Originally Posted by lhrsfo

Where UA totally fails is in its front-line staff. The bag drop situation is stressful even for a 1K, with staff who would be more comfortable directing traffic, or working the curbside no parking regulations. What it's like in the GM section, where people are less familiar with procedures, I dread to think. I don't experience anything like this when I travel with other airlines with no status. Even EZ are a delight in comparison.

But it only gets worse. The boarding gate experience is truly horrible. I'm not sure that I entirely blame the GAs for losing their tempers on a regular basis, and for being even more traffic cop-ish than the bag drop staff, because they have been handed an impossible job by management. But I find I walk on to the plane seething after having dealt with that lot - at pretty well any US station. DUB and LHR are fine IME.

And then, on the flight, half the staff have clearly been trained by ex-Aeroflot staff from the old days. I know of no normal airline in the West which has staff who are so off-hand to the passengers. There are good FAs but they are few and far between. Again, contrast with EZ, even FR, and they are streets ahead of UA in C.

This is what needs tackling. If they can weed out the bad apples, re-train the rest, put in place procedures which minimise conflict with passengers and re-launch the customer experience, then within a few years they'll be able to reverse the reputational issues. If they can't, then there'll be blood when we have the next downturn.