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United Airlines' Quest to Be Less Awful

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Re: United Airlines' Quest to Be Less Awful

#41

Post by enobrev »

The last time I flew United was a non-stop flight from Chicago to NYC. I somehow ended up in Washington D.C. with seemingly clear skies* and no more flights out for the evening and a three-hour line for people trying to get hotel vouchers. I rented a car and was in my bed five hours later. That was six years ago. That wasn't my first bad experience with United by a long shot, but I'm trying to make sure it's my last.

* If there WERE poor weather conditions anywhere along the way, they weren't showing up on any weather maps. I'm no expert - I'm sure they had their reasons.

Re: United Airlines' Quest to Be Less Awful

#42

Post by pcurve »

hellofunk wrote: post #7
zyxley wrote: post #4

Airlines taking away free snacks for customers feels like companies taking away free snacks for employees: it doesn't really matter much by itself for anyone involved, but it's an obvious signal that the management involved can't bother to even put a fig leaf on the matter of your personal comfort.

What is odd is that even the cheapest budget airlines of Asia, and there are many, many of them, nearly all provide not just free snacks, but free hot meals.

I've flown on couple dozen airlines. Yes, Asian carriers are almost always better in terms of food. I was actually served medium cooked steak on Asiana. But the real difference is in their cabin attendants. x10 better.

But what I hate flying about isn't the food or CA service.

It's flying into and out of JFK. Everyone working there is f'king miserable. They treat people like live stocks. And their customs and immigration are incredibly inefficiently run.

Re: United Airlines' Quest to Be Less Awful

#43

Post by BookmarkSaver »

peteretep wrote: post #38
martinald wrote: post #33

What I can't understand is why United (and tbh most airlines) put such ludicriously short connection times in going from international to domestic in the US. I've literally had them quote a 42 min connection at me getting from IAD international to domestic. This is literally impossible unless the flight was very significantly early/they put me on Concorde by mistake. I phoned up when I noticed and asked to change fli…

> And as far as I can see there is no option on the > scheduling system to say I want a longer layover A travel agent can help you with that.

Yes, but the idea that you actually have to hire a person to do something that can be almost trivially handled by their existing systems is ridiculous these days.

Re: United Airlines' Quest to Be Less Awful

#44

Post by ubernostrum »

stephengoodwin wrote: post #15

About 1/2 of the flights I've taken in the past 5 years have been on United or Continental. 11 flights on United and 4 flights on Continental[1] (I keep track of my airline travel in a spreadsheet). 2 of my United flights were international. My most recent United flights was in late 2014. I can only speak for myself, but I've never had a bad experience with United or Continental. A few small delays here or there. One…

Congratulations, you're an anecdote!

Statistically, United's performance has been absolutely abysmal. The crap really started hitting the fan in June of last year, when United reported departure/arrival on-time numbers of 42% and 66% (in other words, over half of flights departed late, and over one-third arrived late, meaning they didn't make up much time in the air).

For another perspective: if we look at "chronically delayed" flights (DOT defines this as being 30+ minutes delayed, 50% or more of the time), the most recent month published (November 2015) shows one-third of the chronically-delayed flights in the US are on United's network, through its chronically-comically-delayed Newark hub. Back in 2013 the WSJ published a report listing eleven flights through Newark which had landed on the chronically-delayed list for 8 consecutive months or more. The only carrier with more chronically-delayed flights than United... is Spirit. And that's saying something (they're also typically the only airline with worse overall on-time performance than United).

Granted, a lot of that is from affiliates running small regional jets under the "United Express" brand -- though mainline United was still dead last in on-time performance among the big three legacy US carriers in Q3 2015 -- but in turn that's mostly ripple effects of the way United manages its regionals and shops out as much flying as possible to them (in Q3 2015, Delta operated 233,000 flights, American operated 234,000 and United only 133,000; over the same time period ExpressJet, which does regional operations for all three but primarily for United, operated over 142,000 flights, and SkyWest which has over half its flying as United Express operated over 152,000 flights), which in turn was thanks to a major strategy (slashing mainline operations in the name of "capacity discipline") of the previous Smisek-led management at United.

Re: United Airlines' Quest to Be Less Awful

#45

Post by rbcgerard »

rconti wrote: post #27

I think the airlines have had a bit of a race to the bottom in a few ways: * Fees. Charge baggage fees, everyone else does the same, nobody's any better off. Boarding is slower and passengers crankier. I was HAPPY to not have to tote my bag around every single layover until they started charging for bags, now I'm another unhappy customer lugging a bag everywhere, walking up and down the aisles looking for space, havi…

if it makes you feel better mid level "elites" don't have it a whole lot better I wasn't updraded a single time last year on 50+ flights - yes there are free checked bags and free economy plus...but that's about all I get for spending $15k+ on United

Re: United Airlines' Quest to Be Less Awful

#46

Post by tzz »

martinald wrote: post #33

What I can't understand is why United (and tbh most airlines) put such ludicriously short connection times in going from international to domestic in the US. I've literally had them quote a 42 min connection at me getting from IAD international to domestic. This is literally impossible unless the flight was very significantly early/they put me on Concorde by mistake. I phoned up when I noticed and asked to change fli…

You can use Kayak to set your minimum layover time.

Re: United Airlines' Quest to Be Less Awful

#47

Post by scottkduncan »

peteretep wrote: post #38
martinald wrote: post #33

What I can't understand is why United (and tbh most airlines) put such ludicriously short connection times in going from international to domestic in the US. I've literally had them quote a 42 min connection at me getting from IAD international to domestic. This is literally impossible unless the flight was very significantly early/they put me on Concorde by mistake. I phoned up when I noticed and asked to change fli…

> And as far as I can see there is no option on the > scheduling system to say I want a longer layover A travel agent can help you with that.

Or Kayak, where you can filter flights by layover time to make sure you don't get one that is too long or too short.

Re: United Airlines' Quest to Be Less Awful

#48

Post by zbruhnke »

rconti wrote: post #27

I think the airlines have had a bit of a race to the bottom in a few ways: * Fees. Charge baggage fees, everyone else does the same, nobody's any better off. Boarding is slower and passengers crankier. I was HAPPY to not have to tote my bag around every single layover until they started charging for bags, now I'm another unhappy customer lugging a bag everywhere, walking up and down the aisles looking for space, havi…

As someone who is in the top 1% of fliers I could not disagree more with the sentiment that the top 1% of fliers aren't going anywhere/will not notice good service.

In fact as a counter to that point I flew well over 150k miles on United last year and yet right now I'm doing a status match on American because United's service on my most frequent route (LAX -> JFK) completely changed in October of last year and I was/am hoping that American may offer superior service on that route. Regardless of the miles in my account (they truly don't matter that much to me) I care about how the customer service is, how the delays are and how often my baggage is handled properly.

When I do use my miles its almost never on a ticket for me but a ticket for a friend or family member.

As for those people who are not frequent fliers but expecting an upgrade "randomly" I'd suggest to pay more for the seats and "upgrade" yourself. The short of it is, the people who do spend as much time in the air as people like me do care and it does make a difference to the Airlines' bottom line no doubt.

Re: United Airlines' Quest to Be Less Awful

#49

Post by mikeash »

jcranmer wrote: post #36
ghaff wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that people complain but many then go ahead and book the cheapest flight whether it's to save their own money or to comply with corporate travel policies. I'm not sure what "disruption" you have in mind that isn't available to existing carriers.

One major problem is that the comparison sites that people use to determine this stuff don't make it easy to figure out if you're saving $10 to get a massively more uncomfortable situation.

That's effect, not cause. The customer's relentless quest for cheaper fares at all costs was around long before everybody was booking their flights online.

Re: United Airlines' Quest to Be Less Awful

#50

Post by Karunamon »

scottkduncan wrote: post #26
Karunamon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Very many little things" is a great way of describing how bad air travel is. None of the issues are all that bad taken individually, but taken together, the experience is worse than the difference of its parts. * Security (a stressful PITA) * Boarding (never goes smoothly) * Environment (tiny seats, loud, sick passengers, babies, etc) * Service (rude/inattentive FA's, overpriced small extras that feel insulting) * D…

There are also a few great things about modern air travel. For one, it has gotten considerably cheaper (and thus more accessible to a broad spectrum of consumers) over time. It's also amazingly safe for travel in a metal tube at 550 MPH 35,000 feet above the earth. There are market-based products that would address many of your concerns if you are willing to pay. Prefer a larger seat or priority boarding? Try economy…

The problem with those value-adds is that they're priced completely out of the range of the utility you might get out of it.

Remember - little things. Yeah, having a few more inches of legroom would be nice, but $50 nice? I'm well over 6" here, and the seats are designed for the lowest common denominator. Unless I get a reclining seat in first, it's gonna suck.

Priority boarding, I never understood the point of. Okay, you get on the plane a bit faster to spend more time in tiny seats. If you didn't get a window seat, you're still moving over people. For another extra $30 or so.

Say I get 'em both. I've spent an extra $80 on a ticket, and from there, I'm about halfway to first class. The extra ~$120 would get me more legroom and a mediocre meal that I could have gotten in the airport for a tenth of the price and some positive multiple of the quality. Some might bring up the free drinks at this point, but I swear the FA's are trained to tactically ignore you after about two drinks.

On top of all that, there's the psychological aspect. It feels scummy and exploitative (indeed, it is scummy and exploitative).

So a victory for the "market", I guess, at the expense of basic humanity.

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