byoung17

I know nothing should surprise me, but I was in shock when I read your post. I thought of my parents who are in their late 70's and have heart conditions. My father has stopped flying, but my mother flies a little and almost always in purchased first or business. She's nervous enough about flying, and she would have been scared if someone had grabbed her boarding pass. She is not able to walk very fast so we usually request a wheelchair for her. My parents have never flown enough to have elite status and wouldn't have known what 1K meant.

UA handled your situation well, and I hope security was called. I'm glad that you had an enjoyable flight.

sinoflyer

OP: Congratulations for holding your composure. It shows admirable character on your part.

I'm disappointed to hear that stuff like this can still happen in America. Kudos to UA for taking the stand against the offender regardless of his FFP status.

sefrischling

Wow that is just incredible.

You figure someone who's a 1K should have flown enough to know that people travel, move, immigrate and .....pay for C and F seats.

I think if someone made a comment about my parent especially i would have been arrested for assault.

Glad to hear the Purser stepped in and this guy was sent packing.

lucky9876coins

WOW! I am absolutely speechless! This is without question the worst case of an overentitled elite I have EVER heard of! Absolutely shocking!

Congrats for keeping your cool. While I would not have been violent, I am sure I would have argued it out with this guy for a while and not taken it. Your approach was definitely better, so congrats for staying to calm!^

JBlaine

OP, I am sorry to hear about your experience.

Is there a remarks section in the MP file that could make note of the incident and put this person last on the list for upgrades for the foreseeable future? Or perhaps even a strongly worded letter from United that United has appreciated his business over the years, but given the incident with three ticketed business class passengers on xx mar 07, United would prefer if he found a new carrier for his business. I imagine United's intention is to serve all passengers with dignity and respect and passengers such as this make doing so difficult.

jef7

My blood is boiling just reading the OP's experience. That passenger's blinded and misguided sense of entitlement covers a deeper and more worrying sentiments of hate and racism.

Mike Jacoubowsky

IAD was probably ground-zero for the most-unhappy passengers, because the weather wasn't bad there (on Saturday), and yet people couldn't get where they wanted to go as fast as they wanted to get there.

A number of passengers were doing what they could to make sure others knew of their displeasure with whatever UA employee they were dealing with, telling people they were never going to fly UA again (why do people do that in front of UA employees? Why do they think telling someone you're never going to be a customer again is going to make them do something for you?). And, yes, their "Trump" card was to tell them they spend a lot of money with UA, a couple of them mentioning that they're 1K.

I was in the fortunate/unfortunate position of seeing some of these passengers through several phases of their ordeal. I got to see how they work, what actually happened vs how they claimed the world was going to stop because UA couldn't get them where they wanted to go. I got to see them call up their travel execs and have them book the best room they could find, money's not an issue, loudly enough so everyone in their traveling clique could hear.

I don't think that UA giving people "status" is what makes such people bad. They were bad to begin with. They'd be demanding whether they were 1K or GM. Maybe, if you had an airline without status, such people would go elsewhere. I was going to suggest that SouthWest might not have such people, but then I remember watching Airline...

Don't get me wrong; I still have issues with how UA handled the situation at BWI regarding my flight that couldn't arrive at its gate because of a problem with a plane still at that gate, and it wasn't until my arriving plane had been out on the tarmac for 45 minutes that they finally shifted it to one of two other open gates (completely open; no flights scheduled to arrive in the next hour). Which resulted in our flight not being able to leave because the weather had gotten progressively worse (we were supposed to leave at 5:58pm; flights continued to leave BWI unti 6:30pm).

But I'm not going to yell at anybody. I tried to find someone to talk to, but the shortest line at BWI looked to be about an hour's wait, and as those people were trying to re-book (which I'd already done on the phone), I figured best to take care of things later.

At IAD, when the pilot showed up over an hour late for IAD-SEA (the official reason is "crew late", nothing about weather keeping him from getting there on time), which was going to cause me to miss the last flight with seats home to SFO, I didn't get mad at anyone, I didn't pull out my own trump card (it was my birthday), I didn't give the gate agent the story about missing my son's first bicycle race due to yesterday's mess. I did ask if there were any upgrade possibilities (he matter-of-factly counted off the number of UGS & 1Ks on the flight, an A319, and told me not to bother), after which I asked if there was anything left in row 6... yes!). And UA made up for a lot when they actually held my connecting plane for me, rather than have it leave the gate as my plane was pulling in.

Other details- Check-in for non-elites ran pretty much the length of the main terminal. Could have been two hours for many of them. Check-in for elites ran about half an hour. Security for elites looked bad but was actually less than 10 minutes. Security for non-elites was... bad. But likely still less than half an hour. Easy Check-In seemed to be inoperative for nearly everyone. Very, very few were having any success. Me included, even though my flights hadn't changed.

Fredd

Great post! ^ ^

Especially coming from a Lowly 2P.

brahms77

How rude! I can only hope that this "jerk" is not an FTer.
Sorry that the OP had to go through with this terrible incident.

somnibaulist

Like others I admire not only your restraint in action but also your understatement -- I think this fellow's behavior transcends rudeness and it sounds like you were nothing but assertive and polite.

karenkay

so sorry to hear that happened to you--and your parents. sheesh, some people really ought not be allowed to leave the house. kudos to you for keeping your composure and for writing a nice letter to ua telling the 'real' story. classy behavior on your part. ^

i'd be willing to be that person is NOT a flyertalker. i figure we know the rules of the game well enough to know that when it looks like someone just 'got' the upgrade although we've been 'waiting two hours,' there's something else at play.

what an unfortunate incident. sorry. glad the guy was booted from the plane.

Mike Jacoubowsky is right, though...that guy was most likely a jerk long before he started flying with united.

Sneezy

You need to interject that if they really spent a lot of money on UA, they'd be Global Services.

It should be the goal of every one of us to spin such people up as much as possible. They deserve it.

And kudos to the OP for his handling of the situation.

Of course, I do wonder what Marine Corps he's talking about - I grew up in Fredericksburg, VA, and we'd always have Marines down from Quantico starting fights in the local bars...

CApreppie

Kudos to the OP for handling it well and UA.

Good for UA not to tolerate this sort of unacceptable behavior from passengers.

goalie

sorry to hear that you and your parents had to experience a true first class royal a/h, but pvtwongand the ua folks handled it perfectly. you didn't lower yourself to this jerk's level and the fact that this pax "was not seen on your flight" shows that ua handled it right as well and my gut tells me that this person might not have flown ua that day at all (come back tomorrow) or had their ticket cancelled and refunded as with that much of a stink being made by this jerk....well let's just say that methinks this person got their comeuppance in a very big way. again, sorry that you and your parents had to go thru this but kudos to you ^ for handling it like a genlteman and kudos ^ to ua as well.

dhammer53

On behalf of the many New Yorkers who fly out of JFK, I'd like to apologize for this jerk. While he may be indicitive of a few, the balance of us are (whatever passes for) normal.

Kudos to pvtwong for taking the high road. ^

dh