jondysse

Apologies in advance if this post is flameworthy or otherwise inflammatory. it's been a long day but I just wanted to share how flying UA made me really appreciate and miss flying US (esp with status).

I made CP on US this year via trial and have been flying US pretty regularly since - enjoying cheap fares, great CS on the chairman's desk, more miles, more perks, and really loving the 95% complimentary upgrade rate. I'm sure some of you can relate that it started to feel like a game - I would actually look forward to booking tickets, most recently a christmas transcon that cost only 300$. Or the time that I booked a flight exactly a week out and was insta-upgraded. Not living out of a hub, I do a lot of connections. CLT is hands down my favorite connection hub. I would read the us airways magazine just for fun during takeoff and landing. In other words, I became a US "fanboy" or fangirl in this case...

I even proudly nominated a friend for silver (he made gold just a couple days ago) and was giddy every time he got an upgrade on his flights.

Nevertheless, I figured: the grass is always greener! This is just irrational attachment that the FF market feeds off of. I figured, I'm missing electric plugs in the seats, IFE, a better "soft product" or so I'd heard, and best of all DIRECT flights from my home airport SFO.

So I bite the bullet and book a UA metal flight SFO-BOS direct! I know I'm going coach class. But I figure, this way I'll get there sooner! This way, it'll look more rational. Who on earth gets a connecting flight SFO-BOS?!

Day of the flight, I'm feeling nervous. Like a fish out of water. Who knew UA had 7 zones of boarding? Who knew their upgrade request list was 50 (!) people long? In any case, we start to board up. Even though I had tried to pay to upgrade, I wasn't one of the lucky ones (which is fine, I was prepared for that). I could tell this wasn't my regular old trip on familiar US airways. Dread was setting in. I just had a *feeling* something was going to be wrong.

So, we're sitting there and everyone is boarded and it's past our scheduled departure time. And from my experience with US (which has been 95% positive, all on time departures), I knew you generally had to get out by departure time. So the minute we didn't push back... I just *knew*.

Basically, we sat there, the pilot came on and informed us after 30 minutes that a part was "lost" in fixing things. And there was a slide that was broken. And an overnight crew had discovered this but they boarded anyway. They could not find a slide for our plane. One had to be flown in. There were some murmurs about how this was a continental plane and not a united plane which complicated things... There was talk by frequent flyers on UA that this flight was going to be massively delayed, canceled etc, based on their recent experience...and I'm sure you see where we're headed.

As soon as I realized things were going south, I called my trusty chairman's desk number in a panic. "Please," I said, "can I switch to US metal? Please can I get a connecting flight?" Alas, my trusty customer service agent told me, you'll have to talk to united about that.

Long story short (because this is not the UA board and I don't want anyone to have to relive my pain), we had delay after delay, watched another plane use our gate to depart late themselves, and finally 6 (!) hours later we were on our way. Never an explanation, always a rolling delay - taking off 30 minutes later, another 30 minutes ... and so on.

I'm not saying that safety isn't important, I'm not saying that this couldn't happen on US. But my lesson today was go ahead and book the connecting flight. If it makes you feel more secure that you're going to be accommodated because of status in case of IRROPS, if it makes you feel better knowing a nice cushy first class seat is awaiting you, if it makes you feel better knowing that a nice customer service lady is a ring away, that's really reason enough to fly US with status, even if it means looking like a buffoon for booking flights with stops in PHX, CLT, or PHL!

Silver lining: I had already booked connecting flight on US Airways for the return. Red wine, snack mix, us airways magazine here I come!