1. This is a thread about one pax who encountered an employee who made an error and that error was corrected by a supervisor. It turned into a resarch project in international law. The takeaway here is that if you travel enough you will find that, just as in all walks of life, there are great, mediocre and poor employees. As a sociological observation, perhaps worth a PhD thesis. As an FT post, nothing new.

2. For those who rant that a domestic *G status doesn't result in freeloader access to *A lounges, the reason is quite simple. For both UA & US, Gold is the 2nd from bottom tier and it can be earned with little BIS spend and is broadly available. While, the benefit is "free" to the customer, its paid for by the carrier. When a LH*G uses a UC, LH pays UA for the use.

USA pax want cheap fares with few frills and that's what they get. Every marketing effort shows that pax want the opportunity to pay little and then pay for what they want (checked luggage, BOB, lounge, and so on). So, that's what they get.