Alohashirt

Recently my work has required flying frequent transcons from IAD to SAN. In the last few trips, the credit card selling by flight attendants has grown more frequent and annoying. The low point came a few days ago on my "red eye," where FA's blasted their sales pitches mid flight. This was in addition to forcing passengers to watch the idiotic Tracee Ellis Ross commercials on their seatback monitors with the ability to turn them off disabled.Clearly, the crew was aware that some people try to sleep on overnight transcon flights. But why care about that when there's a $60 reward for each application submitted? The net result of this relentless pitching is that flight attendants will soon get the same level of respect as telemarketers and spammers. Passengers will get in the habit of ignoring any of their "announcements," even the safety warnings. Or they will attempt to escape with noise-cancelling headphones. Flying is not the same thing as agreeing to sit through a time-share pitch in exchange for a hotel stay. But apparently, UA has decided that its customers are truly a "captive" audience that must and will submit.

laxmillenial

Sorry. We all don't like it, but it's not "required" on every flight thanks to the UA executives. And I believe there's a $100 reward.

Invest in some noise cancelling headphones. And of course, if you want to try and fly an airline that doesn't blast a CC announcement, your choices start dwindling rather quickly...

Just remember, it's an "enhancement based on passenger feedback!"

Alohashirt

My problem is with them doing it repeatedly and mindlessly mid-flight on overnight transcons. Plenty of other airlines limit the pitches to either the end of the flight or the beginning. So did United, until recently.

jsloan

I suggest that anyone who doesn't like the practice register their displeasure with UA. Personally, I find it obnoxious at any time, but mid-flight on a redeye sounds like a crew deliberately trying to get passengers to complain.

I can't imagine that UA's flight attendants took the job because they wanted to become shills for Chase. I'm sure many of them are just as unhappy as the passengers are.

Austin787

And there are plenty of airlines that don't do credit card pitches over the PA - maybe a brief commercial on the streamed IFE if that. Delta, Alaska, JetBlue, and Southwest come to mind.

clubord

dmurphynj

We're getting Kirby'd... welcome to America West.

The first time I heard a United FA make one of these announcements, I had flashbacks.

Bethune, Tilton -- heck, even Jeff Smisek's airline -- had more class than this.

beachmouse

Delta seems to largely limit the credit card pitches to yelling at people in their hub airports. And if you're paying attention, you can generally move to the other side of the hall as you approach the sign-up stations .

SFOrunner

Experienced this yesterday on ORD-SFO, before we departed. I just wrote into Customer Care voicing my displeasure.

- Luke

Austin787

No credit card pitching on any of my JetBlue flights. YMMV, though.

elperro

American is worse.

bocastephen

Annoying on any flight, but on an overnight red-eye in the middle of the flight? Totally unacceptable! I would be livid.

fezzington

When it was announced, the program was optional. It became a running joke amongst FAs (save for the ~100 or so in the system who actively pushed them)

It's now been made mandatory as of Sept. 2. (I think I forewarned of this in a post here at some point)

Please write in if you don't like it. Although, be warned that if you're on FT, you're likely not the target audience for these pitches anyways, and your feedback may not mean as much as it usually would as a 1K/GS.

Gig103

Doug Parker: "The best part of the IFE system was the commercial before every show. Let's keep that feature while removing the actual IFE!"

jsloan

Yes, I remember that post.

And I did write in, and while you're right that we're not the target audience, it's going to take a lot of credit card sign-ups to make up for a HVF defection. (I'm not an HVF, but..

I still recall the first time that I saw one of these (on US). It made the entire airline feel cheap. (Of course, US already had a reputation for that...) It was the first time that I had flown US in years, and it certainly didn't make me want to go back.