United Airlines FTL

[Edge34]

*General bitching post about a terrible airline...*

So today my mom was supposed to fly to Pittsburgh to visit my grandma (she's had health issues recently and is 81 years old). We live in the Cities, so she's flying from Minneapolis to Chicago at 4:50 Central and arriving at approx. 6:10 PM. Connecting in O'Hare to go to Pittsburgh at like 7:05 or something.

She is told at the American Airlines ticket counter (she's flying AA to O'Hare and United between CHI and PIT both ways, then NWA back to Minneapolis) to go to a United gate to get her boarding pass for the connector. There, they tell her that her flight has been cancelled because they don't have A F*CKING CREW IN CHICAGO FOR THE FLIGHT. That's right, they don't have a pilot, or enough flight attendants, or whatever, in their HUB CITY. Retarded, but OK, how do we fix this? My mom calls us from the gate and says they booked her for a flight at 9 PM tonight. Sucks, but at least she's going.

We get some dumb recorded phone call from United at about 4:30 or 4:40 saying she's had her 7 PM flight cancelled and that she's been rebooked to leave Chicago at 9 AM TOMORROW. WTF?!?!?! She's ON THE PLANE and NOW we get a call about a cancellation?

So after my dad gets on the phone with United Customer "Service", we apparently have a free hotel for the night, but my mom's traveling alone and is inexperienced, plus we don't know if she even knows she's staying in Chicago tonight. All this because UNITED AIRLINES DOES NOT HAVE A CREW IN ITS HEADQUARTER CITY.

[censored] United Airlines. They should put her ass in a first class, fake-leather seat, at the MINIMUM. I love flying, but I hate that in this industry, its so acceptable for companies to piss on their customers like that.

/rant

[edfurlong]

Yeah, they managed to tack an extra six hours on to my 24 hour flight a couple weeks ago. I was pretty far past polite at that stage.

[dlk9s]

[ QUOTE ]

We get some dumb recorded phone call from United at about 4:30 or 4:40 saying she's had her 7 PM flight cancelled and that she's been rebooked to leave Chicago at 9 AM TOMORROW. WTF?!?!?! She's ON THE PLANE and NOW we get a call about a cancellation?

[/ QUOTE ]

Since this thread will obviously become filled with tales of airline woe, I'll start by saying, with sympathy, that at least your family got a call.

I flew AirTran from MKE to ATL two Saturdays ago with my wife and eight month old baby. ATL to MKE was perfectly fine and I generally have good experiences with AirTran. Anyway, this flight was scheduled for 10:50am.

I went online Friday night to check-in and print our boarding passes only to find out that the flight had been pushed up to 6:30am. W. T. F. I never received a phone call (they have my cell), never received an e-mail.

I called the airline to change the flight and the reservation agent, upon listening to my gripe, said that her department is not responsible for the change, and essentially offered no apologies. She said there was a 7:00am flight with a connection, but I told her that sucked, too.

After prodding for several minutes, she finally offered me an 11:00am direct flight. Well, thanks! Thanks for not volunteering that information earlier! I mean, I know the chances were low that I would accept a flight a whopping 10 minutes later than my original one, so it was nice that you thought of it.

I imagine that the scene at check-in that morning was horrible. I'm sure there were a lot of people who didn't check-in early and got to the airport only to find out the flight had already left.

I called them last week to complain and did get some vouchers for future travel, so that's fine. But [censored].

[kyleb]

United is [censored] terrible. I had to stay at a hotel in Pittsburgh when I was flying into CLEVELAND.

[BigTimboKing]

[ QUOTE ]
she's flying AA to O'Hare and United between CHI and PIT both ways, then NWA back to Minneapolis

[/ QUOTE ]

is your mom a terrorist?

[kidcolin]

I always hear horror stories about United, but I end up flying it a lot between SAC and Boston/Providence and haven't had any real problems. Last week flying back to SAC was the first time anything odd came up, but it was due to weather.

[ChipsAhoya]

[ QUOTE ]
I always hear horror stories about United, but I end up flying it a lot between SAC and Boston/Providence and haven't had any real problems. Last week flying back to SAC was the first time anything odd came up, but it was due to weather.

[/ QUOTE ]

United is a pretty good airline, the problem is that Chicago is the worst city ever to fly through so since it's United's hub most of the [censored] up flights through there are United's. Don't fly through Chicago.

-ChipsAhoya

[kidcolin]

I've also gone through Chicago a bunch, and have generally had good luck with that, too. I guess I'm just lucky.

[El Diablo]

Edge,

Have you talked to her since she's landed? There's a 9:07p flight ORD->PIT. Maybe she just misunderstood the gate person, but it's definitely possible that she the default system rebooked her for 9a tomorrow after the cancellation, but when she talked to the gate they were able to put her on the flight tonight.

[suzzer99]

Avoid Chicago like the plague, especially this summer. My aunt made it to Ireland 2 days late for our family vacation. Her flight was on AA from Charlotte to Chicago to Dublin. When the first leg (Charlotte to Chicago) was late, they told her they couldn't rebook her for 2 freaking days. This used to be unheard of but supposedly is becoming standard this summer.

Most of the major airlines pretty much have standard running delays of a couple hours on all flights going through Chicago right now. But you won't find out until a couple hours before the flight. Also they've figured out how to game the system so the flights don't count against their ontime record. Lovely.