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A Zoo at UA Check-in Area in BKK-NRT UA 882 on 2/22
I arrived at BKK Airport at 4:30 AM for the 6:35 AM flight. Hundreds of people overflowing and overwhelming all check-in counters. F and C counters probably had the longest lines in the confusion. Apparently, this was caused by a cancellation of the previous day's flight (maybe due to grounded aircraft experiencing the turbulence over the Pacific heading to NRT the previous day). Anyway, there were no UA groundstaff trying to make order out of things and no announcements of any kind as to what was happening and whether the plane was going to depart on time. After almost two hours getting to the front of the check-in counter, UA stopped checking in to economy class despite hundreds of people wanting to check in. Fortunately, they continued to check in C and F. I received my boarding pass right around 6:30 AM, but then had to face long passport control lines. The flight ended up leaving close to 8:00 AM.
Hundreds of passengers left behind...Wonder how UA will untangle the situiation and get those pax out of BKK.
I'm now de-compressing at the RCC at NRT, waiting for my flight to SEA and on to LAX.
Did the plane go out full? I'm assuming they stopped checking in when they didn't have any more seats. Wonder what they were offering in compensation for bumping people.
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Also happened to msg75
"Another mess today (2/22) BKK-NRT UA 882...
Mass chaos at BKK Monday morning as all the people from the cxled 882 from Sunday showed up along with the scheduled Monday passengers for a single 747 to NRT. I had already called the 1K desk three times prior to make sure we had seats and were protected to get out of BKK on 2/22 and was assured every time that I was good as gold...
Well 650+ people trying to check in for one plane with NO dedicated 1K or C class line and guess what? A single mass line winding away from the check-in counters. Was 3 hours early and I identified myself as a 1K flying in C to three different UA employees (including a Sup) and was told to go to the back of the line and wait..."Same Same...One Line Only!"
Of course our "confirmed" "protected" seats magically disappeared by the time we got to the front of the line. They had big signs printed at each check-in station announcing that every passenger would receive $300 and another night at the "Miracle" airport hotel (thankfully we high-tailed it back to the Sheraton the night before...apparently the "miracle" hotel was anything but).
Then the "big boss" (as she was referred to by the other agents) admitted that tomorrow (Tuesday) would be no better than today since they were NOT getting an extra plane and 882 for Tuesday was overbooked by over 200! At this point people were just demanding to get out of BKK (as was I).
They eventually got a lot of people to take BKK-MNL-LAX on Philippine Air...but having transited through MNL before there was no way I would go for that. Here's what we wound up with (trust me...this was the ONLY way to get out today with confirmed non-standby segments)...
TG 455 2/22 BKK-SYD 1825-0735 (economy)
UA 840 2/23 SYD-LAX 1525-0952 (waitlisted NC but wide-open)
UA 840 2/23 LAX-ORD 1212-1814 (confirmed F)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimbo
I arrived at BKK Airport at 4:30 AM for the 6:35 AM flight. Hundreds of people overflowing and overwhelming all check-in counters. F and C counters probably had the longest lines in the confusion. Apparently, this was caused by a cancellation of the previous day's flight (maybe due to grounded aircraft experiencing the turbulence over the Pacific heading to NRT the previous day).
I believe that all airlines have overbooking problems for people trying to get out of BKK.
There are predicted political problems for Friday.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jimmc66
There are predicted political problems for Friday.
February 26 is Judgment Day. The courts have frozen more the US$2 billion of Thaksin's assets. They issued their decision on that day as to whether to seize them or not. There are warnings from embassies to stay clear of demonstrations leading up to the decision. Here in Bangkok, life goes on as if nothig happens, just like when I was here for the coup a few years ago. The only thing most people notice is the headlines in the paper. Daily life goes on.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by schley
Did the plane go out full? I'm assuming they stopped checking in when they didn't have any more seats. Wonder what they were offering in compensation for bumping people.
Yes, the plane went out full. It appeared that they were taking people in Economy on a first-come, first-served basis, notwithstanding whether they had confirmed reservations or not. As noted by another poster below, they were offering $300 vouchers to those people choosing not to fly as well as those that were involuntarily bumped.
Unbelievable. I guess UA listened to the guy on the other thread from yesterday who was complaining about 1K/1P getting special treatment. I cannot beleive that they left a 1K with a confirmed seat in C cooling his heals at the back of the line.
If ever there was a time to write a letter, this is it.
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Unbelievable. I guess UA listened to the guy on the other thread from yesterday who was complaining about 1K/1P getting special treatment. I cannot beleive that they left a 1K with a confirmed seat in C cooling his heals at the back of the line.
If ever there was a time to write a letter, this is it.
I am not surprised. My one and only UA flight out of BKK a few years ago was horribly handled at check in. Not sure as I guess theres more than one flight a day (UA) out of BKK and the other flight had cancelled or something and they were trying to accomodate the pax but instead of opening a separate line to deal with rebookings, everyone formed the same line. So we ended up waiting to check in for over an hour for C class pax. Then there was the chaos at the gate with the 100% security check that took another 30-40 mins.
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I guess BKK is not so good at handling IRROPS.
I traveled BKK-NRT-LAX in mid-February. The continuation of the BKK-NRT flight goes on to ORD, which happened to be canceled that day, so the BKK staff were handling all of the rebookings for folks that were supposed to go on via ORD. Check-in took almost 90 minutes for the C/1K line, probably nearly as much for F/GS. Very poorly handled, IMO.
Irregular ops must be a big problem for UA at BKK. There is just one flight a day out of BKK - the B747 that leaves at 0635. So when the flight is cancelled, they have up to 374 pax to rebook, with obviously inadequate staff and check-in space.
Perhaps I can ask - was anyone offered TG to SIN, and the UA flight the next day out of SIN, or was that full too?
Agreed it was a total zoo. In 15 years flying in and out of BKK on a somewhat regular basis I have never seen it that busy.
That said. There was as always a dedicated 1k/C line, yes the line was long, but maybe only 20-30 people rather than easily 200+ in the Y line. There also was a dedicated GS/F line which had no one waiting and once you went thru the little security questions they were using for C check in as well.
I was at the airport at my normal 5:00 and was in the lounge at 6:00. They were handing out FastTrack passes which is new for United in BKK.
Yes BKK tends to be a bit of a mess in general, but try re-routing a cancelled 747 overbooked (as most of the BKK-NRT flights tend to be) onto a week of already overbooked flights! Not easy even in the best managed UA outpost.
FYI I was on a confirmed NC ticket. No problems. In fact I have always had good experiences on UA through BKK for the most part. Except for the ungodly early flight
Also overall I thought that the crowd, given the situation, was relatively behaved. I have seen WAY more chaotic scenes at LAX on cancelled Southwest flight!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by milepig
Unbelievable. I guess UA listened to the guy on the other thread from yesterday who was complaining about 1K/1P getting special treatment. I cannot beleive that they left a 1K with a confirmed seat in C cooling his heals at the back of the line.
If ever there was a time to write a letter, this is it.
I was the 1K that DIDN'T get special treatment (talked to a GS in another line who was in the same boat). We had confirmed C seats on Sunday's flight (W fares ug'ed with SWUs but confirmed nonetheless). We were repeatedly sent to the back of the line on Monday.
Many, many calls to the 1K line since Sunday and the letters are going out tomorrow.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimbo
Yes, the plane went our full. It appeared that they were taking people in Economy on a first-come, first-served basis, notwithstanding whether they had confirmed reservations or not. As noted by another poster below, they were offering $300 vouchers to those people choosing not to fly as well as those that were involuntarily bumped.
That's exactly what happened. They took everyone on a first-come, first-served basis with no regard to prior seat assignments, status, or class of ticket. I saw a guy (purple t-shirt body-builder type) who admitted he had no status and was in Economy bully his way to the front of the line and pounded on the podium. Couldn't hear what he was saying but he left ten minutes later with two boarding passes and high-fived his wife/gf and went towards the gates. Still in line I went to the front and (for the 3rd or 4th time) identified myself as a 1K WITH seat assignments and was told to go to the back of the line as the other passengers in line started cursing at me for cutting to the front.
If you're interested in how we finally got home, it's posted over in the canceled/delayed flight thread...
PS - Made it home to ORD tonight, but our bags are in SFO (note: at no point were we ever in SFO)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bkkchriss4
I was on UA882 on 2/22.
Agreed it was a total zoo. In 15 years flying in and out of BKK on a somewhat regular basis I have never seen it that busy.
That said. There was as always a dedicated 1k/C line, yes the line was long, but maybe only 20-30 people rather than easily 200+ in the Y line. There also was a dedicated GS/F line which had no one waiting and once you went thru the little security questions they were using for C check in as well.
I was at the airport at my normal 5:00 and was in the lounge at 6:00. They were handing out FastTrack passes which is new for United in BKK.
Yes BKK tends to be a bit of a mess in general, but try re-routing a cancelled 747 overbooked (as most of the BKK-NRT flights tend to be) onto a week of already overbooked flights! Not easy even in the best managed UA outpost.
FYI I was on a confirmed NC ticket. No problems. In fact I have always had good experiences on UA through BKK for the most part. Except for the ungodly early flight
Also overall I thought that the crowd, given the situation, was relatively behaved. I have seen WAY more chaotic scenes at LAX on cancelled Southwest flight!
Cheers,
Chris
I'm assuming you were originally booked on 882 for 2/22 and not left-over from 2/21's flight.
If you recall they had everyone from the canceled flight queue on the left side and everyone booked on the 2/22 flight check-in on the right. Yes, there was a 1K/C line on the right side and I did get in that line.
I was told that since I was leftover from the canceled flight (even though I had seat assignments for the 2/22 flight) to go to the other side. It was the other side (that had paper signs above the screens that said all passengers from the canceled flight need to check-in here for today's flight) that had NO 1K/C/F/GS lines at all.
And at the risk of being a broken (frustrated) record I was repeatedly told to go to the back of that line every time I identified myself as a 1K. Of course, as previously noted, our seats were given away and the flight went out without us.
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Crazy stuff! Last year I was coming through BKK from CNX bound for NRT. As I was deplaning about 11pm night before the 0635 flight, my mobile travel app starts chirping that UA 882 is cancelled (MX) for next morning. I literally RAN in flip flops to the ANA desk while on the phone with 1K Int;l desk, told them 882 was cancelled (they hadnt known that! but confirmed it) and I wanted OUT. They put me on ANA red eye(I was already at the desk b/c phone said it was THE alternate flight) and then RAN to the ANA plane just before the door closed, UA booked me onto the ANA flight (I had to take Y as opposed to my confirmed C on UA) and I got out. I was nice and sweaty to sit between the two sweet oba-san's in row 43 of Y lol. They kind of gave me the gaijin scoot away when I sat down, but soon realized I am harmless lol.
I feel your pain, BKK can be absolute chaos. Agree, UA seems to not have alot of control over IRROPS here.
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