Well hey, you asterisk “nincompoopery” and then just leave us hanging for a footnote. No fair.
I flew trans Atlantic on United a few weeks ago. Normally, there is a free copy of USA available, but not on this particular flight. I happened to find a copy lying around, though and the reason for the lack of that particular publication became quite obvious; there was a large headline on the front page
Airline survey reveals the United are now the worst for customer satisfaction :smack:
I was on United not too long ago, and I was on United also two years previously. It did seem to me that the level of customer service had dropped significantly. But as Una Persson says, I can top the horror story you had with other stories. My worst one was PanAm, right before it went belly-up…every time I have a bad airline experience I recall having my airplane turn around in mid-flight because something was wrong with it, return to its city of origin, and then I remember being stranded in a strange airport without even a single rupee coin.
And then I think “Whew, the flight’s only delayed. I can wait it out.”
There’s no doubt that security at Dulles is a complete clusterfuck. The airport is simply not designed for the modern security system and barring massive renovations that is not going to change. However they are doing something about the bus situation. They have completed an underground tunnel to one of the terminals and are working on another.
Sorry must have gotten left off when I cut and pasted the rant. It wasn’t anything special, just a note that I have always like the word nincompoop and nincompoopery is even more fun to say.
Thanks for the replies. We are following up I am mostly torqued off at the tone of the letter they sent. We gave you 75% of your money back for the flights, but you are SOL for the hotel and inconvenience, and by the way we don’t care that you missed a once in a lifetime graduation.
Ahhh, air travel.
Well, I was off on a trip to India and my original itinerary was Chicago to London to Dubai. After a couple of days there, on to Delhi. After a week in India, a return trip to London via Dubai again. After a few days there, back to Chicago, all booked by my the travel agency my company works with. Of course, the trip didn’t go as planned.
I got to the Virgin Atlantic counter a good couple hours before I was supposed to go. They found me on the flight list and had me all ready to go before they asked me for the paper ticket. I haven’t seen one of those in decades. So I get sent to the custmer service line. I wait for a good half hour while the agent helps the two ladies in front of me. Finally she gets to me and tells me the electronic ticket ‘didn’t go through’. Huh? While I’m on the manifest, apparently I can’t go and I can’t get a good explination of what is going on. So I call up the agency and apparently this has happened to my traveling partner in NY as well, so the get me booked on a United flight.
Well, all I know is that it’s a United flight and I need to get to Terminal 1 from terminal 5. The lady from Virgin wants me to stick around while she ‘fixes it’. I ask her what she needs me for and she can’t quite answer that question, so I book off to the other end of O’hare. I find the United check in for international flights and after a long wait, get to the machine. Well, lo and behold I’ve been booked to NY. Well, the United guy chuckles as he tags my bags, but I get through. Then it’s waiting in security while some joker tries to cut ahead of everybody. Then a mad dash to my gate, with a quick stop for some fast food, where I get behind some guy that looks like Steve Zahn and make it onto the plane just in time for my boarding group. I sit down, we get all ready to go and we have to wait. So the pilot pulls away from the gate so we won’t lose our place in line, but weather in NY is keeping us from leaving. Luckily for me, I brought my lap top and I start watching Gladiator. Then we go back to the gate so people can grab something to eat. Well, I ate already, so I go and charge my lap top up and the guy who looks like Steve Zahn plugs in his phone next to me and proceeds to start his phone conversation with “Hi, it’s Steve Zahn and I’m going to be late.” Well, it turns out he’s a rather down to earth guy and might not make a sequil to Sahara because there are some legal wranglings going on.
Suddenly, it’s back on the plane everyone! Only some guy who wasn’t on the plane the first time wants to deliver a garment bag to the plane. Well, in this new age of hightened security, that causes a whole new level of confusion. Eventually this gets straightened out and we’re all buttoned up. And we get to wait some more. Finally, to the cheers of the passengers, out pilot announces we have been given clearance to take off. We haul ass and an hour into the flight, I finish Gladiator and decide to see what’s happening in the real world. Well, the pilot has pushed the throttle down, because we’re over three quarters the way to NY already. But we’ve got to wait in the air. Circle, circle and finally we land. I meet my agent out front who informs me that I get a non-stop flight to Dubai in the morning. In the mean time, he’s checked me into a Howard Johnson. So, we go get some food and stop off at my room at the Best Western. Meanwhile my travel companion is staying with his sister in NY thinking I’m in a Holiday Inn. I don’t care so much as long as I get a bed and I manage to get six hours of rest.
And that was just the first day…
The people who are coming into this thread with making comparable anecdotal claims about other airlines do not understand how uniquely shitty United is.
[screams and hides under desk]
I believe I’ve mentioned this before—I am flying up to Ottawa in a couple of weeks on United, going thru O’Hare. Do I need to be very afraid or pack extra Xanax?
Hey, I’m going to Vancouver in a few weeks on United. I haven’t flown them in years, so I didn’t know how bad it’s gotten. I chose them because they have non-stop flights, and American doesn’t.
Now I’m getting nervous.
This is all distressing. I’m flying from PDX to O’Hare tomorrow. On United.
Into the void…
(United did strand me in Denver one time, but they gave me tiny bottles of Jameson to make up for it!)
FWIW I have flown to YVR dozens of times on United and never had a problem. If fact I have flown over 600,000 miles on United and the worst I have ever had is a bag that was about 4 hours late, and a flight canceled because a blizzard closed the airport. Hard to Blame United for a blizzard.
Really it all depends on the weather, for the most part. If they have to start funneling and delaying flights, thats when things get all fucked up. Though the good pilots will start the movie if you have to wait while you’re on the tarmac.
[The plural of anecdote is not data]The only United-related trouble I’ve had in years is the weather-delay story I quoted above, and United was pretty much blameless in that respect. When possible, I fly them preferentially, even if I pay a little more than another airline to do so. Oh yeah, I love their UnitedPlus extra-space rows too. Then again, I happen to like O’Hare, so maybe I’m just weird.[/TPoAIND]
The Times has been running a series on how bad the airlines have gotten. One problem beyond too many planes is that they are 85% full, on the average, which means that most interesting flights are near 100% full. Thus, if you get delayed, there is no where to put you. Great for the airlines profitability, but bad for service. No wonder they don’t want a legislated bill of rights for passengers.
I try to avoid United. 10 years ago I loved it. Southwest is far better now. Why pay more for no better service?
In the Times story was the doozy of disasters. A Continental flight from Ireland had toilet problems. Passengers were told to hold it, and not to eat before boarding. And that’s what passes for airline service today.
AP story from 5/15/07:
“UAL Corp.'s United Airlines and Delta Air Lines Inc., both of which restructured under Chapter 11 in recent years, ranked last and next-to-last, respectively, among airlines in terms of customer satisfaction in a survey to be released today by the University of Michigan.”
I am, on my own dime, CHEAP when it comes to flights. I want to spend my money “there”, not getting “there”.
I fly Southwest a lot.
Then I ended up in coach on a United flight (business money, not my own). There was LESS room for my knees and legs on the United flight than on any other flight I’ve ever flown.
To be fair, my dad preferentially flies United. But he never flies coach.
You have my sympathies. I was in the Newark airport on March 16th (or was it 15th) the day they shut it down for weather. As in, all flights cancelled, so sorry, it’s snowing like a mother fucker, shut down. I saw it coming (a la Planes, Trains and Automobiles) when I saw them talking about the airport I was in and the weather on CNN. I stood in line with about 1500 other angry people, watched a ticket counter person berate a customer for acting like a woman 
and just gave up. I headed to the nearest airport bar and got filthy stinking drunk while I watched the snow fall, and waited for my husband to drive in from CT to pick me up.
It was a very special moment for me when I, drunk and wearing the clothes I had left sunny Alabama in that morning watched them dump the luggage into the center of the aisles for people to pick through themselves. I lost my mind. When someone that worked there finally found my luggage they called me out and I jumped up screaming “I won! I won! Honey, I hope you win next!” to the lady beside me. It was fantastic.
But, as Rick said, I would rather live through that than the “Oh crap, I can’t see to land” moment that it could have been.
Being in the airport the moment all flights are cancelled is a very special one indeed. Thank god for Sam Adams on tap.
Recenty I was in a wedding in Boise, ID and flew there from SFO, on United because they were the only direct flights. Spoiled rotten by having always lived in easy driving distance of multiple major international airports, I very rarely have connecting flights.
In late April I had surgery on my ankle, and had a cast/crutches for the trip. I flew with a friend (and fellow groomsperson) and his girlfriend, because I needed lots of assistance. I booked us three seats in a row, the couple in the window and middle, and me in the aisle. When I go to check in online, they’d moved me to the middle, the guy to the window, and his girfriend to another part of the plane (in a middle). I call and complain that I needed an aisle seat because I could not physically get over to the window since the rows are so close together, and had deliberatly flown with two friends so some poor person wouldn’t be stuck fenced in by me (since I in no way had the ballance to stand up with the plane in the air).
She said she couldn’t help me, she didn’t know why the seats had been moved-- but that the ticket counter at the airport would definitly fix it.
The ticket counter moved my friend’s girlfriend to a different middle seat, said he couldn’t do any more, but that the gate agent would definitly fix it.
The gate agent told me no, we could not sit together. No, there were no more aisle seats left on the plane. No we can’t accomate you. Yes, it is noted about your handicap. No, I don’t know why the seats were moved. No, I can’t see if someone will switch seats with you.
The punchline? The plane was half full. Whole rows in the back were empty. There was no one in the aisle seat of my row (my original seat). No damage done, obviously, but bizzare and maddening.
(My wheelchair was waiting at the gate, only they insisted it was for someone else. I said I was the only person with a chair to get ON the flight, but no. Jane Smith only. Ten minutes later as I hobble slowly toward baggage claim, the dude went past with the wheelchair-- empty. Ignored me when I tried to flag him down. Thanks again, United.)
OP: Why don’t you sue? You have suffered significant damage. There was a time when an airline would call you if there was a problem with your flight in order to re-book you appropriately, now since you have an advance puchase ticket and are stuck on their airline they feel no need to do this.
The airline is not to be blamed for some of the things that happened on your trip, but one thing they are definitely doing wrong is refusing to compensate you for your hotel costs. The United agent herself seemed to agree that you should get compensated, except for the fact that she ran out of hotel vouchers. The airline saying six weeks later that you would not get reimbursed is inexcusable.
The fact that other people say they have worse stories is irrelevant. United Airlines did not do right by you.