EWR764

Cool story, but there has been absolutely no crossover between flight attendant workgroups. If you were on a sUA airplane, you had sUA flight attendants. If that f/a had previously worked for CO, it was eons ago.

youreadyfreddie

Wow! If only I had the license to sell popcorn and drinks near the gate where the OP-described debacle was taking place.

EWR764

Maybe you can apply for the dormant licenses of the old IAH popcorn vendors that made the entire C concourse smell like a crappy movie theater...

UAPremierGuy

Just to add to the discussion, I just got off the phone with my mother who reported a similarly dissatisfying experience on UA on Saturday. ASE-ORD was oversold, and they needed 2 volunteers. The VDB offer was a measly $200. I can't imagine this would entice many people in a, er, um, different market, let alone out of Aspen. Nobody budged. Everybody boards. GA enters the plane, comes on the PA, and again asks for 2 volunteers or "the plane can't take off." Nobody budges. GA leaves. A "ground operations" staffer comes on the plane, next. Doesn't use the PA - just yells. And yells. "Nobody is going anywhere unless we get 2 volunteers." Still same offer of a measly $200. Savvy flyer checks the next ASE-ORD flight, and notices 2 F seats still available. He asks the "ground operations" manager that if he guarantees that he can sit in F for that flight, he and his wife will leave. Entire plane applauds. Staffer snaps back, "I'm not guaranteeing anything. The offer is $200 and that's it." Man and his wife thus stay on the plane. Staffer then, again, not using the PA yells, "Fine, if nobody wants to get off, then I'm offloading all the bags." And he did -- all of them. Plane takes off sans bags. Apparently FA's are extremely embarrassed about the situation, pass out free snacks to all of the passengers, and urge passengers to visit ualsurvey.com. Little did they know that ualsurvey.com no longer works due to the CO We Don't Care philosophy purveying this once great company. Mom gets to ORD. Next plane has a 2 hour mechanical. Her bag shows up today (2 days later). Welcome to the new UA. I'm about 1 straw away from breaking and going with AA. I'm sure they'll enjoy my 125,000 miles and A Fare purchases.

youreadyfreddie

Ouch!

anc-ord772

Except for some misplaced miles, all is ok with me, my colleagues, and my loved ones travel so far. The problem UA has, although it appears there are more each day, is this; If I lose trust that they can't a) transport me successfully, b) my colleagues on time, c) my family with respect, they lose my endorsement (which is well earned), and we all go elsewhere.

SS255

Wow! I arrived at LAX yesterday on UA1605 from IAH, which pulled into Gate 62 about 2PM. I overheard the GA at Gate 61 (UA 1179, the 2:49PM flight to EWR) announce a "severe oversell" situation, and that they were looking for volunteers to give up their seats & get re-booked for today's 2:49PM flight to EWR, since that was the soonest available opening.

2 things came to mind immediately:

1) The earlier flight to EWR must have gone MX, and they way overbooked UA 1179, and all nonstop LAX-EWR flights in the next 24 hours.

2) That's very odd: You mean that the world's largest airline cannot manage to find a way to get the VDB'd and IDB'd customers to EWR (or the NY area) in less than 24 hours during a non-weather event??? Come on, people -- use some creativity! If I need to get somewhere, and I get IDB'd (or want to take a bump), I'll usually accept a connection which gets me there sooner instead of a non-stop which gets me there later. The combined UA flies to several cities which have nonstops to EWR. Get me to ORD, or SFO, or DEN, and I'll fly the redeye to EWR. Or, fly me to my final destination through another hub instead of through EWR. I find it very hard to believe that the agents tried very hard to mix metals (much less re-book pax on other airlines) in order to help the displaced customers get to their destinations.

Plane-is-home

25k miles for that ordeal and 6 hours delay is an insult

NickP 1K

This sounds like a weight limitation; which is NO excuse for how it was handled. If he would have taken the VDB to $400 someone would have bit. Sorry but on PMCO and PMUA I've seen VDB's go UP if no one bites. This agent was just a putz. (Is Aspen staffed by SkyWest?)

colpuck

Where did you get that list from? Do you have a bookmark folder labeled "the merger sucks."

anyways.

MX and WX happens. its a fact of life, for the seasoned traveler the solution is to just walk down to the club or CS center and get accommodated. it is isn't as if there was a lack of flights to TLV that day.

One of CO's weaknesses is the failure to properly plan out IRROPS. The way one flight chaos is by having a set of procedures in place to manage the problem. I think PMCO had a set of procedures in place, IE GG Downgrade, but either the agents were not trained on them, or they didn't care.

Seriously, how hard is to do this.
IF Aircraft swap, then ask
more or less seats than original.
if more, hooray
if less, then follow the plan.

The plan.
Do you need to downgrade passengers?
if yes, then process downgrades in reverse upgrade order, GG downgrade.
Add downgrades to seat assignment list.
Is flight overbooked?
if no, assign seats, process upgrades as normal, board flight, push flight. close flight.
If yes, solicit volunteers to per VDB reg
take volunteers to reduce pax count to seat capacity.
add to VDB list, process in status, fare order. passengers with checked bags will be processed last

In the event of international or short connections, call for second agent to begin re-booking passengers. Print vouchers, send rebooked passengers to new gate.

If still over, process IDBs per-IDB order.

In the event of a large number of overbookings due to equipment swap agents are excused from filling the flight. advise VDB passengers there maybe space at the end of boarding and they are welcome to wait. Keep compensation as a gift.

Part of the reason gates are so chaotic is that agents are afraid that they will be punished if the issue a VDB and the flight goes out with standbys. If you relax that rule agents will be more will process early VDBs and it would keep chaos to a minimum.

kb1992

A credit card signing gives you 50K miles even if you never paid one dollar to COUA.

goingbananas

Yeah...the OP can take it up with Scott since the Customer Care group reports to him...

dgdevil

$500 just adds insult to injury. They gave me $400 the other day for a relatively minor mechanical delay.

elitetraveler

Thanks for this. Obviously foot/mouth/insert. As One can eat their foot and not even realize it.

craz

WOW! if Jeff doesnt take his head out of his ____ , UA is heading straight down

was gonna do a MR next week and cut my Staycation short, when I fnally decided to press the button the fare went thru the roof. Now Im Im not giving CO any $$

CO d/b/a UA is not gotta cut if it palns to stick to all PMCO ways of doing things

these were PMCO employees working what was a PMCO flight, I hate to think what would have been had it been PMUA employees working a PMUA flight having to use CO ways