Well, I did give you the TL;DR version...you could have sailed right by. It was just a data point for anybody who thought that things might be getting better now that Jeff is gone. And while it might have been painful for you to read, trust me, it was painful to go through, despite nothing really going wrong.

My problem with all this is that so many people here find this acceptable. But when does flying United become a point of diminishing returns? If I can't receive good customer service, things that these people get paid for, why bother? If the airline can't even get you there when they say they will, what is the point? If the airline can't handle the operations it has despite merging and giving passengers fewer choices, then why did it merge in the first place? (Oh, I know, so that a few guys at the top could get super rich and then jump ship when things got messy.) This is bigger than just a bad day in a notoriously difficult hub. This is endemic and systemic to United culture now. Delta had a meltdown last week that impacted their operations for days. Little things at United impact their ops every day.

Coming from an experience in the last two years where I was practically coddled in Asia (and at least treated with respect in Europe), yeah, it's a bit of a downgrade. But I went into this knowing what kind of experience I get. I just secretly hoped I would be wrong. I don't expect everything to be great all the time at an airline, but when it's bad all the time, you're doing something wrong.