Originally Posted by
dagezi
I flew UA for years (as a kettle before my FT days) out of SFO and was always impressed by the sheer nastiness of many the GAs and cabin crew. (Now this may just have been SFO -- my uncle who is GS with them still goes out of his way to avoid that station). The final straw for me was being forced to deal with flight delays at something called a "self-service customer service" kiosk in ORD circa 2004. CO has always been head and shoulders above those experiences. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if end up flying UA after E+ reciprocity. Still, I'm not at all thrilled by the prospect.
I switched from UA to CO as primary back in 2001 or so because I found the CO employees friendlier and more accommodating, as well as upgrade rates to be far healthier than what I was getting on UA (was Premier at the time, getting about 20% upgrades with my e500 allocation, and got 70% as CO Silver). I was willing to give up E+ since I was riding in CO F most of the time.
Today, each aspect of the two airlines that drove my decision has flip-flopped, IMO. There are still many great CO employees, but they are tightly constrained in what they can do, and I've found UA to be far more accommodating in getting me going, particularly in IRROPS.
Originally Posted by kenziid3
grobma- one important category missing here is the fact that UA does *Net blocking and so far CO has not. UA likes to put strong limits to using award miles on *A metal other than its own. For me this a game changer.
I know this gets a lot of attention on FT, but I'm not sure I'd classify it as "strong limits." In the past 12 months, I've redeemed well over 1 million UA miles on F and C *A partner redemptions, and not run into blocking. This includes LH F, TK F, LH C, OS C, TG C, and NH C.
The last time I ran into it was a couple years ago. So while it definitely sucks if the flight you need is blocked, and I dislike the practice from a principle standpoint, I'm not sure exactly how often it actually impacts someone.
Originally Posted by TWA Fan 1
As CO has integrated into *A, it's been fascinating to watch the evolution of the attitudes toward UA (and to some extent US). As the alliance was announced, there was a torrent of negativity coming forth on this forum, a torrent that seemed to be based on some very old experiences flying UA.
Also, it seems that some posters here have a deep-seated need to establish the superiority of CO's product at all costs, even if this position is--in many respects--no longer justified.
As many here have begun flying UA, I think they have discovered that UA (and, again, to some extent US) is not the horrifying experience that some have described, and that, in fact, there are some aspects of flying UA which surpass the experience on CO.
+1
In addition, some CO employees still believe that CO is superior (which I would have agreed with back with Gordon's CO). I recall on a recent trip, a CO employee expressed bitterness at having to take CS training for Star Alliance, when "UA and US provide lousy customer service." I told him I find the opposite to be true, and that while CO's ground staff are usually good, the call center staff leaves much to be desired, and I'd much rather be dealing with UA or US if I run into trouble. Needless to say, he was surprised to hear that, since it ran counter to the thoughts in his head that were placed there by the company COol-Aid machine.
Also worth noting how irrelevant dated experiences can be, especially during the financial challenges the airlines have had over the past several years. UA and US (and NW) all sacrificed cleaning at one point as a cost-saving measure. This resulted in reduced customer sat rates. They all took steps later to rectify that, but the damage was already done. US was charging for sodas in Y, but fixed that, but the carrier is now considered a joke, despite reversing that policy. I think DL was using plastic in F at one point, but that's fixed. US still does, but that's another story. UA was arrogant many years ago when they were flying high, but that's changed. Just like CO seems more arrogant today. Hopefully that will change.
The point is this stuff is always changing, and there's no one consistently best carrier. Hopefully one day we'll look at this premium drink charge in F and laugh at it, because it will be behind us as another boneheaded airline mistake.