aviatorzz
Aug 12, 08, 12:36 am
"But you didn't go anywhere!?!?!"
Disclaimer: This is my first trip report, so please bear with me. Any suggestions and tips are greatly appreciated and will be taken into account if I receive enough responses. :)
My weekend (read:Monday thru Thurs...not the actual weekend) started out as any another. Sleep in, do my laundry, work on my thesis. You know, all that fun stuff that needs to be done. As this was my first revenue flight with United, I was actually looking forward to this week. Me being a tall gentleman at 6'7" makes any ride in regular coach, sans exit row, well, a living hell. Thats where United's easy check-in online made it a little more bearable, by offering me a glimmer of hope. "Would you like to add Economy Plus to your itinerary today?" Why of course I would! :D But alas, my longest flight of this week MCO-ORD, it wasn't available, but every other segment was!
05 Aug 2008
Flight: UAL1523
Route: MCO-ORD
Departure: 0642 (edt)
Arrival: 0831 (cdt)
Aircraft: A32S (Ted)
Seat: 19C
I was so thoroughly involved with my thesis that I did not even notice that it was already 2am. Oh well, by the time I got ready for bed, it wouldn't have really mattered if I got any sleep because by 3am my alarm would ring and I would have needed to get up anyways. So I decided to pass on sleep, and just finish up what I could to what I was working on. I packed my laptop and a change of clothes and my normal travel toiletries and headed down 95 to the Beeline that would eventually bring me right to the airport.
This marks my first time traveling out of MCO in over a year, so much has changed concerning the airport, the drive into it, security, and the terminal itself. As I approached the exit for SR436, I noticed that the construction was completed and that you don't actually go under the overpass anymore, but you actually are using that overpass. Needless to say I almost missed my exit, but thankfully there were no cars out at the time that I needed to cut a lane over.
Check-in was a breeze, as I made my way up to the self check-in units (I have no printer at home) there was a family of four that thought it necessary to pack their entire life into 5 suitcases. The agent stopped them at the beginning of the line and had them weigh their bags on the scale right there. The least heavy bag weighing in at 55 lbs and as I left the self check-in area, they were madly repacking their suitcases, so the fee wasn't too high.
The second noticeable change was the security layout pre-gates 1-59. Instead of the high glass windows that you couldn't see through, they brought most of the security lanes forward, took down those walls, except for the far end (at the crew lane area), and opened it up immensely.
Once I got through the checkpoint, I hopped on the train to the NW/US/UA/NK side in dire hopes of finding a restroom and something to keep me awake. As I walked towards my gate, I realized that they are still doing construction on that concourse, but things were changing. One of the most notable things I saw was that when I left and came back on Tuesday, there were no ceiling panels anywhere throughout the 40-49 concourse. When I came back Thursday morning, there were ceiling panels placed about a third of the way down from the spine of the concourse.
I wandered around a bit, went up to the RCC just down the way by my gate. The agent in there was very nice, and she and I chatted a bit about life, aviation, and United. After a little while in there, I made my way downstairs and into the gate area where I tried to obtain wireless, but alas to no avail. Didn't matter much, because the crew arrived in the gate house, and pre-boarding started just a few minutes later.
I sat down in my (as you FT'ers put it) E- seat, and got out my required headphones for channel 9, and brought my iPod out just in case the pilots didn't have it switched on (but luckily for me I had it all the flights it was available on). I settled into the seat and noticed that I don't really have less room than any other airline in coach, its just always going to be awful pitch.
My seat mate who sat in 19A was reading a book on his tray table when the flight attendant came by and politely asked him to raise his tray table until after take off. He shot her a disgusted look, proceeded to set the book down (which ironically was named "Loving God in Today's world") and promptly passed out for the remainder of the flight.
Captain Mike came on the PA and talked to us once we were on board. He explained that for the first portion of the flight he should be able to turn the fasten seatbelt off, however, we would be doing some course corrections, and maneuvering to avoid the massive cell that went through Chicago overnight, however, bumps will be expected.
The flight went without incident. I received my OJ as well as my biscoff cookie, and listened to channel 9 as well as flipped back and forth between that and the show that was on the TV. I flipped back to 9 just as they were giving us our decent instructions, followed by "expect a rough decent". No sooner than I thought "I am surprised the F/As are still in the aisles" the captain came on and explained what we were going to do on the approach. Basically we had a few cells that we had to dodge, then came the thick cloud back end of the storm that was sporting some heavy precipitation so we needed to buckle up and that he asked the flight attendants to do the same.
I must say the crew did a fantastic job on the decent because we hit only one minutes worth of what the crew called moderate turbulence. We were turned in from the north side of the field and brought back to the south before we made our downwind for one of the 28s.
Touchdown was smooth and wondered what kind of organized zoo ORD would look like on the inside after a night of mostly heavy delays and cancellations. Much to my surprise, after arriving at gate B20, the concourse looked awfully normal and not a whole lot of people. I then made my way down out to baggage claim area and even that wasn't all that busy. It was when I made it upstairs to the check-in level that was where the zoo really showed its face. Even though it was hectic, people were taking it in stride.
05 Aug 2008
Flight: UAL7654
Route: ORD-ORF
Departure: 1136 (cdt)
Arrival: 1423 (edt)
Aircraft: E170
Seat: 6C
I was actually impressed with UAL's concourses. While they were narrow, they have high ceilings, and "light"-ish colors (which were kind of drab, but somehow to me made the space seem bigger). After I made my way back through security down at the far end of the check-in area, I decided I was hungry and I wanted to check around the airport to see what kind of stuff it had to offer. There were little stands of food and gift items placed in the already narrow corridor of ORD's B concourse. I decided to make my way over to the C concourse in hopes of finding something to eat. As I made my way down the escalator, having the aircraft just outside the window reminded me slightly of the new McNamara terminal. And I guess the airport had to prove a point where, while not as spectacular IMO, they also had a lighted themed tunnel for the walk from the B to the C concourse.
Once I made my way up the escalator on the other side, I spotted a food area pretty much right across from the escalators. I stopped in there and grabbed some Chinese food, a great breakfast at 10am. I saw a lot of food vouchers being used this morning as folks from the previous night decided to cash in their vouchers. I paid my overly expensive tab and went over and sat in the fairly busy food court seating area.
After I finished there, I went over to my originally planned gate of C5. I laid down on the fairly uncomfortable chairs and promptly fell asleep for a good 30 minutes or so. I then got up, afraid of missing my flight, and walked around to wake myself up. After a fairly successful attempt at that, I went and sat down across from my new gate which was right across the way. Now, there was an earlier flight to ORF, delayed due to crew rest, that was departing about 20 minutes prior to my flight. And the gate agent didn't say what flight she was boarding, except by saying "Boarding the flight to Norfolk, boarding all seating areas, please board through the gate B7. By this point, the folks that were on my flight decided to get up and head over to that flight and the gate agent tried herding them back over to the correct gate.
Shortly there after, our gate agent arrived to meet the aircraft. After those pax deplaned, she did something that surprised and pleased me. There were three Navy personnel heading back to ORF, and my guess is that there were no more 1K/1P/2Ps on board the aircraft because the gate agent saw them approaching the podium and put them up in First Class. Nice touch! ^
I sat down in my seat, and decided to get comfy for the 1 hour 40 minute flight to ORF. The flight attendant came down the aisle with the drink cart and I got my can of soda and a bag of pretzels. I don't really remember much of the flight because I did fall asleep for the majority of it. I awoke to the sound of the landing gear deploying as we were closing in on ORF. Landing did not rearrange my internal organs, so I was pleased with the First Officer's landing.
Well that flight that left ORD 20 minutes before our flight was parked at UAL's lone gate at the ORF airport. So we had to wait a good 10 minutes or so before they started pushing that aircraft out of the gate. I had a pleasant experience up until this point and things were about to change.
I wrote this letter the day after it happened and received a response that was well above my expectations. While I won't include the response, I was very impressed with how quickly they responded and how they made it seem very personal to them.
Here is the letter I sent to UAL:
To whom this may concern:
I flew four flights and two time zones all in one day. Now, comparatively to your 1Ks and GSs that probably means nothing. However, as you may have noticed by how many (or lack there of) miles I have in my account or a lack of an extensive trip history, I am a new flier to United Air Lines. Up to this point, Delta has been my carrier and as of today I have flown 61,000 miles just this year alone. Again, I am not here to impress you, but to comment on the quality of the ground staff in ORF.
I enjoyed three of my segments, two of which were on TED and the other on Shuttle America. Seating was comfortable, the service aboard the aircraft, as well as in the terminal (even after the wicked summer storms that went through ORD the previous night) were at the very least, very good. The best crew I have had in a long time was on my MCO-ORD flight. Continuously walking through the cabin with water/coffee/extra refills after the main drink trolley went through the cabin. Channel 9, along with the economy plus cabin (I am a tall guy at 6'7") were on and more than comfortable and partially the reason why I would like to switch my business over to United.
My trip then took a wayward turn when I arrived at the Norfolk airport... As we arrived into the gate area, I first noticed the unprofessional dress code of the ramp crew. I know it was hot (95F) but I used to work in hotter weather and made to wear collared shirts. These gentlemen were just wearing tank tops with a vest on. After we deplaned, I was actually connecting back to
Washington, and wanted to see if my flight was delayed going back or if I could possibly get on the aircraft of which I just deplaned that was continuing onto IAD.
There were two gate agents at the gate when I walked into the gatehouse. I got in line at the main podium and the flight attendant brought up a UM and the gate agent found that the parent/guardian was waiting outside of security. She escorted the child out of the sterile area. The others and I in line were kind of taken aback by her not even acknowledging that we were standing there waiting to talk to her. The other agent didn't bother calling us over to the podium, instead we had to all walk over to where she was and didn't greet anyone with a smile, didn't call anyone by their name; to put it simply she just acted like we were an inconvenience to her. By the time I got to the podium to ask to see if the later flight was delayed or to see about getting on this flight, she promptly walked down the jetway (I presume to see if the crew was ready to board). She then came back up, ignoring me the entire time and boarded First and seating areas 1 and 2. I finally asked her if she could help me, and she answered with a "I am boarding the flight right now, are you on this flight?" I responded to her saying that I want to see if I could get on this flight. She told me that "you should have come to see me before I started boarding". I told her I was patiently waiting in line. She then told me that she couldn't get me on the flight, that "I can't do that at this point in the boarding process".
Thoroughly disgusted with the Air Wisconsin people at this point, I decide to head downstairs to the ticket counter to check myself in on the easy check-in unit for the 5pm departure to IAD. Turns out, that flight was delayed and that I was rebooked for the last flight from IAD-MCO putting me into Orlando around 2359 scheduled. Already this was going to be a long day because I have been in an airport since 4am.
I explained to the agent that I just arrived in on the ORD flight that was at the gate, and what I was trying to do. She then asked me why the gate agent didn't put me on the flight because there were seats open on it. :td:
Because I am not one to let this sort of thing bother me, I shrugged it off and made some phone calls to let them know of a late arrival.Back through security, I waited patiently. Now, maybe this is just because I have been spoiled by Delta, but whether the flight is delayed or if it is on time, the gate agent is always at the gate 45 minutes prior to *scheduled time*. The same gate agent from earlier was nowhere to be found at 5pm (for a 545 departure) and had a pretty sizable line due to there being a departure to ORD at the same time. When she finally showed up (512pm) she ignored (again) the line that was at the main gate desk and started checking the crew ids and paperwork and explained to them what was going to happen. The unfortunate part is, she didn't make one announcement about the delay to anyone nor did she attempt to help any customer...they had to approach her. She didn't even say what flight she was boarding. She just said that we will board flight XXXX...the standard gate announcement and then was rude to the folks who tried boarding for ORD. So what should have been a 16 hour day, turned into a really long 20 hour day. I understand that Air Wisconsin is an affiliate but since your branding is on the aircraft, I expect the same hospitality that I was shown in the air and on the ground with all the mainline flights (as well as the Shuttle America flight) across the board. United Air Lines, as a new (and potential lifetime) customer I hope this is not the norm I will experience. I sincerely appreciate your time in reading this. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
05 Aug 2008
Flight: UAL7133
Route: ORF-IAD
Departure: 1745 (edt)
Arrival: 1840 (edt)
Aircraft: CR7 (Mesa)
Seat: 4B
So after all of that, I made my way into seat 4C and sat down enjoying yet again E+ and praying that there was no one sitting next to me, so that I could take up both seats and sleep yet again. Luck, this time, turned in my favor as the seat next to me was not taken. So I slid my tiiired butt over to that seat and promptly passed out, the only time other time I woke up before landing was when the flight attended asked me if my seatbelt was still on. Just to prove how tired I really was, when we landed (the first time) I woke up, thinking we hit rough turbulence, but just found out the flight crew landed fairly hard, enough to bounce us up in the air and land "again". lol
I really was not impressed with Mesa, but reading over various trip reports that involve YV, I wasn't really surprised. The interior was simply hideous, carpet was ripped and very dirty, the side panels on the sides of the seats were very scuffed from bags that went by and hit it, and the seats were dirty and scuffed.
One of my pet peeves about UAx, at least when you are ground deplaning, is that they hold people on board the aircraft until all carry on baggage is taken off before they let you deplane. Had this procedure not been in effect, I could have made my original flight to MCO because we parked at D10, and our flight to MCO was leaving out of D6. But alas, I arrived just a moment or two after they shut the door.
05 Aug 2008
Flight: UAL1569
Route: IAD-MCO
Departure: 2310(edt)
Arrival: 0110 (edt)
Aircraft: A32S (Ted)
Seat: 4F
I wandered around one of my favourite airports in the world, IAD. Most people would argue that the majority of the airport is drab, ugly, with low ceilings. And I would agree. But its something about the B concourse that I absolutely adore, and the adoration is what is making up for the lack of quality else where. I don't know. Maybe its because I can look at and appreciate aircraft from all over the world that converge on IAD in a single concourse. Maybe its because I am just an aviation dork. Either way, me missing the original flight to MCO was a blessing in disguise. I took the "tram" over to the A/B concourse and headed down the B concourse to Harry's to grab dinner. It was fairly empty that time of night, with the sole exception of a Qatar flight being called around the B40ish gate area for transfer passengers to come collect their boarding pass onward to Doha (please correct me if that city is incorrect, details were not sticking too well)
I finished dinner around 8 and I was just wandering all over the place, and I finally made my way back to C2 which is where our Tedbus was waiting to take us back to MCO. I hopped on the internet to check the status of the flight, and of course the flight was delayed lol. At that time it was only 20 minutes, and I went to check my seat and see if there was anyone sitting next to me. As I pulled my reservation up on united.com, it showed that my seat was N/A. I checked with the gate agent to be sure that I actually had a seat, and she greeted me by Mr. Aviatorzz (impressed), personally apologized about the delay and explained that it was due to a crew inbound on another Ted flight that was late. She gave me the flight number if I wanted to track it, and while I write this, I have no clue as to what that number was, but I knew that it wasn't going to be a 2210 departure (originally scheduled at 2150).
After putting my laptop away, I found the only three seats in the IAD airport that didn't have arm rests in between each seat, set my phone alarm, and promptly fell asleep. I woke about 5 minutes before my phone would have gone off. The gate agent was making an announcement stating that we would be boarding because the flight attendants were already on board and ready for us, we just needed the pilots to leave the gate they were at.
Once aboard, the ground crew either didn't attach the air conditioning to the aircraft or the unit was actually broken, but it was about 100 degrees on that aircraft. The flight attendant called the gate agent to see if she could get a mechanic on board to at least turn on the APU. The mechanic showed up just as the last few were getting on board the flight. The aircraft finally cooled and about 10 minutes later the crew showed up and we were finally underway around 2310.
Again, great, efficient, and friendly crew. The captain came on and apologized about the delay and offered channel 9 to those who wanted to listen. But again, I chose the window, so that I could sleep, and sleep I did. A solid hours worth of sleep right after the drink service had me zonked. After deplaning, I made my way down the concourse, on the train over to the main terminal, past baggage claim, and into my car. Now, for those who know and use SunPass, it usually is a great thing to have. But when I was leaving the garage, the SunPass lanes were closed and the girl that was taking care of me had to call a supervisor to force open the gate. I eventually ended up in Daytona that night around 0230.
As a side note, I did this trip again on Thursday, two days later. I did have a meeting up in ORF that was canceled and instead of spending $300 for two days hotel I spent $140 to come back and sleep in my own bed. Same experience on the way out, but instead the morning CSA in ORF told a girl before me in line that "even if she wanted to help her, she couldn't". :rolleyes:
I hope you all enjoyed this report. Sorry for lack of pictures, but unfortunately I do not own a quality camera. Comments are always appreciated!
zz :)
Disclaimer: This is my first trip report, so please bear with me. Any suggestions and tips are greatly appreciated and will be taken into account if I receive enough responses. :)
My weekend (read:Monday thru Thurs...not the actual weekend) started out as any another. Sleep in, do my laundry, work on my thesis. You know, all that fun stuff that needs to be done. As this was my first revenue flight with United, I was actually looking forward to this week. Me being a tall gentleman at 6'7" makes any ride in regular coach, sans exit row, well, a living hell. Thats where United's easy check-in online made it a little more bearable, by offering me a glimmer of hope. "Would you like to add Economy Plus to your itinerary today?" Why of course I would! :D But alas, my longest flight of this week MCO-ORD, it wasn't available, but every other segment was!
05 Aug 2008
Flight: UAL1523
Route: MCO-ORD
Departure: 0642 (edt)
Arrival: 0831 (cdt)
Aircraft: A32S (Ted)
Seat: 19C
I was so thoroughly involved with my thesis that I did not even notice that it was already 2am. Oh well, by the time I got ready for bed, it wouldn't have really mattered if I got any sleep because by 3am my alarm would ring and I would have needed to get up anyways. So I decided to pass on sleep, and just finish up what I could to what I was working on. I packed my laptop and a change of clothes and my normal travel toiletries and headed down 95 to the Beeline that would eventually bring me right to the airport.
This marks my first time traveling out of MCO in over a year, so much has changed concerning the airport, the drive into it, security, and the terminal itself. As I approached the exit for SR436, I noticed that the construction was completed and that you don't actually go under the overpass anymore, but you actually are using that overpass. Needless to say I almost missed my exit, but thankfully there were no cars out at the time that I needed to cut a lane over.
Check-in was a breeze, as I made my way up to the self check-in units (I have no printer at home) there was a family of four that thought it necessary to pack their entire life into 5 suitcases. The agent stopped them at the beginning of the line and had them weigh their bags on the scale right there. The least heavy bag weighing in at 55 lbs and as I left the self check-in area, they were madly repacking their suitcases, so the fee wasn't too high.
The second noticeable change was the security layout pre-gates 1-59. Instead of the high glass windows that you couldn't see through, they brought most of the security lanes forward, took down those walls, except for the far end (at the crew lane area), and opened it up immensely.
Once I got through the checkpoint, I hopped on the train to the NW/US/UA/NK side in dire hopes of finding a restroom and something to keep me awake. As I walked towards my gate, I realized that they are still doing construction on that concourse, but things were changing. One of the most notable things I saw was that when I left and came back on Tuesday, there were no ceiling panels anywhere throughout the 40-49 concourse. When I came back Thursday morning, there were ceiling panels placed about a third of the way down from the spine of the concourse.
I wandered around a bit, went up to the RCC just down the way by my gate. The agent in there was very nice, and she and I chatted a bit about life, aviation, and United. After a little while in there, I made my way downstairs and into the gate area where I tried to obtain wireless, but alas to no avail. Didn't matter much, because the crew arrived in the gate house, and pre-boarding started just a few minutes later.
I sat down in my (as you FT'ers put it) E- seat, and got out my required headphones for channel 9, and brought my iPod out just in case the pilots didn't have it switched on (but luckily for me I had it all the flights it was available on). I settled into the seat and noticed that I don't really have less room than any other airline in coach, its just always going to be awful pitch.
My seat mate who sat in 19A was reading a book on his tray table when the flight attendant came by and politely asked him to raise his tray table until after take off. He shot her a disgusted look, proceeded to set the book down (which ironically was named "Loving God in Today's world") and promptly passed out for the remainder of the flight.
Captain Mike came on the PA and talked to us once we were on board. He explained that for the first portion of the flight he should be able to turn the fasten seatbelt off, however, we would be doing some course corrections, and maneuvering to avoid the massive cell that went through Chicago overnight, however, bumps will be expected.
The flight went without incident. I received my OJ as well as my biscoff cookie, and listened to channel 9 as well as flipped back and forth between that and the show that was on the TV. I flipped back to 9 just as they were giving us our decent instructions, followed by "expect a rough decent". No sooner than I thought "I am surprised the F/As are still in the aisles" the captain came on and explained what we were going to do on the approach. Basically we had a few cells that we had to dodge, then came the thick cloud back end of the storm that was sporting some heavy precipitation so we needed to buckle up and that he asked the flight attendants to do the same.
I must say the crew did a fantastic job on the decent because we hit only one minutes worth of what the crew called moderate turbulence. We were turned in from the north side of the field and brought back to the south before we made our downwind for one of the 28s.
Touchdown was smooth and wondered what kind of organized zoo ORD would look like on the inside after a night of mostly heavy delays and cancellations. Much to my surprise, after arriving at gate B20, the concourse looked awfully normal and not a whole lot of people. I then made my way down out to baggage claim area and even that wasn't all that busy. It was when I made it upstairs to the check-in level that was where the zoo really showed its face. Even though it was hectic, people were taking it in stride.
05 Aug 2008
Flight: UAL7654
Route: ORD-ORF
Departure: 1136 (cdt)
Arrival: 1423 (edt)
Aircraft: E170
Seat: 6C
I was actually impressed with UAL's concourses. While they were narrow, they have high ceilings, and "light"-ish colors (which were kind of drab, but somehow to me made the space seem bigger). After I made my way back through security down at the far end of the check-in area, I decided I was hungry and I wanted to check around the airport to see what kind of stuff it had to offer. There were little stands of food and gift items placed in the already narrow corridor of ORD's B concourse. I decided to make my way over to the C concourse in hopes of finding something to eat. As I made my way down the escalator, having the aircraft just outside the window reminded me slightly of the new McNamara terminal. And I guess the airport had to prove a point where, while not as spectacular IMO, they also had a lighted themed tunnel for the walk from the B to the C concourse.
Once I made my way up the escalator on the other side, I spotted a food area pretty much right across from the escalators. I stopped in there and grabbed some Chinese food, a great breakfast at 10am. I saw a lot of food vouchers being used this morning as folks from the previous night decided to cash in their vouchers. I paid my overly expensive tab and went over and sat in the fairly busy food court seating area.
After I finished there, I went over to my originally planned gate of C5. I laid down on the fairly uncomfortable chairs and promptly fell asleep for a good 30 minutes or so. I then got up, afraid of missing my flight, and walked around to wake myself up. After a fairly successful attempt at that, I went and sat down across from my new gate which was right across the way. Now, there was an earlier flight to ORF, delayed due to crew rest, that was departing about 20 minutes prior to my flight. And the gate agent didn't say what flight she was boarding, except by saying "Boarding the flight to Norfolk, boarding all seating areas, please board through the gate B7. By this point, the folks that were on my flight decided to get up and head over to that flight and the gate agent tried herding them back over to the correct gate.
Shortly there after, our gate agent arrived to meet the aircraft. After those pax deplaned, she did something that surprised and pleased me. There were three Navy personnel heading back to ORF, and my guess is that there were no more 1K/1P/2Ps on board the aircraft because the gate agent saw them approaching the podium and put them up in First Class. Nice touch! ^
I sat down in my seat, and decided to get comfy for the 1 hour 40 minute flight to ORF. The flight attendant came down the aisle with the drink cart and I got my can of soda and a bag of pretzels. I don't really remember much of the flight because I did fall asleep for the majority of it. I awoke to the sound of the landing gear deploying as we were closing in on ORF. Landing did not rearrange my internal organs, so I was pleased with the First Officer's landing.
Well that flight that left ORD 20 minutes before our flight was parked at UAL's lone gate at the ORF airport. So we had to wait a good 10 minutes or so before they started pushing that aircraft out of the gate. I had a pleasant experience up until this point and things were about to change.
I wrote this letter the day after it happened and received a response that was well above my expectations. While I won't include the response, I was very impressed with how quickly they responded and how they made it seem very personal to them.
Here is the letter I sent to UAL:
To whom this may concern:
I flew four flights and two time zones all in one day. Now, comparatively to your 1Ks and GSs that probably means nothing. However, as you may have noticed by how many (or lack there of) miles I have in my account or a lack of an extensive trip history, I am a new flier to United Air Lines. Up to this point, Delta has been my carrier and as of today I have flown 61,000 miles just this year alone. Again, I am not here to impress you, but to comment on the quality of the ground staff in ORF.
I enjoyed three of my segments, two of which were on TED and the other on Shuttle America. Seating was comfortable, the service aboard the aircraft, as well as in the terminal (even after the wicked summer storms that went through ORD the previous night) were at the very least, very good. The best crew I have had in a long time was on my MCO-ORD flight. Continuously walking through the cabin with water/coffee/extra refills after the main drink trolley went through the cabin. Channel 9, along with the economy plus cabin (I am a tall guy at 6'7") were on and more than comfortable and partially the reason why I would like to switch my business over to United.
My trip then took a wayward turn when I arrived at the Norfolk airport... As we arrived into the gate area, I first noticed the unprofessional dress code of the ramp crew. I know it was hot (95F) but I used to work in hotter weather and made to wear collared shirts. These gentlemen were just wearing tank tops with a vest on. After we deplaned, I was actually connecting back to
Washington, and wanted to see if my flight was delayed going back or if I could possibly get on the aircraft of which I just deplaned that was continuing onto IAD.
There were two gate agents at the gate when I walked into the gatehouse. I got in line at the main podium and the flight attendant brought up a UM and the gate agent found that the parent/guardian was waiting outside of security. She escorted the child out of the sterile area. The others and I in line were kind of taken aback by her not even acknowledging that we were standing there waiting to talk to her. The other agent didn't bother calling us over to the podium, instead we had to all walk over to where she was and didn't greet anyone with a smile, didn't call anyone by their name; to put it simply she just acted like we were an inconvenience to her. By the time I got to the podium to ask to see if the later flight was delayed or to see about getting on this flight, she promptly walked down the jetway (I presume to see if the crew was ready to board). She then came back up, ignoring me the entire time and boarded First and seating areas 1 and 2. I finally asked her if she could help me, and she answered with a "I am boarding the flight right now, are you on this flight?" I responded to her saying that I want to see if I could get on this flight. She told me that "you should have come to see me before I started boarding". I told her I was patiently waiting in line. She then told me that she couldn't get me on the flight, that "I can't do that at this point in the boarding process".
Thoroughly disgusted with the Air Wisconsin people at this point, I decide to head downstairs to the ticket counter to check myself in on the easy check-in unit for the 5pm departure to IAD. Turns out, that flight was delayed and that I was rebooked for the last flight from IAD-MCO putting me into Orlando around 2359 scheduled. Already this was going to be a long day because I have been in an airport since 4am.
I explained to the agent that I just arrived in on the ORD flight that was at the gate, and what I was trying to do. She then asked me why the gate agent didn't put me on the flight because there were seats open on it. :td:
Because I am not one to let this sort of thing bother me, I shrugged it off and made some phone calls to let them know of a late arrival.Back through security, I waited patiently. Now, maybe this is just because I have been spoiled by Delta, but whether the flight is delayed or if it is on time, the gate agent is always at the gate 45 minutes prior to *scheduled time*. The same gate agent from earlier was nowhere to be found at 5pm (for a 545 departure) and had a pretty sizable line due to there being a departure to ORD at the same time. When she finally showed up (512pm) she ignored (again) the line that was at the main gate desk and started checking the crew ids and paperwork and explained to them what was going to happen. The unfortunate part is, she didn't make one announcement about the delay to anyone nor did she attempt to help any customer...they had to approach her. She didn't even say what flight she was boarding. She just said that we will board flight XXXX...the standard gate announcement and then was rude to the folks who tried boarding for ORD. So what should have been a 16 hour day, turned into a really long 20 hour day. I understand that Air Wisconsin is an affiliate but since your branding is on the aircraft, I expect the same hospitality that I was shown in the air and on the ground with all the mainline flights (as well as the Shuttle America flight) across the board. United Air Lines, as a new (and potential lifetime) customer I hope this is not the norm I will experience. I sincerely appreciate your time in reading this. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
05 Aug 2008
Flight: UAL7133
Route: ORF-IAD
Departure: 1745 (edt)
Arrival: 1840 (edt)
Aircraft: CR7 (Mesa)
Seat: 4B
So after all of that, I made my way into seat 4C and sat down enjoying yet again E+ and praying that there was no one sitting next to me, so that I could take up both seats and sleep yet again. Luck, this time, turned in my favor as the seat next to me was not taken. So I slid my tiiired butt over to that seat and promptly passed out, the only time other time I woke up before landing was when the flight attended asked me if my seatbelt was still on. Just to prove how tired I really was, when we landed (the first time) I woke up, thinking we hit rough turbulence, but just found out the flight crew landed fairly hard, enough to bounce us up in the air and land "again". lol
I really was not impressed with Mesa, but reading over various trip reports that involve YV, I wasn't really surprised. The interior was simply hideous, carpet was ripped and very dirty, the side panels on the sides of the seats were very scuffed from bags that went by and hit it, and the seats were dirty and scuffed.
One of my pet peeves about UAx, at least when you are ground deplaning, is that they hold people on board the aircraft until all carry on baggage is taken off before they let you deplane. Had this procedure not been in effect, I could have made my original flight to MCO because we parked at D10, and our flight to MCO was leaving out of D6. But alas, I arrived just a moment or two after they shut the door.
05 Aug 2008
Flight: UAL1569
Route: IAD-MCO
Departure: 2310(edt)
Arrival: 0110 (edt)
Aircraft: A32S (Ted)
Seat: 4F
I wandered around one of my favourite airports in the world, IAD. Most people would argue that the majority of the airport is drab, ugly, with low ceilings. And I would agree. But its something about the B concourse that I absolutely adore, and the adoration is what is making up for the lack of quality else where. I don't know. Maybe its because I can look at and appreciate aircraft from all over the world that converge on IAD in a single concourse. Maybe its because I am just an aviation dork. Either way, me missing the original flight to MCO was a blessing in disguise. I took the "tram" over to the A/B concourse and headed down the B concourse to Harry's to grab dinner. It was fairly empty that time of night, with the sole exception of a Qatar flight being called around the B40ish gate area for transfer passengers to come collect their boarding pass onward to Doha (please correct me if that city is incorrect, details were not sticking too well)
I finished dinner around 8 and I was just wandering all over the place, and I finally made my way back to C2 which is where our Tedbus was waiting to take us back to MCO. I hopped on the internet to check the status of the flight, and of course the flight was delayed lol. At that time it was only 20 minutes, and I went to check my seat and see if there was anyone sitting next to me. As I pulled my reservation up on united.com, it showed that my seat was N/A. I checked with the gate agent to be sure that I actually had a seat, and she greeted me by Mr. Aviatorzz (impressed), personally apologized about the delay and explained that it was due to a crew inbound on another Ted flight that was late. She gave me the flight number if I wanted to track it, and while I write this, I have no clue as to what that number was, but I knew that it wasn't going to be a 2210 departure (originally scheduled at 2150).
After putting my laptop away, I found the only three seats in the IAD airport that didn't have arm rests in between each seat, set my phone alarm, and promptly fell asleep. I woke about 5 minutes before my phone would have gone off. The gate agent was making an announcement stating that we would be boarding because the flight attendants were already on board and ready for us, we just needed the pilots to leave the gate they were at.
Once aboard, the ground crew either didn't attach the air conditioning to the aircraft or the unit was actually broken, but it was about 100 degrees on that aircraft. The flight attendant called the gate agent to see if she could get a mechanic on board to at least turn on the APU. The mechanic showed up just as the last few were getting on board the flight. The aircraft finally cooled and about 10 minutes later the crew showed up and we were finally underway around 2310.
Again, great, efficient, and friendly crew. The captain came on and apologized about the delay and offered channel 9 to those who wanted to listen. But again, I chose the window, so that I could sleep, and sleep I did. A solid hours worth of sleep right after the drink service had me zonked. After deplaning, I made my way down the concourse, on the train over to the main terminal, past baggage claim, and into my car. Now, for those who know and use SunPass, it usually is a great thing to have. But when I was leaving the garage, the SunPass lanes were closed and the girl that was taking care of me had to call a supervisor to force open the gate. I eventually ended up in Daytona that night around 0230.
As a side note, I did this trip again on Thursday, two days later. I did have a meeting up in ORF that was canceled and instead of spending $300 for two days hotel I spent $140 to come back and sleep in my own bed. Same experience on the way out, but instead the morning CSA in ORF told a girl before me in line that "even if she wanted to help her, she couldn't". :rolleyes:
I hope you all enjoyed this report. Sorry for lack of pictures, but unfortunately I do not own a quality camera. Comments are always appreciated!
zz :)