Originally Posted by
usa18dca
IMO this is very unfair to the US folks...They were not short staffed but overwhelmed with the excess capacity available that day in turn with forgive me but "Kettle" Passengers who don't know how to use a kiosk at all.
Excuse me, but US Management knew what the load factors were going to be in DC on that day based on ticket sales. It sounds as if they were not proactive enough in staffing to handle the loads and the needs of their CUSTOMERS.
When the reservation migration happened, they sent extra staff to the major cities to handle any issues and while it wasn't perfect and lines were long, they were able to accommodate check-in. Why couldn't they have been more proactive and deployed staff from other stations to help DC check-in during this peak time? Probably because they are so lean on staffing all over the country they have no extra folks to spare. Does anyone know how BWI's operation went? Was it smoother or did they have the same problems?
The whole check-in and pay for bags process is flawed anyway. It takes too much time to collect the money for bags at check-in and for people who pay cash the process is even more of a hassle. US should allow you to declare the number of bags you will be checking at the time the reservation is made and collect the money at time of ticketing. If you exceed the number of bags at check-in you declared at the time of reservation, you would then have to pay for the extra bags at check-in. I believe most folks would pack accordingly and only check the number of bags they previously paid for. IMO collecting extra money at check-in would be rare if they went with this scenario.
Sorry...you can't blame it on the "kettles" this time.