fiddlestickies

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.

mkr

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

uwr

Seems par for the course.

JNelson113

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

CO_Nonrev_elite

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"

channa

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

Doc Savage

You've been smiseked.

halls120

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.

iluv2fly

Comedy of errors?

People here would love for that to happen.

mduell

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

CO_Nonrev_elite

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

CO_Nonrev_elite

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.

Mike Jacoubowsky

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

nova08

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.

Catbert10

SFH, the sequel?