So IAH is Houston, Texas. YYZ is Toronto, right? On a regional jet? What a nightmare.

Non-stop travel between the 5th largest city in the US and the largest city in Canada is served by a dinky RJ????? Yuck!

Highly doubt it. Customer-facing staff are the ones that are being outsourced - ramp and baggage have been outsourced for at least years. Don't know when they changed to the current contractor - believe AC ground was doing back in the day about 5+ years ago, and then Swissport (I think) was between.

The wait time listed is absolutely unacceptable. But just as a point of reference, with YYZ as one of my primary destinations until last fall, and where I was based for a long time before that up through the early 2000s, over the years, I've seen how things work. UA actually has been pretty good most of the time. I've waited over 30 minutes on a few occasions, and even more than an hour on occasion, to get a gate when flying AC over the years. I've waited this long or more for checked bags sometimes, too.

As mentioned above, this part of the operation was outsourced for years, well before the talk of any merger.

Sorry - no gate numbers at YYZ with 800 - this kind of exaggerating, while might feel good as a rant, is not going to help your argument in my book. They all start with a letter (D (domestic), E (international) or F (US)) and a two digit number.

You were probably went to the barn as it is sometimes called - gates F in the higher 80s and 90s. The waiting area is indeed awful, and its a long walk for sure...almost as deserving of a shuttle bus as the old infield(/midfield) concourse). There were likely Beech's, yes, but Dash-8s, CRJ(-200) and ERJs go there all the time, including ACs CRJs. Granted, those are mostly the 50 seater CRJ - its rare for the CRJ-700s to park there IME, but I've had it happen before. My arrivals/departures on these aircraft with UA have almost always used gates in the main terminal area (usually F61 - F65).

I've definitely heard of this on one of the ERJ carriers - I think Trans States. They bought ASA, so own CRJs too now, so perhaps thats why on your flight.

A CRJ-700 on the route is actually one of the upgrades from the merger. PMCO flew the route exclusively on 50 seat ERJs for years.

Recognizing intentional (and funny!) hyperbole and then issuing demerits for it is kinda... strange.

Perfect. That's standard release language. Ignore it, you're not planning on suing them, so let them have the release, so long as the travel credit value seems fair to you.

The pmCO RJ/prop operation at YYZ is pathetic.

(I say that as someone who is based in YYZ)

They run 2-3 flights at a time out of the regional 'barn', where its often difficult to know what is running from what gates, and the procedure on inbounds is to hold everyone on board until ALL the bags are delivered. AA lets people off over in T3, and I've never had to wait more than 3-4 minutes for the door to open, vs. > 30 minutes sometimes on UA.

And its only going to get worse.

I agree....if you want to get their attention quickly, Tweet them. Their Twitter desk seems to be one of the rare bright sides of United.

Yep, 1280 MP miles 3 hours up and pushing 4 back depending on the winds. Which is why I always go IAH->EWR->YYZ and return. Plus the possibility of actually getting a CPU on the IHA<->EWR portion and sometimes even on the EWR<->YYZ leg when its a Q400.

Never knew. Thank you both for the clarification. :-:

I've gotten canned responses from Twitter as well that did not answer my question, but yes, generally speaking, they are much better than email support!

4th largest

BTW - gate agent in LAS on Wednesday night was enforcing size limits by just looking at bags -- I saw very few people putting bags into the sizers. The GA on my flight stopped a guy as he was about to board and told him his bag was too big and to check it. It looked larger than a standard rollaboard, but not by much. I assume he got a gate check tag from the desk and carried the bag to the end of the jetway, but I boarded and didn't see him after that.

Actually the CRJ 700 is quite nice and roomy and a long trip is a lot better than a middle seat on a 737 or 319. When I took the same route on CO a few years ago, on the ERJ-145, they even served a nice cold meal and the RJ was fine for the long trip. The current AC (Sky Express) version on IAH-YYZ is labelled as a 705 (and I think is a CRJ-900), has IFE and a larger pitch than the UA version. I went one way on the AC version where there is no gate check at all - they insist that you use the overhead, which was fine - I had no problem. For the return on United (Express) I knew that my bag would fit in the overhead but the agent in IAH tagged everyone who was boarding with a roll-on. She assured me it would be at the door of the plane when we exited (yes, I stand corrected - the gate was 175 not 800 - poor memory for important details -but it still took 90 minutes and it still looks like a remnant of T2 and is very far out). I could only see the outside number of the gate. (The letters are for inside use (http://www.airliners.net/aviation-fo...d.main/5371555)
The tweet to United got a much quicker response than the initial complaint but the response was the same suggestion that I should pay to get on the plane sooner.