FCfree

On the week before July 13, I had to choose between taking Southwest (with one stop in either PHX or LAS) from DEN to RNO, or taking UA/TED non-stop. Since it was scheduled for two or more extra hours with the layover, I selected UA/TED. Little did I know that it actually would have been faster to take Southwest with one stop.

I arrived at the airport and walked down to the gate for UA/TED 1467, the 5:53pm departure DEN-RNO on July 13. The airplane was there. I thought great, except that seems like a poor utilization of equipment. Southwest would never have an aircraft sitting at the gate for more than a hour. Well, first reason that UA keeps losing money, I thought, but this should be good for me, at least the equipment was there. I went off to get some dinner.

I came back about 15 minutes before boarding and now the sign shows the flight as "delayed." Oh, here we go again with United, I thought. The aircraft was there, but the pilots were not. Turns out the pilots were stuck at Dulles. Again, this escapes me. Why not keep the aircraft and the pilots together throughout the day, like Southwest does? The GA announces that they are "searching for pilots." Here we are at United's hub (DEN) and they don't have A-320 pilots? Sad state of affairs.

They search for almost 2 hours and finally cancel the flight. The GA can't do anything for you, you have to go to their customer service center. Everybody takes off in a run. We stand in line for 30-45 minutes. By this time, the last flight for SFO has left, which could have connected me to RNO.

The CSC agents don't know anything about the RNO cancellation and have to check with the supervisor to find out if they can give hotel vouchers, even though the GA has promised them. Finally they give a hotel voucher. I ask about UA/TED 1469, the 9:20pm departure to RNO. The reply: Oh, that is overbooked, you will never get on that.

I go down to UA/TED 1469's gate anyway. With the problems from Dulles, there are at least 14 misconnects, meaning 14 open seats on 1469. I get on that flight. Thanks to my efforts, I saved United the cost of a hotel night. Do they give me anything for my efforts? Nope!

I paid for an E+ upgrade on UA/TED 1467 and they can't give me that on 1469. At least they give me an aisle seat. But, its just one row behind E+, so I can look at and drool over the E+ seats without actually sitting in one. I wonder if I will get a refund for the E+ upgrade fee.

The 9:20pm flight doesn't get going on time either. Finally about 9:40pm we push away from the gate. I listen to channel 9, which is on, for the moment. We taxi out to runway 17L in DEN. The pilot turns off channel 9 as they taxi around to the holding pad while they work out some problem -- they never tell us what that problem is. They leave channel 9 off during the take-off (a part I really like to hear), then turn it on after they get into the air.

There is no listing of what music they have on what channel. I finally find my music by surfing around. No idea what songs will be played in what order. I watch a little bit of the in-flight video (re-runs of TV shows and advertising for NBC). We arrive in Reno at 11pm local time, 4 hours behind my originally scheduled arrival, 2 hours behind when I could have been there with Southwest. (I checked, Southwest flew on time that day).

The next day I called UA to ask for my E+ upgrade refund. Can't process a refund for 3 days until all the data comes through. I call again on Thursday. This time they do promise to process the refund ($29). It takes 7-10 days to get a refund. What gives? Southwest processes a refund in 2-3 days. OK, do the best you can. I ask for a different refund on a different matter where I was promised not to be charged a $25 telephone fee for an open jaw award ticket (something you can book on-line at www.southwest.com). I was charged it anyway and the refund agent gave me the refund (still waiting to see it on my credit card).

So, in summary... UA can't get their pilots and equipment at the right place and right time. They can't be honest about their ability to correct their problems. They have poor communication about what remedies they will give when they can't fulfill their commitment to fly me from point A to point B. They don't know what misconnects they are going to have. The pilots won't keep channel 9 on to let us know what is going on. The refund process is a mess.

The GA told me that the Sunday and Friday flights from DEN to RNO and vice versa are always overbooked. Definately an opportunity for WN.

UnitedSkies

Yes.

http://www.united.com/page/genericpage/1,,52372,00.html

FCfree

Thanks UnitedSkies. I requested the refund on the phone but it hasn't processsed yet. I put it in on the web site. Hopefully one or the other will come through.

timezone_trooper

Sorry to hear about your experience, but you should be thankful that you even got to where you were going on the same day. I think it's a little unfair to position this as a problem that is common only to United; troubles like you experienced could be had by any passenger flying any airline on any given day.

zorn

Never on WN, apparently.

Diplomatico

Whenever I have a flight cancelled, I just call the 1P desk number on the back of my MP card and rebook that way. Waiting in the long CS lines is an exercise in frustration.

CMHFlyerOH

I ask myself the same questions all the time. It creates so many problems when aircraft and crews are broken up, and I'm sure that countless delays/cancellations could be prevented if UA created schedules that didn't break up crews and aircraft.

I'm wondering if the reason that UA breaks up crews and aircraft has something to do with the fact that US flies so many different kinds of aircraft and some crews are rated to fly multiple types of equipment. It might also be the result of the pilot contract. I'd imagine being able to break up crew and aircraft allows pilots to fly more "interesting" routes than would be possible if crew and aircraft had to stay together all day.

luv2ctheworld

While I sympathize w/ the OP's plight, the comment regarding why UA can't do what WN does with the pilots is a bit oversimplified. As many here will probably point out, UA's operation doesn't work like WN's and can't due to their different aircraft configuration, routes, logistics, etc.

Wishful thinking, but in the end, I think the OP answered his/her own issue of choosing which airline he should fly.

worldtrav

You think they are financially irresponsible for having the aircraft on the ground for more than an hour yet you expect them to have pilots hanging around doing nothing waiting for something to do?

And how do you get FCFree on WN??

As someone else pointed out, never hang out in the customer service counter line.

KathyWdrf

This looks like another one of those "Southwest can do no wrong and the legacy carriers can do nothing right" threads.

<Yawn>

FCfree

How often do I get FCfree on WN? Exactly the same frequency that I get FCfree on TED. Never. How often do I get FCfree on mainline? The same frequency as WN -- never. I have no status with UA. When I had status with UA, how often did I get it? Approx. once every 16 round trip flights. (10,000 / 616 approx = 16). But then, only when the flight was light and it really wasn't needed, otherwise the 1K's and 1P's would get the first class and I wouldn't. Frequently, I'd have first class upgrades expire because I was flying mostly TED so I'd earn upgrades on TED but I couldn't use them because I didn't fly mainline enough. Then, once in a while, I'd fly mainline and all the upgrades would go to the 1K's and the 1P's and I couldn't have the upgrade because of that. So, bottom line, my upgrade frequency on UA was virtually the same as my upgrade frequency on WN.

How often do I get 12F (with no 11F seat) on WN? Pretty frequently. How often do I get 11E with no 11F seat on WN? Pretty frequently. How often do I get an open middle seat on WN? Pretty frequently. How often does WN cancel a flight? Not that often. How often is WN delayed? Not that often. When it is delayed, what happens? WN lets you jump to an earlier flight for free. I had that happen recently. A flight delay resulted in me getting to my destination EARLIER than the originally scheduled time.

How often do I get upgraded to E+ on UA? I'm 0 for 1 this year, even though I paid for it.

I don't think that United should have aircraft on the ground for over an hour. That just seems silly to me. The aircraft needs to be utilized better than that. If they would keep the pilots and the aircraft together, they wouldn't have aircraft sitting on the ground doing nothing. Depending on aircraft to arrive from one place (say, the west coast) and pilots to arrive from another place (say, the east coast) certainly doubles the risk that something is going to go wrong. A storm on either coast is bound to screw something up.

I tried the 800# to try to get help. As a non-status flyer, the wait on the phone was longer than the wait at the CSC line. Plus, I get the ICC, so trying to explain rerouting me to SFO then RNO is pretty complicated. I did reach the ICC before the flight was cancelled and they told me that flight 1469 was overbooked and that they wouldn't put me on it. They couldn't figure fast enough that there were some people on that flight that weren't going to make it. They wouldn't offer DEN-SFO-RNO. Who knows immediately after the cancellation, but I couldn't get through fast enough, being a lowly non-status flyer.

With or without status, I've never waited more than 5 minutes to talk to a live English-as-his-or-her-first-language person at WN. Whatever I ask for at WN, they get what I am talking about right away. Because of the streamlined operation, there are fewer rules and fewer obstacles to doing what seems like the simple, obvious solution to the problem.

Maybe UA's refusal to try to put me (and everyone else) on 1469 was a good thing for me, as it chased most of the people on 1467 away from the airport, leaving me a chance at 1469. In that way, confusion works. However, if I hadn't tried the standby, it would have cost United $50 to $100 for a hotel night. They must have given out at least 100 vouchers to the 156 people that were on 1467, so there is $5,000 to $10,000 down the drain for United, all because they couldn't get their equipment and their pilots at the same place and the same time. For that kind of money, yes, they could have a spare crew hanging around "just in case."

I've never had to ask WN for a hotel voucher, because in all the years I've flown WN, they have never had a situation (for me) where they couldn't figure out an alternative to get me where I was going on the same day. I'm sure it happens to them, but I'd bet it is less frequently than it happens at UA. And, ultimately, that saves WN all that money that UA spends on hotel rooms. $5,000 here and $10,000 there and pretty soon it adds up to real money. I would think that buying a hotel room for everyone on the flight pretty much wipes out any profit that could be made on that flight. Therefore, actually having the flight go, or finding alternatives is critical to making a profit, as well as promoting customer good will.

I find that WN is much quicker to admit that the airplane isn't going and either put you on a later flight, or give you a different routing.

WN is not perfect. My point is that there is just so much UA could do to make their operation run more efficiently. Fewer types of airplanes, cross trained crews, keeping crews and aircraft together, scheduling better aircraft turn arounds, admitting when they aren't going to get a crew for the flight and putting as many people as possible on alternate routings so that they don't have to pay for hotel rooms (and utilize the aircraft 100%). Why do they agree in the pilot contracts to these crazy rules where pilots fly 2/3rd of the way across the country, then change aircraft?

These fixes would save them a lot more money than limiting passengers to a single cup of soda, getting rid of in-flight magazines and having limited snack food.

GoingAway

You've got a totally oversimplified look at the airline industry and your comparison of UA vs WN and for your travelling habits that's fine. It seems like your destinations meet the WN footprint, so I would recommend you stick with them because there are definitely things they do well, especially for the leisure traveller.

I would like to point out though that you "saved" UA nothing by taking the flight versus the hotel room, as UA booked the hotel for you and had to pay it just like any "no show" does when they make a hotel reservation and don't appear.

uibd

I don't think you can really count this as you took another flight that you were on standby for.

FCfree

GoingAway -- UA issued me a hotel voucher at approx. 8pm. I gave them the hotel voucher back at approx 9:15pm. The gate agent said she would cancel it. If UA doesn't have a deal with the hotels where they don't get billed for rooms unless people show up for them, then they are victims of the same change fees that the apply to us. I would think that a voucher issued at 8pm and returned to them at 9:15pm would result in no hotel billing.

I would like to stick with WN. If WN had a non-stop from DEN to RNO, there would have been no doubt who I would go with. But, no airline can go from everywhere to everywhere non-stop. UA had the chance to earn my business and my good will. They failed.

uibd -- I feel as though I was willing to pay for E+ and that I actually did pay for E+. Because UA didn't have the aircraft and the pilots in the right place at the right time, they lost that $29 of revenue that I was more than willing to give them. Why wouldn't that count against United? I still don't have the refund.

izzik

Even as a non-elite, calling UA reservations will probably be better than waiting in line and missing out on possible solutions to your situation.

At least you can learn something new this time around..!