Italian_Kayaker

The madness continues... Although calling this "horrific", as opposed to lack of manners, is a bit of an exaggeration.

"[The gate agent] walked over and took away my tennis bag and tagged it with a check-in tape! She even physically grabbed my passport and boarding passes from my hand.”

http://nextshark.com/zhang-shuai-chi...ited-airlines/

boerne

http://nextshark.com/zhang-shuai-chi...ited-airlines/

I keep thinking I might switch to UA, but apparently they still don't care about customer service.
this link includes a photo of the UA GA who allegedly was treating the Pro Tennis star poorly.

So nope. Good luck to you all. Wear a helmet when flying UA.

sannmann

Does being a pro tennis player absolve her from complying with United's rules with regard to carry-ons?

idiosyncrasy

Doesn't excuse any form of poor customer service in forcing her to check it in though. We've all seen larger carry-on's than that in the picture being carried on planes and no one ever stopped them, including overstuffed carry-on's where FA's can't close the bin properly.

After the Reno, NV incident where a white man in a wheelchair launched a relentless verbal assault on a passenger speaking Spanish to his mother, I assume flying out of Tampa, FL would give minorities the same sorts of experiences whether it comes from another passenger or from the gate agent.

MSPeconomist

I guess she's lucky that the UA agent didn't damage her passport when it was grabbed.

Kevin AA

I don't know which is worse, rude UA staff or idiot passengers who think the rules don't apply to them. I clicked on the link and the picture of the carry-on is clearly outside the sizer dimensions. We don't care where you're from or what you do for a living. The sizer is the same for everyone.

When people post this stuff on facebook, the comments are almost universally in agreement with the poster. Here on flyertalk, we have differences of opinion. That's because FT has a far higher signal-to-noise ratio than FB. FB is just trash IMO.

TennisNoob

I used to play competitive when I was young, we traveled around the skies with our tennis bags as carry-ons. We've never had any issues. This was the Continental days for me of course. The only thing I put in my bag were my 3 tennis racquets and put everything else to the under carriage. At least if United lost my bags, I would still be able to compete.

This aggravates me a bit because like someone mentioned above, there are way too many bags out there that should have been caught to attention before her tennis bag. All these years of flying United I've never see ANY GA stop anyone for having too large of a bag.

notquiteaff

That was presumably also when the first checked bag was free and overhead bins didn't fill by by Boarding Group 3. Did they even have sizers back then?

malgudi

All that big talk from Oscar promising changes ...

MY-OTHER-BROTHER-"TED"

NO, but now they have designated violin snatchers, and tennis bag grabbers!
Look closely at their uniform collars, and you will see a small violin and/or a tennis racket pin, and every diamond signifies 10 or more confiscations.

MSPeconomist

UA: The airline of the drag, snatch, and grab, with some screaming, assault, and battery thrown in. Fly the Unfriendly Skies.

emcampbe

They didn't have the sizers back then, but they had worse.

Back at some point - maybe in the 90's, the trend was to put to put a cutout at the front of the x-ray machines at security. The major airline at that terminal would put it there, based on their allowed size (didn't the airlines hire their own security for the checkpoints at that point too, pre-9/11?). Basically anything that wouldn't pass through wouldn't come through security, and presumably one got sent back to check it.

An airline at the time, called Continental, sued at some point, especially considering around this time they had a campaign going promoting their larger overhead bins, which became useless if the bags weren't allowed through security.

FlyingNone

-----

From the Facebook photos he had a red bag, a brown bag and a black bag (backpack?).....that's three carryons with stuff sticking out. 1K or not, you don't get three carryons (He actually says he started out with four) -- truly excessive. Gotta love it when people grouse because they can't get their way. Childish and ridiculous. ......The GA was doing her job but I guess everyone that feels they should have exceptions can post all over Facebook otherwise and claim all sorts of mishandling. "torn boarding pass"......WHERE IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE TORN - on the perforated edge. It certainly wasn't destroyed. Why now do I really doubt the boarding pass and passport were "grabbed" from him?

Walk a mile in agents' shoes, I can guarantee it's a different perspective. I'm sick of every whiner coming out of the woodwork and expecting apologies and monetary/ miles rewards for their own rudeness and tantrum throwing. Do they not know that if enough people cry "Wolf" United and all the rest will have to stop their current never-ending flow of money and miles ? Sorry the street goes both ways, there are two sides to every "story" so people need to stop believing everything they read on Facebook accounts by some overwrought tennis player who got away with murder on previous flights with too many carryon bags.

Kacee

Too many bags.

This rule ought to be enforced more stringently.

Nothing to see here.

S.R

Not how I read it. One of her 3 bags was inside the tennis bag. So she originally had a tennis bag and a backpack.