The entire flight experience was terrible. I fly 100+ flights a year, mostly on a competitor carrier (Southwest). I fly a mix between the cheapest economy seats and full price (paid for, not upgrade to) First Class service. I am extremely familiar with the planes themselves, the routes, and procedures.
It is sad that when I book a flight that uses United or codeshares with a United flight, I anticipate a 2 hour delay and book accordingly. There have been many times where my 2 hour connection becomes running through the terminal. This is made worse by the fact that the planes seemingly don't communicate to each other. If a passenger is on X plane and is delayed arrival into the airport but still has a chance to make it to connecting plane Y and the plane can make up time in the air, why not notify connecting flight Y to hold the doors? I have never seen United do this, and yesterday for the only flight that left on time of my trip as the doors closed the flight attendant told the single passenger in a row ahead to "spread out, we're leaving without them". When I fly on a carrier like Southwest, and the plane is late due to weather or whatever else they have already notified the connecting flight to wait and they make up the time in the air. If by some horrible chance you don't make that flight it is effortless to be on the next flight. I never feel stressed or rushed flying with them, because their system just works.
The system at United is archaic and horrible. I am sitting in the Denver airport and watching as the flight gets delayed over and over and over again. There is only one flight out of EWR to SNN that would allow us to make our plans in Ireland for the weekend. The next flight that we would have been rebooked on, would have caused us to miss a day and the entire wedding, not acceptable. As the delays pile up, lots of customers have already missed their connecting flights, there is a zero percent change they'll make it. So the line grows at the counter to rebook. Meanwhile other agents at different gates do nothingI went to another gate agent and asked if I could be moved from DEN-EWR-SNN to DEN-ORD-SNN which gets in around the same time and there wouldn't be the weather problems in EWR. The gate agent refused to do anything because it is not his flight. Then told me he can't do it because it is a different gate.
I would like to point out that on Southwest, any gate agent can make any change to any ticket as long as it is not being modified elsewhere (i.e. you can't be changing it on the phone and in person at the same time, it is locked). The United gate agent made no attempt to help us.
So I called the United customer service number and spoke to a wonderful agent. I asked her to do what the other gate agent didn't. Basically the flight is full, no seats available which I could see wasn't true because I was standing infront of the other gate. Whatever.
I called back a second time and asked to change my seats to something closer. The only thing they had was from 37B/C to 24E/F. Good enough it might make a difference. Lady on the phone again was very nice and helpful. As we get ready to finally board the plane after all of this terror, I ask the gate agent if seats 24 are a different boarding zone than 37 on this flight. She looks at me, doesn't answer and takes my ticket. "It says you're in 37 right there, boarding group 4" and hands it back to me. That wasn't what I asked. I explained to her that I had arranged to have a different seat on the phone, but obviously my phone didn't print out a new paper ticket, so could you just answer my simple question. She then told me, and everyone in the immediate vicinity quite loudly that there is no possible way for someone on the phone to change a seat assignment, it can only be done at the gate. There is no possible way I could have called and had this done, those seats are for someone else, stop lying. I didn't know who to believe, but whatever, at least we have seats. I walked away and waited for my boarding zone. During boarding (of zone 5) another gate agent scanned my boarding ticked, and it beeped the "no go beep". She told us to hold on a second, and did some super fast typing then tells me your seat has changed to 24F, this ticket is invalid. Well no duh, but your friend over their just yelled at me and berated me for being a liar just 10 minutes ago because apparently there is no way for this to happen. Whatever, we just walk onto the plane. What seats are we in? Who cares, try and make me move. Get to row 24, and there is a lady in the middle seat (24E) so our 24E and 24F tickets obviously aren't correct... What a mess.
No more room left, but add in: waiting an hour on the tarmac, horrible inflight service, and seats. read more
