in Paris when the Air France pilots decide that salaries up to $300,000 per year just aren't enough. On a recent United trip from Hartford to Marseille, I was stuck in Hartford for % extra hours for an airplane that was stuck in Newark (just a <50 minute flight away.) I then missed a cascade of connections leaving me rather miserable. However, United sorted the problem and got me on my way as quickly as possible. Let's not forget Jet Blues antics on multiple occasions a few years ago: a 10.5 hour tarmac delay, a 7 hour tarmac delay among several other extremely long tarmac delays. AA had 14 long tarmac (over 3 hours) delays in February. United had zero long tarmac delays during the same period. Envoy/American Eagle was in last place for on-time arrivals last year. I'm not defending United. I'm not disparaging the others. The fact is that the air transport industry is extremely complex and perceptions of quality are as varied as their are passengers in the sky. Every airline sucks and every airline is great. Pick a day, pick a destination and roll the dice. When you fly often enough it seems like it all averages out to just one level of melancholic service; unless you're flying on Singapore Airlines -- then it just becomes sublime.

by imgabe 11y ago

smackfu 11y ago

Was there a storm or something? Usually there is some motivating reason why flights are screwed up.

imgabe 11y ago
Not that I know of. My particular flight was delayed because they had to replace a piece of the navigation equipment on the plane. This delay caused me to miss a connecting flight and that's how I ended up in an entirely different city.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  This happens with every airline. No airline has magical planes that never break and they all have similar maintenance schedules on the exact same planes running the exact same workload. Blame Boeing for making a crappy plane if they keep breaking down.
  - imgabe 11y ago
    I wasn't so annoyed that the flight got delayed and I got stranded in the wrong city, it was the way they handled it. United's response was: 1. Do nothing. You're stuck here. We'll get you on the next flight. Oh, the next available flight isn't for over a week. Sorry. No, we can't pay for your rental car. 2. Upon renting my own car, and writing to customer service to complain I got a $125 voucher for United. Great. Not enough to buy an entire ticket, so it just ensures I'll have to continue giving money to this airline that failed to deliver what I gave them money for in the first place. 3. After several weeks of emails back-and-forth with customer service finally a manager agrees to issue a reimbursement for the rental car as a one-time exception to their policy of never doing that. (but not the $7 worth of gas. I guess they just have to draw a line somewhere? Oh, and they also rescinded the voucher. No big deal since I'm not too keen to fly with them again anyway) So, yeah. Sometimes shit goes wrong when you travel. Everybody knows that. How airlines act to fix it makes all the difference. If you hamstring all your customer service reps so they can't actually solve someone's problem, it makes something that's already annoying way more frustrating.

boken 11y ago

If I ever listened to horror stories like these, there wouldn't be an airline left I would fly with. This is textbook; replace United with Delta, Southwest, Air Canada, etc., at will. The only company I've used that I haven't heard exactly this type of complaint about is Widerøe, a tiny regional line in Norway with a fleet of prop planes. This is unfortunate, as I live in Pennsylvania and get motion sickness on those little aircraft. And I imagine that if I spoke Norwegian—it seemed to me that while many Norwegians speak English, they don't do much complaining in it when the native language would do—I wouldn't even have Widerøe left.

imgabe 11y ago
I've been flying 1-2 times a month for the past year or so, mostly on US Air or American (same thing now) and I never saw anything approaching the level of problems United had on one trip. Obviously, with travel sometimes things go wrong, but the quantity and severity of things going wrong at United makes me think there's something off about the way they're running their airline. For instance, the two times this year that they've had to ground all flights.
driverdan 11y ago
Overall JetBlue and Virgin have been great. AA and US Air have been good. United is the worst.
- ChiperSoft 11y ago
  Pity they don't fly to more places.
- briandear 11y ago
  AA destroyed a piece of baggage of mine. They denied responsibility. I sued and won. Then I couldn't collect because that judgement was essentially nullified because AA was going through bankruptcy. I have 1k status with United -- I fly internationally with them almost monthly. The problems I've had with United have been when bags have to be interlined to Brussels Airlines and occasionally (surprisingly) Lufthansa. I've also had Lufthansa somehow think it was a good idea for 2 toddlers to sit in scattered seats rows away from their parents (who were also rows apart as well, despite having checked in almost 24 hours before the flight and being Star Alliance Gold.) I've had Brussels Airlines say they were going to "gate check" a stroller only to have it show up days later. I've been stranded in Detroit back in the Northwest Airlines days when aircrews hadn't showed up to work. I've been stuck in Paris when the Air France pilots decide that salaries up to $300,000 per year just aren't enough. On a recent United trip from Hartford to Marseille, I was stuck in Hartford for % extra hours for an airplane that was stuck in Newark (just a <50 minute flight away.) I then missed a cascade of connections leaving me rather miserable. However, United sorted the problem and got me on my way as quickly as possible. Let's not forget Jet Blues antics on multiple occasions a few years ago: a 10.5 hour tarmac delay, a 7 hour tarmac delay among several other extremely long tarmac delays. AA had 14 long tarmac (over 3 hours) delays in February. United had zero long tarmac delays during the same period. Envoy/American Eagle was in last place for on-time arrivals last year. I'm not defending United. I'm not disparaging the others. The fact is that the air transport industry is extremely complex and perceptions of quality are as varied as their are passengers in the sky. Every airline sucks and every airline is great. Pick a day, pick a destination and roll the dice. When you fly often enough it seems like it all averages out to just one level of melancholic service; unless you're flying on Singapore Airlines -- then it just becomes sublime.