Originally Posted by
zeus2120
Total meltdown indeed. I am a big Southwest fan and hope this wakes them up to modernizing their backend IT infrastructure. Imagine if United could just improve their ground and inflight customer service to Southwest levels. United would be firmly rooted as the number 1 option. I think it's getting better as more of the older employees retire and are replaced by youth -- but I'm based in CLE and all I get are the very rude dinosaurs. I flew Jet Blue for the first time a bit ago and it made me appreciate how good United actually is.
CLE is very senior (IIRC, it is the top line station for seniority with more than half having 30 or more years of service) but I can't say I know any rude dinosaurs (well...since the merger. There was one pmUA dude that I found to be so intolerable I just had the ticket refunded and went over to WN rather than dealing with his idiocy...but that was nearly 11 years ago at this point) -- some are overly blunt at times but the UA CLE crew has been the one thing that's kept me loyal to UA is the amount of "above and beyond" looking out they do for flyers -- some may never realize the magic that premium services agents and ops are working in the background... Inflight is much more of a mixed bag -- when its good its awesome and when it's anything else eh....
It does surprise me that WN seemed to be so technically unprepared (seems like a root issue may be saturating available bandwidth for their VOIP call paths based on reading between the lines) but every airline has had issues -- my perception is UA has generally been less scathed than others but UA/DL/AA are not perfect -- but at least they have broad interline agreements to aid recovery.