The Consumer Reports blog would like your story. They have a great time relaying bad customer service and airlines. United is one of their regular story lines.
The best I can say is that I’m pretty sure your airplane will not crash.
The glass is always half full.
Your story pales in comparison to some of my Delta stories. Which is why I now fly United (1K easily last year). Not that they are great, far from it, but lately it seems that Delta has become the worst. I long ago gave up looking for the best airline and have resigned myself to just avoiding the worst.
When you call, be polite. “Hello, I’m hoping you can help me… We were surprised because United has always been so reliable… My wife was really looking forward to her 1K status…” If the agent gives their name, use it: “Carol, thank you for helping me with this”. Make sure you tell them what you want, and are just not calling to bitch. They want to process the call as quickly as possible and still leave you happy.
Oh, to be sure, they all blow. Its just to the degree to which a particular carrier blows on a particular trip. I used to fly a moderate bit around the U.S. and the only airline I have no bad story for is Southwest. Of course, some people have had problems with them, it just hasn’t happened to me yet.
For all of my frustration with American, I still use a credit card to accumlate miles with them. My parents live in Dallas, and American is still the best way to get back and forth.
Hmmm, I’m at 95 flights this year, I wonder who I’d contact to try to do such a thing.
I think we have found the problem. 
Airplanes just like anything more mechanically complex than a crowbar break. They always break at a bad time. When they break, say the following to yourself. “It is much better to be down here, wishing you were up there, then up there wishing you were down here.”
I must be the only one who’s never had a major problem with flying United, apart from an incident 20 years ago that wasn’t strictly the airline’s fault.
Also I’ve never had a problem at O’Hare except some delayed luggage because my layover time was too short. I definitely know that one’s a statistical anomaly, though.
This is what I find so amusing about airline horror stories. For every person that says “I will never fly airline A, the only airline for me is B,” there is someone who says “Airline B is the armpit of aviation, airline A is the only one that gives me consistently good service.” The only exception to this, as far as I can see, is US Air. Everyone hates US Air.
Untrue.
I’ve never heard one complaint about Southwest. Except fat people whining about extra seat charges and some extra-sensitives who were pissed off over an imagined slight at their ancestry.
Try Mileage Plus customer service at 800-325-0046. A colleague of mine got Premier status renewed for 2010 even though she is going to end the year a thousand or so miles short. The agent told her that United is being lenient this year, FWIW.
Note that you can always get water in one of the lavatories.
This is why you can put me in the “color me unimpressed” group. The plane had a problem - would you rather they fly the plane and put everyone at risk just so you can have your 3-day (?!) getaway to Australia and get super awesome frequent flier status, or, you know, would you rather them be safe with everyone’s life?
How about those of us who aren’t fat who also think the extra seat charges are unjust?
Dammit! USAirways is the one a family member flies for…
Just because we’re here:
In July, I flew to Chicago the morning of a friend’s wedding. I flew back out of O’Hare at 7am the next morning. At this point, I wasn’t hungover, I was still drunk (some of us went out on the town after the reception). I was really dehydrated, and I must have looked pretty pathetic, because the fight attendant was nice enough to give me the whole bottle of water.
Just checked my email archive: It was United.
You know, I see this kind of post in virtually every pitting (particularly in a consumer complaint), and I always think, “do not feed the trolls.” And yet, when it’s my OP, I find I can’t help it.
Where, in all that I wrote, could you possibly draw the conclusion that I would rather fly in an unsafe manner than miss my flight? Seriously, please quote me chapter and verse and connect the chains of logic, because I just don’t see it. In fact, I thought I was pretty clear about the things I was most pissed off about.
And you know what? There’s one area in your post I’m not going to apologize for.
I had this nagging feeling that someone was going to pick on this. My wife has worked her ass off to get where she is, and pull in the salary and benefits she does. For her, FF status is important. Not put-peoples-lives-in-jeopardy-important, not oh-this-is-the-worst-thing-in-the-world-important. But worth addressing nonetheless. I’m pretty damn certain that my OP never, ever claimed that this was a tragedy by any standard. I firmly believe, however, that it is an example of piss-poor customer service, and I think that if a company is willing to treat a customer who purchases (through her business) almost 100,000 miles worth of fully-refundable airfares per year in this manner, that it serves as fair warning to the rest of their potential customer base (like me) that they can expect similar, and likely worse, treatment.
If you can show me where (to the satisfaction of the majority of other posters in this thread), anywhere in my OP, I even slightly indicated that I wished to be careless with the lives of my fellow passengers for merely a gain in FF status, I will sponsor your SDMB membership for two years. Given the razor-sharp logic you’ve displayed to this point, however, I think I’m safe spending it on a decent Oregon Pinot Noir instead (ooh, look at mister fancy-pants buying expensive wine).
Well, then what else could United have done in this situation? I readily concede that you had a very frustrating travel experience, but if a flight is cancelled to a mechanical issue, it will be simply impossible for the airline to accommodate all of their passengers that day. It sucks but that’s reality. At least they were flexible enough to cancel your itinerary and refund it to you.
Are you confident the gate agents didn’t call your name and you missed it? AFAIK, the only reason they would give confirmed seats away to standby passengers is if you failed to claim a boarding pass. If you’re a confirmed passenger, you don’t have a boarding pass, and the aircraft starts boarding, what exactly were you expecting to have happen? For the gate agent to say, “oh, fill every seat on the plane except for two I’m saving for two passengers that haven’t bothered to come get a boarding pass yet but who I trust to show up?”
i think you meant to say fancy-pants buying expensive whine.
and, as much as you are a great prognosticator, i too had this irksome feeling that the “see, she buys (well, actually doesn’t buy at all) x thousands of dollars of good from company y, so that entitles her to have her ass wiped by employees of company y” entitlement complex would come out in wonderful technicolor.
but let’s proceed:
if that was really your gripe, that you could’ve just skipped 2/3 of the post and said “hey, guess what, we were supposed to be re-booked on another flight because our flight had a mechanical delay that would make our connecting flight unobtainable, but, hooly shit, it turns out that since trying to re-book everyone from a widebody aircraft onto another otherwise scheduled flight may result in people not getting on the plane, gasp, but certainly the last people who should not get on the plane are some our-shit-don’t-stink-yet-we-don’t-actually-pay-for-the-airfare-we-purport-to-grace-upon-your-airline super awesome customers of said airline. right SDMB?”
ever think that bumping (sorry, not bumping even, "not accommodating) two people (on) a flight where, because of all of the delays thus far, they may or may not make an intercontinental connecting flight that is only offered once every 24 hours may be slightly more inconveniencing to other passengers whose final destinations may have been san francisco, or other destinations readily served by far more connecting flights?
and i don’t know about you, but i have “confirmed seats” every time i fly. shockingly, people can get bumped from flights where they have confirmed seats. regardless, you yourself admit that you weren’t as of yet given seats on that flight, and that you knew this notwithstanding your “confirmed seats” card.
and, lastly, in this case 777s weren’t a dime-a-dozen, but there were enough of them to accomplish what they wanted to do (before they became aware of a dented door) they merely swapped your original 777 for one that was coming in, which would only result in a brief delay for you. not quite sure how relevant that is.
face it. you wanted to status-drop a kind-of-crappy experience, but not that crappy in the annals of crappy airline experiences, into some chest-thumping “respect mah frequent flyer status” rant.
And of course, the asshole brigade come out in full force.
It’s not irrational or some amazing stretch to demand an airline do what they say they would do. That airlines don’t, and choose that so regularly that it’s become commonplace (hell, that pestilent asses are gleeful it happened to you, too!) is a major fault. If they can’t seat everyone, they should be hoenst and upfront. What they actually do is foist the problem off for as long as possible without finding any adequate solution… and then then try to find an excuse to leave the service desk. It’s incredibly shortsighted and costs them far more than they get, but they do it.
“Asshole brigade?” That’s hyperbolic.
The plain and simple fact is that it’s very likely the OP and his wife fucked up.
I was in a very similar situation to the OP just a few months ago at O’Hare. I generally know how the confirmed seat and standby system works, and I empathize with the frustration of watching flights leave packed without you on it, but when your name turns green, as the board explicitly instructs you to do so, you approach the gate agent, say, “I’m Jimbo Bob Billyton,” and they give you a boarding pass.
If you don’t bother to go get a boarding pass on a full flight with 100 standby passengers trying to get on, the gate agent will assume you’ve missed the flight for whatever reason and give your seat to someone else. I just don’t know what was going through the mind of the OP when they were sitting there 20 minutes before the door was going to close without a boarding pass, a giant flashing sign saying, “go get a boarding pass,” and watching 260 people line up to get on a plane with 275 seats without thinking, “hmmm, better take some initiative here.”
United tried to help you out. They probably did see your wife’s mileage stats and put you on the top of the list for seats, but for whatever reason, that didn’t work to get you on that flight. Whatever the morality of balancing loyal customers vs. other travelers, when events which are impossible to foresee occur, IMHO, the people least screwed-over are the ones about to launch a mileage-gathering jaunt still in their home city who can receive a full refund, and possibly even the mileage status they’re coveting and taking the trip for.
That flight wasn’t going to leave with empty seats.
“Transtellar Cruise Lines would like to apologize to passengers for the continuing delay to this flight. We are currently awaiting the loading of our complement of small lemon-soaked paper napkins for your comfort, refreshment and hygiene during the journey. Meanwhile we thank you for your patience. The cabin crew will shortly be serving coffee and biscuits again.”