Comedy of Errors on UA flight
 

Just wanted to list all the different things that happened on my United flight to LHR this morning. All of this is under the umbrella that I absolutely know that by far the most important thing is that I arrived at my destination safely. Also, none of these things were the FA's fault; they were great the whole flight.

1. Flight was oversold and gate agents were desperately offering $800 travel vouchers to fly 12 hours later.
2. Flight was delayed due to maintenance paperwork.
3. Captain never said hello or how long the flight would be.
4. The entire plane was bundled up into the heaviest layers possible due to the unrelenting AC that the FAs could do nothing about.
5. Entertainment system had to be reset 5 minutes into the flight and then for the duration of the flight the map was not working.
6. As the plane was climbing out the FAs informed us that service would be slow since they were two FAS short that morning. They specifically said that not enough FAs were assigned to our flight. I guess they were at the bare minimum to be safe to fly?
7. I ordered a veggie meal and was informed that United no longer does veggie meals, only asian veggie meals. Neither myself or my neighbor's confirmed veggie meal orders were listed in the manifest, despite the FA telling us that if we ordered regular veggie, we would have come up as an "unfulfilled request."
8. The meal choice for the meat eaters was chicken. That was it. No standard "chicken or beef." Just chicken.
9. They were only serving juice, water, tea and coffee plus alcoholic drinks. No soda for some reason?
10. Both my tray table and my "TV" handles were broken(was sitting in exit row).

Obviously none of these are that huge of a deal on their own, but to have all of them happen on a 7 hour flight made me really wonder what the heck was going on.

These are all part of the changes Smisek says we are going to like. Just wait until more 2015 enhancements are announced. You will be able to spend your devalued RDM to assure yourself of blankets on the planes and other amenities like veggie meals and TV handles that are not broken :rolleyes:

Seems par for the course.

And they really think that people will stick around once the new mileage earnings go in. :rolleyes:

Everything they do is a comedy of errors. My mother is on a plane to Europe right now that's delayed. They were short an agent for boarding, then they had to clean the plane (that's been sitting since this morning) and now they just delayed it again because they had not loaded the catering supplies... BUT

If you look on united.com it is listed as an "AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL DELAY"

Why would you put your own mother on UA? Mother-in-law, I understand, but mother?

You've been smiseked.

I'm assuming you were on a sCO flight, correct? Understaffing TATLs seem to be a sCO habit - my first experience on sCO on a EWR-CPH flight was short FAs as well. More flyer friendly from United. :td:

Comedy of errors?

People here would love for that to happen.

That delay reason can be correct even if other things are going on.

That's of course true, but not in this case :P

United recently cut back to cut one FA position on the 777. It is systemwide change for the 777 to save money. I actually think we are in the equivalent of a slowdown now. Operations have completely fallen apart this month, and I wouldn't look too far beyond the employees thanking Jeff for his recent comments.

You're considering it a reward to have the opportunity to fly more on UA? Sometimes less is more.;)

This happened to me before. A 764 was sitting over by the SFO hangars and they waiting until 30 minutes before departure to realize they needed to tug it over to the gate, all in all something like an 75 minute delay.

SFH, the sequel?

+1, I learned something new two weeks ago about the ATC reason - don't know if it's 100% true but I'll believe it.

What happens is if for some reason a plane goes MX or crew, etc., the delay is initially registered as MX, crew, etc, but then they try to schedule a new time for departure, and ATC may inform that the new time will not work and delays perhaps 5 minutes after the suggested time, so the new delay reason gets updated to ATC, even though it was MX that caused it to become ATC.

+1 x100

That's my guess. If the Board won't do anything, even small groups of employees can take the matter into their own hands. It's going to get uglier.

\

SFH, the sequel? I am sorry, but I do not know what this means. Will someone kindly enlighten me? Thanks.
.

SFH = Summer From Hell

SFH II would likely be a lot more horrific with load factors much higher than they were SFH I.

One reason my wife and I are driving to our vacation spot this summer.

I really feel badly for the employees who have to deal with this kind of stuff day in day out and are expected to put on a smiling face throughout.

I've never seen that on CO or sCO since the merger. I've seen airlines with more FAs, but compared to UA (and US and AC), I haven't seen any difference in staffing numbers on TATL flights

This post really sums up the current situation. I'm sure we've all had these issues with flights and it just goes to show what a sorry state UA is in. (My last flight, a TALT, had the delay, AC, flight map and tray table issues. Thank goodness I didn't try for a veggie meal.)

United Airlines, dysfunction, is our function.

I've said to more than one FA, if everything was working correctly it wouldn't be United.

My parents are flying SFO-CDG on the 26th to catch a cruise. Sure hope everything goes smoothly.

And yes, I told them they should've flown AF.

This was one of those old 767's that has a beautifully updated Global First and Business and an economy section straight out of the mid 90's. I'm not sure if that's CO or UA, but the plane looked and felt OLD.

On the flight I'm referring to, a supervisor came on the aircraft, pulled an FA off, and the flight service director made a point of telling us to expect less service because of the departure of the FA.

sUA. sCO don't have Global First. Also, while all sUA 767s have updated premium cabins I believe and sCO haven't, sCO updated Y with C while sUA kept Y old-school

That really does suck, but I doubt that's a "sCO thing." Sounds like just a cr*ppy situation

Is it my understanding that UA just wants to cater to pax who can afford to fly up front and not in the back?

Does this explain why the FA seem so indifferent; basically unhappy when they are working in the back? This doesn't happen all the time, but it did on my last flight.

No I believe this is an int'l configured 757 which is pmCO staffed

No, that describes a 3-cabin pmUA 763 pretty well

OP did not mention his origin (only 7 hours of flight time, morning flight, and another flight 12 hours later) but UA is currently operating:

EWR-LHR as 4x 763 and 1x 777
IAD-LHR as 2x 777 and 1x 752

It could have been the morning 752 flight out of IAD, but it feels like it was the morning EWR 763 flight.


SunLover

Believing doesn't always make it so. OP sounds like he was riding a PMUA 3-class 767. There goes the anti-PMCO talk :rolleyes:

That was a UA bird. CO has no GF section. And all CO mainline planes look new or almost new. This board has turned into a PMCO bashing whenever things go wrong. As far as I'm concerned CO was just fined until we made the mistake of marrying up with UA.

In your opinion. While the pmUA 763s are old, the new sCO/sUA 739s look dated as soon as they lose the new plane smell.

You do realize that the management of the current combined airline is PMCO, right? Including the great Jeff Smisek.

Doesn't being short 2 FAs effect safety?
 

Dont mean to sound naive but if they can fly short 2 FAs and not be in violation of any FAA rules is the reason for those 2 FAs for service, not safety?

I just came back from BKK on a combo of TG F and LH F and it just stuns me that anybody at Willis Tower thinks that one would fly UA in GF unless they are made to.

Stuff like the OP stated is happening more and more. I have 1 RT to Europe in BF (got in on the 1400. P fare that was around for a few days) and had I not gotten that fare I would be on another airline.

Normal FA staffing on CO 757s TATL is 6 so even if the FA was pulled from the flight, it still would've gone out with 5 FAs. 1 above the FAA minimum.

I'm sure that is the case, but the FSD wasn't at all happy with the decision, and he made sure the entire plane was aware of his unhappiness.