Silver Fox

As one of my friends dad's used to say "civility costs you nothing". Oh well, those days are gone.

MatthewLAX

Has nothing to do with whether a FA smiles.

Spare me the bankruptcy/pensions correlation to good service, which is spurious and frankly N/A

aisle-guy

LOL!

LaserSailor

Definitely a problem, but probably not the kind you are thinking of.

jsintexas

Aisle Guy

All of legacy carriers are the same, I fly AA to Asia often and I am EXP in J Class most of the time. Things up front have deteriorated too.
All of those young hot FA that you talk about in the 1980s, they are all still there. Just they are 30 years older.
Its called the Seniority System.

Bretteee

My aunt flew to Australia in the 1980s on United in Business.

She said that the seat was very uncomfortable and that the seat rest could not even be lifted up.

She did not sleep a wink.

I flew QANTAS in economy in 1986 from LA to Sydney and it was great.

The food was very generous and I actually slept well in both directions.

My cousin flew UA to Sydney last month. The Economy + option though is great as it's not much more.

I just flew them from Bonaire and was surprised; nice crew and new Boeing 737-900.

However their food to Europe is atrocious. And the legroom in Y not good.

I avoid them to Europe if I can.

flyingnosh

For a moment I thought the title of this thread was "United, you've lost the pilot."

Anyway, let's keep the forum tidy and merge this into the "United - Negative Experiences 2015" thread. We're already doing a good job keeping the positive experiences in one place. If we do the same with the negative ones, then we can better focus on helping each other out.

PcolaPaul

I recently flew to SYD in Economy+. Thank goodness for those 5in. Otherwise the flight would have been extremely worse. The flight attendants acted as if it pained them to be on that flight. They rarely smiled, rarely interacted with pax, and if they did interact with pax it was short and terse. Meals were AWFUL.AWFUL...I REPEAT...AWFUL! I couldn't even eat my breakfast. That's saying something because I usually can eat anything (I was eating MREs while deployed in 2003....those were gourmet compared to what we had on that flight).

The lavs on that flight were deplorable... and people were walking into them barefoot. YUCK lol By the end of the flight the lavs were so foul smelling I resisted going.

SamuelS

Pick your reason as to why the FA's might be demotivated/disenfranchised. Could it be that their pensions were robbed by management in what Frontline described as one of the greatest transfers of wealth within a company in recent times?

Could it be that the current management fosters an atmosphere of hostility and distrust between the flight attendant group and their management team?

Could it be that the current management has done all they can to fracture the flight attendant group internally, fostering distrust and misinformation between the suCO and suUA groups in what some claim is an attempt to break the AFA?

There's a lot that's rotten in the barrel at UA and it's a great pity as there's some fantastic folks in the UASW, but running a training event (no - not Channa's fabled 1st April Pyongyang - an actual customer service training event) that tells FA's they need to smile more to counter DL being the airline of choice.... I can't help think of the lipstick on a pig analogy.

tw747

Just flew purchased BF tickets to SYD. Can't say that UA was trying to target my business. The return was re-routed via HNL, and trust me, the WORST BF/First flight I have ever had.

BearX220

Here are two different rankings of the world's ten best international economy class products. I offer them not to rub it in about United falling short -- that much is obvious -- but to show that the top brands and market leaders in the business do not deliberately make Y- grim and Spartan, as UA does, in order to propel buy-up behavior. I think it is very risky for United to put forward a deliberately, defiantly also-ran, last-resort experience down the back on longhaul. When the economy turns down again, a lot of Masters of the Universe will end up back in 38C, if they're still flying at all, and there's no reason not to desert UA for a pleasant product.

DesignAir names, in ascending order, Virgin America, China Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Emirates, JAL, Oman Air, Air NZ, Cathay, Singapore, and Etihad.

http://thedesignair.net/2015/03/28/t...-classes-2015/

The World Airline Awards names, in ascending order, ANA, Asiana, Cathay, Turkish, Singapore, JAL, Oman Air, Garuda, Korean Air, and Saudi.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hopper...b_6888280.html

"Because the customer asked for it" is not a rationale for a global airline offering a prison-aircraft product in longhaul coach when so many competitors do well by doing different.

Boghopper

Buy low sell high is the key to profitability. Only problem is if they don't have any takers. At the moment they've got lots of corporate types locked in I guess. I know if I was spending my own money on business class I would not see any reason to pick UA over its competitors on any route I can think of.

Boghopper

But then he would have to be an elite on UA and pay for UA business class. Sounds like this one was smarter than that.

aisle-guy

If seniority gives older FAs preference on the AU routes over younger FAs, what's the incentive in choosing those routes? Those older FAs have probably lost count of how many times they've been down (t)here so flying to AU can't have any inherent attraction for them.

Why not let the younger folk staff these routes, who would be prepared to be friendly and attentive to their passengers (as it was in the 90s) and at the same time happy to travel somewhere they've never or rarely visited before?

goodeats21

For the senior FAs, it is not about the thrill of seeing Australia. Senior FAs tend to bid the trips with long flight times so they only have to work a limited number of days each month.