Rumor_Watkins, I feel I owe you something of an apology. I don’t frequent the Pit very often, and I think I allowed myself to get overly sarcastic and offended too quickly. I apologize for the snark in my last post.
I left many details out of my OP in an attempt to make a long story a bit shorter. Perhaps I left out the wrong ones, so let me try to fill in some blanks regarding the second flight on which we were booked.
We made ourselves known to both of the United employees working the desk at gate C11 as soon as possible after we arrived there. I showed them our seating “confirmations” and told them our names, and was again told that they would call our names once they had seat assignments for us. I never ventured more than 4-5 people away from the desk, and was standing in a group of at least 6 people who also had “confirmations” that they were booked on that flight. I could hear other people’s names being announced over the speakers; they simply never called ours, nor did they call anyone else standing in our little group. The other guy trying to get to Australia? They never called his name either, and he couldn’t have missed it as he was standing at the desk throughout the boarding process.
[QUOTE=threemae]
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.”
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That’s my point; the “giant flashing sign” never said, “go get a boarding pass.” It said (not the exact wording), “you’re confirmed, please wait for an agent to call your name.”
[QUOTE=Rumor_Watkins]
… 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…
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I think this is a mischaracterization of what I wrote. I don’t believe there is anywhere in my OP where I indicated that I wanted special treatment; I wanted United to get us from our point of origin to our scheduled destination at the time for which we scheduled our flight. Failing that, I wanted them to get us on a different flight that would still get us to our desired end-point at the scheduled time. Please point out where I indicated differently.
[QUOTE=Rumor_Watkins]
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?
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My gripe is, in the whole, that United had a whole bunch of things go wrong (most of which seemed to be under their control) that resulted in me not getting to my destination on the scheduled day. Had I, “skipped 2/3 of the post,” my gripe would have appeared to be, “my flight got cancelled and I didn’t get to go on vacation.” I felt the length was justified in that it demonstrated a chain of events that ultimately led to my missed flight. In chronological order:
[ol]
[li]Whatever it was that caused them to need our inbound 777 for a different flight,[/li][li]Not having provisions for the outbound flight on hand for re-supplying the aircraft we finally got,[/li][li]Damage caused to the aircraft neccessitating its removal from service,[/li][li]Issuing confirmed seating above and beyond the capacity of the second aircraft,[/li][li]Failing to inform passengers in a timely manner that the aircraft was severely overbooked.[/li][/ol]There were other contributing factors, such as the delay on our inbound aircraft in the first place. I have not blamed United for this because I have absolutely no idea as to the reason, but it is entirely possible that these other factors were at least partially their fault.
I’m well aware that other passengers were also inconvenienced; I was talking to several of them at the gate. I have, on numerous occasions, been one of those people waiting to get on an aircraft bound for home, and I always felt sorry for the people who were going to miss connections. Again, I just don’t see anywhere that I suggested I deserved something that they did not. Hell, one of them claimed to be a Global Services flier; I fully expected him to be called before us. He, too, was left standing at the gate when the door closed.
