Happy New Year FT'ers,

I'm posting this recent United experience to get your take on what may have happened behind the scenes here and why United 1K Customer Service didn't seem at all interested in what happened.

Briefly, the issue concerns flight 763 from SFO to IAD on 1/1/13. To put it mildly, the arrival into IAD did not go well. United incorrectly reported on its web site that the flight arrived 34 minutes early. Yet that description mischaracterized what really happened. Soon after landing, the 777 taxied to the gate and remained parked without allowing anyone to deplane for an unusually long time. The pilot soon announced that the jetway was experiencing mechanical problems. Specifically, the hydraulics had failed. The pilot informed us that mechanics had been called to attempt to fix it. Yet after nearly 40 minutes, the jetway was still broken. The pilot made a final announcement that we would be removed from the plane by a Dulles people mover. Nearly 15 minutes later, the people mover came and loaded all of the passengers. But rather than to transport us to the main terminal, incredibly, the people mover only took us to the other side of the D concourse. We then had to take yet another people mover to go to the main terminal. All told, we remained unable to exit the plane for nearly one hour after its arrival at the gate. Worse, we arrived at baggage claim even later than that. Once we finally arrived at Baggage Claim, our bags were no longer designated at a carousel on the screens. Some of us went to the United Baggage Services office for assistance. Surprisingly, Baggage Services was unaware of the broken jetway incident. Consequently, Baggage Services had moved our bags to a holding area on the side, but the United staff did not inform the passengers of this. We had to find our bags ourselves.

As I mentioned above, I called United's 1K Customer Service (in Hawaii now?) in hopes that United would even consider some type of minor compensation. (I redeemed a Premier Regional Upgrade, which would have been worth it had it not been for this fiasco.) The representative I spoke with looked at the records she had available for this flight and did not know about the jetway problem. In fact, she was showing that the flight was 34 minutes early. And as for dealing with effects of the broken jetway, she said this wasn't a compensatable issue because "the delay was less than four hours." I politely attempted to explain that this wasn't a delay in the traditional sense but rather an inability to exit the aircraft upon arrival. That went nowhere. Finally, she said that even if the jetway issue was compensatable, the maintenance of the jetway was the sole responsibility of Dulles airport in the same way a landlord is solely responsible for the maintenance of an apartment. I do not agree with her analogy. And perhaps her comment about the responsibility for the maintenance of the jetway was more of a guess on her part than a fact.

Here are my questions for you in the FT community. Feel free to answer all, some, or none of them.

1. Why did United list this flight on its website as 34 minutes early when passengers could not exit the aircraft until an hour after we arrived at the gate?

2. After the pilot realized the jetway wasn't operable, could the situation have been handled any differently? I do not understand why the Dulles people mover picked us up only to take us to the other side of the same terminal--for us to then take another people mover back to the main terminal/baggage claim.

3. On the jetway maintenance issue, it would seem to me that United leases the gate, operates the gate, and has at least some responsibility to maintain it. However, could the 1K Customer Service representative be correct that the maintenance issue is solely the responsibility of Dulles rather than United?

4. Why did United's Dulles Baggage Services not know about the jetway problem? After none of the passengers had picked up their bags by an hour after the aircraft had landed, maybe someone from Baggage Services could have inquired about the flight. (And this is assuming that no one from Ground Operations informed Baggage Services of the jetway problem.)

5. Do you think this is worth any compensation? Is this worth a complaint to the DoT for statistical recording purposes and perhaps also to highlight an area of concern?