I would just like to add that as a fairly frequent United flier (750,000 lifetime miles) that they always make announcements about standbys (Johnson party of two. Or ladies and gentlemen our flight has checked in full, if you are on standby, you will be rolled over to the flight leaving at XX), and for people waiting for upgrades (If you are waiting for an upgrade for first class, it has checked in full, please take your assigned seat)
So I find it odd that at OHare, United’s home base that they would not do what is SOP at every other airport that United flies from.
Bottom line, shit happens.
If there is time to spare, go by air.
ETA complaints about Southworst. I got bounced from a boarding list at SW and then they had a plane go done for a mechanical (not my flight) and I lost my seat despite being in the boarding area 30 minutes before flight time. The gate agent told me he had no clue as to when he could get me on a flight. I called my travel agent and rebooked on another airline. That is the very last time I will ever willingly travel SW.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
I’ve had bad experiences with United as well, but the all-time champ for shitty service in my case has been US Airways, which once took 24 hours to fly me a distance I later discovered I could have driven in 6.
Airline travel today sucks, regardless of airline. There’s nothing to do about it except hunker down and endure the suckage as best you can.
Eh, the cattle-call rush to get a good spot in line 24 hours before the flight takes off is off-putting, as is the lack of any upgrades. Plus they fly into some crappy airports. I even have to pay to check a third bag with them. As a frequent flier they don’t appeal to me at all.
We flew NWA (now Delta) in September of this year direct from MSP to Amsterdam non-stop. On the way back, my partner was recognized by one of the flight attendants who brought us both all of the first class treats. Slippers, meals, sundaes, they were all for us free of charge as we spread out over the empty seats where first class was completely full. It was horrible!
Seriously, I’ve only had customer-related problems when I’ve flown. The Sikh man on the Air India flight who refused to sit down in his seat because he would have had to sit next to a woman which delayed take-off by over an hour. Then the connecting flight at JFK where a woman with 3 children had one suddenly go unconscious while we taxied on the tarmac. She panicked and we returned to the gate. She refused to de-plane and the paramedics and police boarded and eventually removed the child from the plane while the mother and her two other children stayed on board and flew to MSP without their approximately 4 year old daughter. WTF.
Sorry if I overreached in guessing why you weren’t able to make the second flight you were booked on. It sounds like you did indeed do everything you reasonably should have had to do to get aboard and the gate agent messed up. When contacting United for the status upgrade, I’d throw that in as well and hopefully your wife will get the 1K status she was looking for.
I have had problems with all airlines I’ve flown. I have had the fewest problems and best assistance with them from Alaska. Far, far, below Alaska, at the bottom of a deep, fiery pit, is United. It is not that the problems are worse than other airlines’, but that they have been so consistent, multiple, and ultimately badly handled (despite courteous customer service reps working very hard on my behalf, alas, to no avail). YMMV.
Wow, seriously? How come these interesting things never happen to me when I fly? My flights are always so mundane. Wait for security, through security, go to gate, get on the plane, wait, take off, sleep, wake up, land, wait for baggage, leave airport. It’s unbearably dull.
I do a bit of traveling for work, as does everyone else in my office working group. I almost always fly United–out of Dulles and Reagan it usually has the most flight options. More than once I’ve been told the flight was delayed becasue of “mechanical problems” and the detail provided was some super special light bulb that took a trained technician to swap out was on the fritz. And of course, said technician has to be called in from home or whatever. Boom. 3+ hour-delay.
In relating this story to other folks at work, they’ve said, “yeah, that light bulb thing was the reason for my delay also!”
I think it’s a bunch of BS. I just don’t trust the “reason” an airline gives for a delay. It could be the pilot is sleeping one off, or they had to glue the wing back on or whatever. Either that, or they need to get a new light bulb contract.
U.S. airlines are mere pretenders when it comes to this type of thing over some foreign airlines. Yes, I am looking at you Alitalia.
I don’t usually jump in on business rants but Alitalia is not only the worst airline in the world, it is likely the worst large business as well. I say that with all sincerity.
It is the Italian…state…airline. That is all you need to know if you think about it.
They held my then wife, two year old daughter and I practically hostage for 8 hours once trying to get our flight out of Paris straightened out. They had us stand in line in these weird places that we could not leave and their employees would simply disappear for an hour or so at a time. My ex-wife is half-Italian and speaks Italian so there weren’t any cultural barriers. Meanwhile, Italian people were practically trampling my daughter because they don’t respect lines like Americans do and I was about to go ballistic on people just trying to keep her from getting injured.
The whole time, we could get neither food nor water and it was getting seriously desperate. As suddenly as it started, it ended when they shoved us on a plane back home with little warning. They refused to give us more than a sip of water on the plane even when I begged the flight attendants in the back of the plane so I had to give all of mine to my daughter.
I went into the lavatory as soon as we got to altitude and just drank and drank from the lavatory sink. I broke out in a massive rash the next day all over my back and shoulders and it took 3 months to heal.
Thanks Alitalia. If you ever need a U.S. spokesperson, put me on the air for a few minutes.
Ah, O’Hare! You see, it’s UAL’s hub, so they figure they might as well check the planes over while they’re there. At other airports, though, what the hell. I was there once waiting to come home to L.A., and we were delayed nearly three hours due to some sort of mechanical issue. About halfway into that they announced that they had requisitioned another plane for us, and wheeled it up to the gate. On the point of nearly letting us board, they apologetically told us that they’d made an error, and this second plane’s certificate of airworthiness wasn’t currently valid. Amazing they tell us these things.
Speaking of mechanical problems, you may remember news about a Jet Blue flight, a few years ago. The front landing gear was somehow turned sideways and it had to land that way. In those days I worked on the ninth floor of building just south of LAX, and we all went to the northward facing windows to watch when the plane landed. Jet Blue offers seatback DirecTV; what I didn’t realize until only recently was that the passengers on that flight were able to watch the news stories about their own cockeyed landing gear, during the flight! I heard about this on a Youtube video about the outsourcing of airline maintenance.
As a fellow frequent flyer, (Exec Plat on AA) I’m on your wife’s side.
When you travel often, especially for business, status means a great deal. I wouldn’t bother defending it against polloi who don’t fly often and who seem to be in a constant jealous snark against frequent flyers. To each his own…
I second one comment made several times here: never just stand in line. United should have a separate phone line for folks w/ status (AA does). Use it. When you get those last minute fiascoes and everyone’s at the counter, stand in line but be on the phone trying to get things straightened out while you are waiting. It is almost always faster. It may occasionally also be useful to book online, although that’s sometimes trickier when you are sorting out a ticket.
Don’t know if it helps to hear the grass is not greener on the other side, but it ain’t. There are times when I have gotten so annoyed at AA I swear I’ll quit flying them. But of course, I’d never give up my status…
and at this point, Jerry makes animated, exaggerated gestures of catching imaginary objects representing “reservations”, which for some reason are flying at him like passed basketballs.
