Posted on 03/31/2014 11:45:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
Last Friday, I flew nonstop on United Airlines from New York to California on a first class ticket. I paid the bellman a nice tip to handle my bags that were labeled “priority.” I arrived an hour and a half before my flight, so there was plenty of time to get my luggage onboard. The flight was delayed half an hour to allow for passengers with connecting flights to make it on our flight, along with their luggage.
But alas, when I arrived, my two bags were nowhere to be found. After numerous telephone calls to their lost luggage claim center during the next 24 hours, talking with people who clearly spoke with a foreign accent (I was never allowed to speak to the baggage claim people in California or New York) I still could not locate my luggage. Finally, my “priority” bags arrived the next night at 10 pm. United Airlines refused to offer me a hotel voucher or any other compensation for my trouble.
For years, I have liked to travel on United Airlines. Thirty years ago, I well remember the time I missed my flight back home and was stuck in Chicago, and the United ticket agent handed me a first class ticket for my trouble. I will never forget his act of kindness.
I guess times have changed.
I did notice that in both my bags there were slips of paper from the TSA indicating “Notice of Baggage Inspection.” Maybe the TSA is the culprit for the delay on my bags, but United Airlines never said.
I flew American Airlines last winter and Jet Blue last spring and United in the summer... AA and Jetblue were phenomenal. Unless I have not choice, United has lost my business, as little as it may be, and I will share when possible how awful they are.
I always flew Continental, and was happy with them.
Alas, the United/Continental merger has proved the truth of the Ice Cream/Dog Poop principle, which states that when you mix a gallon of vanilla ice cream with a tablespoon of dog poop, the resulting mixture tastes a lot more like dog poop than ice cream.
The combined airline is as as bad as United ever was, but now it serves all of Continental’s old routes, so I am stuck flying them out of Newark.
Mark your own bags ‘priority’????
If you are worried about fitting your carry on in the bin then you need to take a lesson from my travel hero Ralph Potts
http://www.rtwblog.com/
Around the world with no luggage. He’s a great travel writer as well.
Ah, business travel. During my last trip to Macon, GA, the airline lost my bags; the car rental place lost my reservation; and the hotel lost my room. There I was, with no place to stay, no way to get there, and nothing to change into when I didn’t get there. I remember midnight, standing, exhausted and dirty under the harsh florescent lights, in the 24-Hour Walmart, buying underwear and socks.
Guy arrives at the airline check-in counter for his flight from NYC to SF. He tells the attendant "I have three bags. I want you to send one to Paris, one to Tokyo, and one to Moscow"
She looks at him in amazement and says "Sir, We can't do that."
He says, "I don't see why not. You did it last week."
I had the same experience flying into Dulles, with a connection to Newark. They had our plane at the assigned gate, but then took on of the wheels off, and were tinkering with the brakes. The plane sat there, with one wheel off, for four hours, while United told us the delay was due to weather on a perfectly clear afternoon.
Eventually, they shifted us to another gate, where we were going to be combined with the next flight to Newark, which was half empty. The gate agent there told me that there were seats on the plane, but that the plane had not been released to him to assign the seats. I asked him what would happen if the seats were not released to him before boarding, which was scheduled to happen in about thirty minutes. He told me that the plane would go to Newark half full while twenty people sat around Dulles, to wait for the next plane.
At that point, I could have yelled and hollared, but I decided I was going to be this agent's best friend. I asked him who he might call, and sympathized with his plight. Eventually, he got on the telephone to Chicago, and got authorization to reassign seats. It took about a twenty minutes of cajoling, but I got my family on that flight, as well as the 17 people behind us.
But if I had just sat down, he would have said the same thing to the next hundred people who asked, and we would have all wound up in Dulles overnight, with nothing from United because the delays were because of "weather". Too nice a day to fly, perhaps...
United... Whatayagonnado?
I wouldn’t be picking Delta as a Plan B airline, either.
Cheaper and safer to take advantage of on site hotel laundry services than check baggage. I don’t take a purse just my wallet in my second in lap carry on.
I'll throw this in as well. Most consumers now book their fares online, always searching for the cheapest fares. This forces the airlines to continuously cut their costs in order to compete. What was once an $600 fare is now $224.
Something has to give. So you get a tiny bag of peanuts instead of a meal. You pay $6 for that can of Budweiser. You pay extra for additional luggage and that luggage is handled on the ramp by an ex-felon who's willing to take that $8/hr job because nobody else will hire him. (In the mid 1980s, that job paid $17/hr - I know this because I had that job once!)
During the heyday of flying back in the 1960s, it was comparatively expensive to fly. You flew if you were a businessman with an expense account or you flew for leisure if you were well-to-do. People used to put on a suit or a dress to get on a plane. The planes were spotless and the service was top-notch because like all things, you get what you pay for.
Now we have cattle cars in the sky. I see businessmen getting changed in the bathroom into sweat pants and sneakers to get on a plane and hanging up their suits in that little closet space between first class and coach. I don't blame them. The planes are crowded and dirty.
The whole experience of flying is a hassle. People with their darn carry-ons, trying to jam suitcases into those overhead bins because they don't want to spent 10 extra minutes at the baggage carousel. And I guess who can blame them when ex-felons are now handling the baggage down below.
I can rant for at least a dozen more paragraphs on air travel...but bottom line is we consumers are driving down the fares and as a result, we are getting Greyhound buses with wings.
I think he meant ‘skycap’...
I still don’t know why they exist.
Stop the presses!!!! He lost his luggage? Wow, bet that’s never happened before.
He has a tall soapbox, and uses it to whine about his bags being lost.
Boring.
I’d rather talk about how planes fly slower than they used to (or could), to save fuel at the expense of passenger time. I don’t know if it’s true, but I’d rather talk about it!
My camera and electrical equipment was ruined
I flew first class on Delta last summer to Chicago. The entire plane looked a million years old, taped seats, broken tray table, horrible service, etc.
I connected to an SAS flight where I flew Regular Joe--felt like A+ first class after having been on Delta.
Well, when I saw “I flew United”, I knew this wasn’t a happy story.
I travel a LOT and wouldn’t fly United on a bet.
TSA = Thieves Stealing Anything!
“I always flew Continental, and was happy with them.”
Before they turned into United, I logged close to a million miles with Continental. Never had a problem. Had a couple of problems with United, but mostly at Ohare. Nothing that would scream I will never fly you again.
Regarding the photo.
When that happened, all of the Passengers survived.
One Flight Attendant was killed when she was sucked out of the Plane when the top ripped off.
Oh yeah, it was Aloha, not United.
How about 30 days in China with a cARRY on!
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