N1120A

Flew YYT-EWR today, which is currently UAX (mainline is summer seasonal). The flight was advertised as having a meal (breakfast) in F and boxes in the back. As the flight was nearing arrival, I asked the FA in F about the catering. She said that they weren't catered at YYT and asked about it, as they noticed that the length of the flight (blocked in excess of 3 hours) was well more than the meal threshold, and they had been catered on the flight up the night before. The YYT ground staff apparently told them that they never cater at YYT and that the passengers would "know that" so they didn't even make an announcement - on or off the plane.

They didn't even cater juice, water, sodas, etc. As an aside, the plane's potable water system was INOP, so no coffee or tea.

Pretty ridiculous.

mherdeg

Baffling.

How is YYT as a tourist destination? Is it worth visiting on the summer seasonal service (and is there anything to see in the winter / is it reliable enough on regional jets to even try?).

Often1

Send in a webform note to UA. Be brief. Say it's advertised as a Breakfast flight and repeat word-for-word what the FA told you.

aCavalierInCoach

Not to veer too OT but I'm actually surprised the service isn't seasonal the other way around (taking folks out of NL southbound connections -- think westjet runs straight to MCO in the winter).

St. John's is also a nice little town so a flight a day isn't crazy and I'm sure they're picking up yield on business travelers (check out AC's total seatcount).

Reliability should improve once the CAT III is completed.

halls120

Clearly, the meal service advertised on United.com means nothing compared to United in practice.

aCavalierInCoach

That doesn't make it ok? Or a potential violation of numerous consumer protection statutes?

mduell

You're in the airline world, most don't apply.

I'm trying to think of any DOT reg about advertised meals, but I haven't been able to come up with one yet.

restlessinRNO

I'm a little rusty on the Canadian airport codes, so for the possible benefit of others:

YYT = St. John's, Newfoundland (NF).

Indelaware

NL is absolutely worth visiting.

riphamilton

i've been eyeballing this flight in order to get to st pierre and miquelon. always wanted to visit that 'part' of france.

fgirard

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_4 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/12H143 Safari/600.1.4)

If you want to get to St. Pierre, IIRC, you can still fly from YUL too.

Kacee

Well it would fall under the umbrella of jurisdiction to regulate deceptive marketing practices, but I don't think DOT's going to get too worked up about this one.

I would send a quick note to 1kvoice.

N1120A

I wrote 1K Voice and copied the current head of customer care. Also Twitter. I'm pretty annoyed about the whole thing, especially since it seems to be regular.

I'll likely dual file complaints with the FTC and DOT, if I don't see resolution. This was, indeed, false advertising.

It was really lovely and is well worth visiting. The winters are pretty harsh, though I'd imagine the scenery is still nice, and I'm pretty sure it is reasonably reliable.

YYT seems to have a lot of business traffic, and especially locals commuting to work in other places. It seems to me that the United service is more aimed at US O&D, and the number of NY/NJ accents I heard suggest to me that they do a fair bit of EWR O&D tourist traffic. I would imagine the winter service thrives on YYT locals.

You can do that from YUL or YHZ as well. In fact, I think YHZ may be the most efficient way of doing it.

Indelaware

With all the real problems in aviation - safety issues, discrimination, poor treatment of labor, price fixing, monopolization etc - it is a shame, IMO, that people bother the DOT with what I take to be quite trivial - viz. meal service. It is far easier to simply be prepared (and happy) by packing a PB&J or apple in one's carry-on bag.

N1120A

That is a unquestionable cop out. First, I never pack food that I might forget to eat on a flight where I have to go through customs - especially either fresh fruit or nuts. Indeed, if this flight was out of a pre-clearance airport, I would't have been able to pack food to start with. Second, I'm supposed to pack my school lunch when I'm 3500 miles away from home? Right. Third, this is advertised as having a certain service. If UA are using their industry position to engage in such misleading business practices, I'm darn sure going to file a complaint about it. Fourth, your perceptions of triviality are noted and dismissed. I bought a ticket, expecting a certain service. I didn't get it. I expect internal resolution, or I'm taking it further.