In the past couple of years, I’ve flown in and out of Florida several times, to Seattle, New York, San Francisco a couple of times, Kansas City, Boston, Columbus, San Jose, Los Angeles, and Sydney Australia. I’m probably forgetting one or two…but the point is, I fly quite a bit. Not as much as some of the “road warriors” out there, but certainly enough that I’ve gotten a feel for some of the major airlines and which ones are better overall.
When I have a choice, I try to fly Frontier whenever possible, and avoid United like the plague, and here’s a good example why: A man recounts the ordeal with United after his wife broker her leg and needed extra legroom on a United flight:
When we got to the gate in Denver, the agent refused to change our seats, instead summoning an “SD”, apparently some kind of manager, at my insistence. Scott (”With two t’s. Make sure you get it right,” he snidely instructed me as I wrote down his name) was pompous, arrogant, and entirely unhelpful. He claimed the flight was full and refused to do anything but put us on a different flight, if there even was one. At this point my wife was exhausted and sobbing, which affected him not a bit. Finally, another supervisor “found” her a bulkhead seat, but United sells these seats as “Premium Coach” or somesuch, so I had to fork over $54 to seat her there. He then miraculously “found” me another seat next to her and ahem, generously waived the fee for my seat. When we boarded the plane, there was still insufficient leg room for her, which was slightly alleviated by angling her leg into my seat space.
It turns out the plane was only about 60-70% full (our six bulkhead seats had only two others sitting in them), and they could have easily given my wife an entire row to use by only moving one or two people. It would have cost United not a penny, and it would have earned our eternal goodwill.
The final insult came from the flight attendant, who insisted that she not use her backpack to prop up her leg during takeoff and threatened to call the captain if we did not comply. We did; she and I spent the next fifteen minutes holding her leg up with her hands.
I’ve never had to fly United with a broken leg (or anything else) but this is totally United’s MO: They are super-rigid about billing the living hell out of you for an emergency exit row seat or any seat with additional leg room. $54 for a single leg of a flight for five additional inches of leg room… it boggles the mind.
In my experience, they have the world’s worst flight attendants and customer service reps — they seem to take great joy in making the experience as unpleasant as humanly possible, and it takes some creative bitchiness to make air travel even more unpleasant than it already is these days.
I’ve actually had CSRs ignore me when speaking directly to them to try to figure out what’s going on with a flight, and you can forget about getting an upgrade to exit row or whatever unless you’re one of their super-special frequent fliers.
Contrast this with American Airlines and Frontier… this weekend, on the way back from Florida, I asked for (and received) an emergency exit row seat without any hassle or fuss from American Airlines, and I don’t even have an AA frequent flier account. (But will probably sign up for one post-haste.) Nearly every time I fly Frontier, as long as I am there early, I can ask for and receive an upgrade to the exit row aisle seat I prefer.
I have also had the same experience with United flight attendants and “personal items” that must be stowed away. I usually carry a small bag or backpack that has my iPod, books, Moleskine notebook, reading glasses, and other assorted necessities for flying. I prefer to keep this in my lap for easy access. Nine times out of ten, flight attendants have nothing to say about this. Whenever someone does choose to make an issue out of it, it’s invariably a United flight attendant — who usually walks by five women with purses the same size as my bag in their laps — to scold me for not “stowing away personal items for takeoff/landing.”
You know what? If we have enough turbulence that it would cause the bag to fly from my hands, passengers are going to have far more to worry about from the weak-assed latches on the overhead luggage compartments popping open than from my iPod or Moleskine smacking them in the back of the head. If the plane crashes, well… I really think whether or not people have stowed their personal items is going to be irrelevant.
All airlines screw up from time to time, and have unpleasant flight attendants and CSRs, of course — but it seems to be company culture with United, not an exception to the rule.
If you must fly, I strongly recommend avoiding United at all costs.