TravellingMan

The other day when I landed in ONT, the bags took forever to show up. 45 mins later even the police patrolling the airport came in to see what happened as too many cars were stuck around the terminal.

Not a single United employee was seen in sight! The airport was filled with pages for United employees and no response. All passengers wanted was a time estimate and a reason for the delay. No one was looking to beat up the United employees.

I placed a call to the 1K line and they called ONT baggage handling and were told the bags are "just" being loaded onto the belt. Another 20 mins later and people were requesting the police to go and verify. Finally 80 mins after the flight landed the bags were found on the belt.

I guess there is a pattern to employees disappearing when it suits their convenience.

ctp

Because for some of us, UA is still the most convenient and cheapest option. All of my flights since 3/3 have been M/B, but they were still cheaper than anything else I could find last minute.

Flying out of IAD, I can fly direct almost anywhere on UA.

For the most part, I'm trapped until I move away from IAD.

danM

Also, a lot of us still have a fair amount of travel which was booked pre 3/3 (I honestly didn't imagine things would get this bad -- I had assumed that merging two competently-run airlines would result in a larger, but still competently-run airline, and that at least they'd be able to check people in, get planes out, etc.

If this is the new world in how they handle irrops, it's one less reason for me to hold on to my silver status (at the very least, I used to have some protection/priority when things went south). They're rapidly removing every single reason for somebody at my level to stick around...

AS Flyer

In this day and age, with people filming everything, then posting it on You Tube, I question this story. Odd how there was pushing, shoving and name calling yet this is the only place we've read about it. I'm not buying it.

Plane-is-home

Even though two different members posted their experience?

CrazyInteg

If I did their job, and was paid what they were paid and customers yelled at me everyday, I would do the same. Politely walking away is better than starting a fight with a customer.

I mean that one guy got so pissed that he jumped out the fire escape. Ha!

bowdenj

I totally missed that it was CO and not UA. That makes it an even more depressingly bad situation.

flyer215

Pure $ upsells do (and always did PMUA) come first (vs still waitlisted at checkin) for intl flights.

People using miles (+ copay, if needed) do not come before GPUs, they are the same priority... it depends on status, fare class...

Poor form from that employee.

JDT1955

Hear, hear!!

SFOFastAir

As I understand it there has been a major change in the way equipment changes are handled at hubs. Pre 3/3 equip changes where handled by CS staff at the effected airport. A person would quality control the seat changes looking at status, fair paid, if in a group or not, downline connections, etc. when you went from a bigger plane to a smaller one. Apollo had a category on the Departure Management list (BP0) which listed passengers who seats had been changed or no longer had a seat. Thus the GA new who was affected by the equipment change. Now in the post 3/3 era equip changes are done by automation in Houston and if there is any equivalent to the BP0 list we GAs haven't been given the secret code to access it thus the announcement, "to go the counter if the BP doesn't scan".

GAs are often the last to be notified of an equipment changes. C'est la guerre.

Update on plane changes. Its been recognized that plane changes are a bigger problem the had been expected. Things are taking place behind the scenes to get more people trained (and to give them better training) to work plane changes.

danville 1K

Clearly another "change we'll like"

hobo13

Latency. Most passengers flying now booked tickets pre-3/3. They need to have one horrible experience such as this post 3/3 to say, 'that's it, I'm done'. Then they stop booking future tickets. Of course, this won't make it into the financial results until the end of next quarter, which means we're looking at end of year before the bean counters start telling the emperor that he has no clothes.....

United_727

All these horror stories are making me a lil nervous venturing back to UA for my trip to MIA on April 1st.

sfogate

Don't leave Weatherboy.

I am so sorry that you had this awful experience. I'm sure most of you know that on March 3 we, the New UA, went to Shares as our computer system. It was a good migration but our sUA folks went live on the system that day as well. Shares has some interesting issues that stumped the best of sCO agents and you can imagine the frustration of the sUA agents attempting to gain experience and speed on Shares since then.

I believe that most stations it is sUA agents that are working all flights with sCO agents there to assist with any Share entry issues they have.

Even on the best days, with the best computer entry experts, change of equipment, downgrades and delays challenge the best of us. I am not excusing the behavior of LAX or anywhere else since March 3 but please, just a little less anger for the next few weeks would help the sUA agents master Shares just as well as they did with Fastair.

The airline you love is still here and getting better every day.

UA-NYC

Oh how we only all wished this were really the case...