First CO Experience in a While... and it was terrible. Is it always like this?
 

for whatever reason, i've always flown AA or DL. sure i have my gripes with both, but overall they're fine.

i think lifetime, i have 4 or 5 flights between CO and United Total. mostly to places like Cleveleand or Houston.

But just returned from SFO on a Red Eye to Boston and am pretty appalled at the experience. Four of us booked business class tickets with my admin. 3 check in at the kiosk... fourth didn't work for some reason. Ticket agent was kind of a jerk... didn't even want to hear what was happening and then sent us to the other end of the terminal.

Priority check in was a joke... learned that security is not the TSA and is private... but nonetheless, stupid.

Flight attendant was very grouchy. boarding process was chaotic -- 20 min late departure -- entirely because it was a mess... and then virtually no service during the flight. every time i opened my eyes, he was just sitting back there reading his paper. coworkers had the same experience.

on the plus side... my priority bag tag came out first.

is this normal for CO or was i just lucky?

Sorry to hear of this experience - think you had an unfortunate exception.

This has not been my experience but never have run TCON red-eyes. Unfortunately have heard that sometimes service is pretty weak on the red-eyes as FA's take advantage hoping sleeping passengers won't notice.

My only red-eye exp close was LAS-IAD and was awake whole time and service was adequate in F. I fly in and out of BOS pretty regularly on CO but typically short hauls and have very few complaints (and off topic obligatory plug that CO staff in BOS PC is the best there is) no real qualms w/ CO except handling of IRROPS, particularly out of EWR.

Was this a UA Metal flight N/S from SFO-BOS? CO Metal does not fly that route non stop.

They do now. It is one of the routes added since the merger.

Continental Flight 1519

Status: Arrived Gate 32 Minutes Late
DEPARTS
City: San Francisco, CA (SFO)

Scheduled Time: 9:00 p.m.
Scheduled Date: Thu., Aug. 25, 2011
Actual Time: 9:26 p.m.

ARRIVES
City: Boston, MA (BOS)
Gate: A5
Terminal: Terminal A
Scheduled Time: 5:30 a.m.
Scheduled Date: Fri., Aug. 26, 2011
Actual Time: 6:02 a.m.

Aircraft: Boeing 737-800 aircraft #259

_______________________________________
Looks like they do now...

Hmm...my mistake...a quick check by me showed no flight but now I see it.

It appears that some of the CO staff do not like the fact the airline is merging with UA and that service may be suffering because of this, IMHO....

Sorry you had this experience. Hopefully, things will improve as the merger progresses.

well... we shall see

I've flown a number of TCON red eyes SFO-EWR/PHL on both CO & UA, and while I've never had an experience like you described, I can tell you that it's common for red eye flights to have more limited service than a similar daytime flight, mostly because the cabin is darkened to facilitate sleeping almost immediately after takeoff. Typically you get a full beverage service at the beginning of the flight and a partial (water/juice) service near initial descent. It's possible your crew was told to suspend service due to turbulence, but I can understand why you'd be upset.

Remember too that the whole east coast is in a tizzy about the impending hurricane - that may have contributed to the FA's attitude. (Or maybe the FA just doesn't like Boston...?)

The operative word here in my post is "hopefully"......

I'm watching and waiting just like most of us.

I love these kinds of posts...a lot of waaaaah, but not really anything of substance...

based on this post, I can only imagine...

Why didn't the 4th work? I would think there could be a number of reasons...could it possibly have been user error? Just out of curiosity, where exactly did the agent that was a jerk send you and why?

Again, just curious, but what does this mean?

I don't doubt the stupid part, but what does this have to do with CO?

CO flights routinely leave 20 minutes later than scheduled, but somehow they magically arrive on time.

It is common practice at CO to allow pax to sleep on redeyes, but who knows, perhaps the FA "snuck" by you when your eyes were closed...possibly so they didn't have to provide service to you?

My advice to you is to stick with AA and DL...I have heard their service is much better than CO. We'll tough it out over here and hope that things get a little better soon.

wow... i bought a biz class ticket got crappy service and wanted to vent. you saw my post and felt the need to unleash.

in case your curious -- first class counter ticket agents should know better, airlines negotiate the priority service lines for freq flyers at their airports, touring the cabin is common practice on red eyes, and magically arriving means they are just padding their schedules to no end.

have a nice day.

No worries -- and welcome I guess to the CO/UA trainwreck merger(ed) airline.

For the CO sectors it sounds more sloppy than I'd expect on either CO or UA and if you feel like spending any more time on it, you might want to send in a note. Alternatively CO also offers a post flight survey which you might want to consider filling out as well

http://survey.continental.com/

That said, as someone is/was a top tier on AA/CO/UA *before* this mess started I'd argue the standards have fallen quite a bit on CO - and were falling far before the merger was approved - and for some reason this seems to agitate the PMCO folks (we all hate to let go of our belle rêve, no?) with the scapegoat being UA at the best or an outright attack on the messenger at the worst. :rolleyes: <shrug>

Bottom line: AA offers the best transcon product ex BOS out of CO/UA/AA (never flown DL/B6/VA) in F IMHO* and as an AA elite you're far more likely to score the upgrade than on CO/UA, if that matters.

*Best food options, IFP, good chance of internet, the old F seats are marginal but doable.

AA no longer flies BOS-SFO as I understand it.

The B6 product in Y is better but no F cabin.

VA offers an excellent product on this route. With the new terminal 2 at SFO, they are eating UA's lunch SFO BOS right now.