A United Failure

If my recent experiences with a certain airline (United) are any indication of the state of the industry, the glory days of train travel should be returning soon. I say this because I have been flying essentially the same route, from Greenville to Chicago, for the last 6 or 7 years, and the service has gotten progressively worse. At first it was simply that they stopped handing out peanuts and pretzels on their flights, and then that the flight attendants were a bit more surly than usual, but lately it's gotten worse. My experiences on my latest trip attest to problems, not just at the customer level (which have always been there), but at the upper levels of the company.

I should start by saying that up until now I have been remarkably lucky in my travel experiences. I had rarely had a flight delayed, never mind canceled. Well, reality has caught up. My flight up to Chicago went through several stages of disaster. At first it was just that the flight was delayed by some non-weather issue in Chicago. Then our plane arrived, but with no pilot. Then the flight that was supposed to have our pilots arrived, but with only a co-pilot. Finally, out of the goodness of his heart, the pilot on the last flight from Chicago to Greenville agreed to take us back to Chicago rather than head to bed. So 5 hours, and many ups and downs later, we managed to take off.

"Only 5 hours?", you say. True, that's not too bad in the history of flight problems. The issue is that this was all supposedly caused by the original pilot getting lost on the way to O'Hare. Never mind the fact that getting lost on the way to O'Hare is like getting lost on the way to Lake Michigan, the fact that one pilot getting lost caused a 5 hour delay is evidence that the whole operation is operating by the seat of their pants. In most operations, they have these things called "contingency plans" that are put into effect when something doesn't go right. Obviously, this is a foreign concept to United. Then, unlike the restaurant industry, where you can get up and leave if your food is 2 hours late, the airlines feel comfortable letting you sit in the gate for however long without even a hint of compensation. It was only due to the wonderful gate agent, who ordered pizza for the lot of us, that we had any dinner at all.

That brings me to my return flight, which I will try to make short. Last time I flew from Chicago to Greenville my flight had been canceled due to weather. Since we are having thunderstorms AGAIN, I decided to call and move my reservation to an earlier flight, just to be safe. First, I had called earlier and been told that I would be charged a $25 fee for this change. Fine, whatever. When I called again, not 2 hours later, I was told that it was actually $50. I grumbled but paid it anyway. When I got back home 10 minutes later and checked my flight status I found that the NEW flight that I was on had been canceled. I called customer service immediately where I was told that yes, the flight was canceled and that I had been booked on a flight for TOMORROW. Why not tonight? It was full. Apparently the people who just switched flights are the last to be re-booked. I guess I'm lucky that they re-booked me at all. The frosting on the cake is that they informed me that even though mere minutes had passed between being confirmed on a flight for a (higher-than-original) $50, that money could not be refunded. Frustrated, I said 'thank you' to the customer service woman, hung up, and promptly funneled my anger into a long complaint email to their other customer service department. I would have called, but of course they aren't open on weekends.

So, at this point I am dangerously close to becoming one of "those people" who yell at the poor gate agent who can't do a damn thing about it anyway. At the very least I hope to get my $50 back and, if I'm really lucky, they might give me a complimentary bag of pretzels on this flight. So my advice for anyone who's considering investing in the airline industry: save your money and invest in my new railroad. Trust me, it's the wave of the future.