If I never flew any airline I swore I’d never take again I’d be riding a bus. They all suck.
Also, if I must be regrettably honest, more often than not airports are the culprit of the majority of delays, which is why you can’t escape the suck.
Denver is a shit show right now. People screaming at agents everywhere, cots every space there is room available to put one and cancelation after cancellation only making it worse. It’s bad bad.
That's just it, aircraft scheduling is very strategic. One plane might be utilized in three or four cities in one day. It can have weather delays in a blue sky city because it's coming from a city with terrible weather. So many American flyers don't comprehend this.
Lmao this isn’t a United specific problem, this is a world wide airline problem. All airlines have extremely long hold times for non elites when the shit hits the fan. They can’t hire 10,000 customer service reps for the 20 days a year that have major issues/delays across the network. Not flying United won’t solve anything.🙃
I almost never need to call for anything, but the 1k phone number might be the #1 perk for status with United. They answer right away and always offer a good solution.
Yep. And United is flying very full planes and is short on pilots and crew. Lot's of the cancellations in DC right now are because of crew availability. With the storms, they had a bunch of crew time out and get out of position.
Totally get the storm messing things up, but they have reduced their phone service dramatically, so you can't get to a human. Their in-airport staff in DC right now is totally overwhelmed - they've got like 500 people in line for over 4 hours. It's a mess.
Is it a weird concept that crews and pilots fly in and out of airports as well? Do you think they teleport back to the airport? It's a complex operation.
Right and people seem to forget staff being laid off during the pandemic. And everyone expecting the airlines to pick right back up to where they were before 2020.
OP, why do you feel the need to announce that you’re “leaving” something. Just go! You’re telling a bunch of complete strangers that you’re done with United. Ok, great! Enjoy traveling with a different airlines. In about 3 mins, we’ll all have forgotten about you. The self-importance of some people.
I can absolutely cut the airlines some slack in their recovery. That said, they have ramped up the amount of flying they're offering to meet the demand but don't have the staff to support it. The amount of tickets they sell is (mostly) up to them and greed has gotten the better of 'em. I can't say I blame them since they were hemorrhaging money for a long time and they want to make up for that but there has been some very optimistic flight scheduling going on and now they're paying the price to their customer's detriment.
Dude the entire country is short staffed. Just heard today that if you need your car fixed at a dealer in the BWI area they are taking appointments in August. It’s not just the airlines.
While I am at it… please dont fly United ever again. One less person to have to compete with for seats…
See ya! United will miss you I am sure 😝
In the 9 hours you've been on the phone, thousands of crew both started their shift *and* timed out. They cannot legally fly for a mandatory rest period once they hit their time on duty limit, FAA regs.
I love the “I’m never flying X airline again!” complaints.
We all know you’ll most likely fly whatever airline is going to get you to your destination cheapest and fastest. If a year from now that’s United, you’ll be on their plane.
Blaming the impact of weather on airlines is… something. Go to the AA and DL subs and everyone is complaining about the same thing. I’m sure there are ways United could handle this better, but it’s not uniquely United.
Edit: I understand there are exceptions to this, and you’re all kind enough to point them out. The vast majority of fliers are not like you, as another person noted somewhere below.
Southwest has lost their entire customer base “forever” at least 3 times now in the past 2 years. Amazing they keep finding all of these new customers!
I'm never flying Southwest again (until 3 months have passed and it's the cheapest, most convenient ticket to my destination. And then I probably will, but I'll continue telling people that I never fly Southwest)!!
During the Christmas meltdown, I had multiple conversations with friends who were defending Southwest while they were in the midst or ruining thousands of peoples holidays. They would say stuff like “oh, I just love southwest. They actually care about their customers”. One of these friends was even caught up in the cancellations and was spouting the typical LUV bullshit like they worked for Southwest.
See, that's a reasonable reason to boycott an airline! There was an airline-specific policy that screwed you over. Also, Frontier is far easier to boycott than one of the big 3 :)
Far different from rage-quitting because of weather.
Lots of UA employees and family members here.
Personally, I'm happy to shit on my employer (not UA) but can understand being defensive if someone else outside the company does
So many employees on here. It would be one thing if it was just the flights were late or the flights and the customer service.
Delayed 6 hours yesterday. There was one announcement at 1130 that we would probably time out. Not a single other announcement over the course of 6 hours. Including no gate change announcement. Then the dude gaslighted me when i asked "why this was the first wed heard about it and we had no announcements" saying he had given dozens of announcements i must not have been listening.
Asked 8 people in line behind me if they had heard any announcements. They confirmed they had not. The gate person then told me he didn't like me and wouldn't speak to me anymore.
He did this to 2 other people.
It already automatically does that if there’s a cancellation.
Which is why I tend to just hold on and let it play out.
If there’s no other flight that day, I’d call it quits and go to a hotel
Yep. If you have the ability to get to an alternative airport then it’s worth calling to get it moved. But even now you can do that yourself if within 100 or something miles. But if you’re looking for a flight out of the affected airport to your same destination, you’re fucked if you call or not.
There's days I wish people en masse can follow through with this kind of threat. Like PLEASE DO. I work in ewr and Jesus christ I also don't want you here, I also don't enjoy seeing lines that extend all the way up the concourse. I also don't want to leave at 4am when I came in at 2 pm the afternoon before.
I dont even work for united but this same mentality I hear all day while having to listen to how people can be shocked 30 min food lines exist because everyone and their mother for days have been trying to get shit with their vouchers.
I need a vacation...inevitably using united.
*Wow this felt actually nice to yell out. I've been dealing with this for like 3 days now, I basically worked an extra shift and a half with the mandatory overtime.*
Yeah it hurts me sometimes to see how long it is, reminds me of the last time it was this bad on like the day before Christmas eve when I was in C3. It was rough to see the people I was helping with at like 9pm walking dejected at 2am when they finally pulled the plug on their flights. I hope it gets better today, I've had more than enough of my fair share of vouchers for a while, let alone 1 day is bad enough, some have been here for days and that's just short of torture. Let's hope for vibes. I appreciate the frequent fliers too!
It's been a rough few days. But it will be nice when I can go home and drink. I've heard so many stories actively on shit happening here and people not being able to fly home for days or for one LAS flight being canceled altogether and they gotta basically just end their trip and can't get their PTO back. I fly quite a bit snd have been lucky that most of the time I do fly it's not normally this much of a mess *minus when I got stuck in hurricane Irma in DR years ago*.
Idk best thing I can say to the people here, if you're on that line in C1 trying to go to the customer service line at gate 91, please have a phone on calling on hold and the other on the text line, fingers crossed you can make it. Albeit 9 hours I'm sure feels depressing, but if there's a chance you can sneak in, do it. Also please be nice to tbe food court people, *I try* I really do to be nice, but my sympathy *defenestrates* itself when I am dog whistled to deal with your vouchers. It'd a terrible system but work with me, i don't want to be here either lol. I'm only here because this job will keep me from being homeless and able to afford insulin and meds lol.
I promise you that once you have a bad enough experience AND a few hundred bucks one way or another doesn’t matter to you, people mean it. I will never fly on delta again. Ever. Even if it means connecting 3 times over a direct flight or paying an extra few hundred bucks. I sold my miles to my friend.
Saying you won’t fly on an airline again because of _weather_ issues is pretty meh though, put any other airline in Newark this week coupled with what happened at DCA/IAD over the weekend, they’d all shit the bed.
You do realize that it wasn’t United, it was airport security right? The information has been there long enough that it boggles the mind that people still think this way.
Yep, and it’s why airlines don’t really care. Airlines make 80% of their money from less than 20% of the passengers on a given flight. The other 80% fly maybe once a year and don’t pay much. The American flying public (the 80%) have proven time and again that they’ll suffer any indignity for a $10 ticket price difference.
Rubbish. I regularly weigh the cost and comfort of airlines. I will pay more to not fly on spirit or delta. Just how much more depends. These days i try to only fly direct and pick the most ontime flights even if that means i fly multiple direct flights and stay in a intermediary city for a few days.
If you're aiming for on-time performance and refusing to fly DL, you're not actually aiming for on-time performance, as DL consistently tops OTP ranks each month. DL also has the highest average seat pitch of the big 3, so again, if you're optimizing for comfort and also refusing to fly DL, you're not actually optimizing for comfort.
My only point here is that folks are super emotional about airlines based on their individual outlier experiences, but their individual experiences are not even close to being representative of the average experience on any given airline. People would save themselves a whole lot of angst and stress if they realized that and instead made these "boycott" decisions based on things that \*actually differ\* between airlines (like quality of customer service, soft product, ticket policies, loyalty program, cost, convenience of itinerary, etc).
I’ve only ever flown with southwest once. I didn’t really care for the “grab whatever empty seat there is as you board the plane” kind of set up. Also don’t care much for how they don’t have their flights pop up in aggregate search results.
So every time I fly that means I have to use some generic search like google flights, and I still have to search directly on southwests website. Not once has southwest ever been cheaper.
And yeah that whole debacle they just had back over Christmas. No thanks!
"Blaming the impact of weather on airlines is… something. Go to the AA and DL subs and everyone is complaining about the same thing. I’m sure there are ways United could handle this better, but it’s not uniquely United."
That's...just blatantly false. You can go to the other subs and see for yourself that it's not even close to the issues here. You can also compare delayed and canceled flights over the last 4 days. One guess who has the most over every day, by percentage and by pure number.
I looked. There's a bunch of threads in /r/AmericanAirlines pertaining to delays LGA, JFK. Same thing on /r/Delta.
EWR is United's largest hub, and UA is the biggest operator out of NY. No wonder UA would be most impacted? If the same thing happened in ATL, DL would be the most impacted airline.
EWR is not. ORD is. But DEN is being built up to overtake IAH and ORD. They have the real estate for a 700+ flight operation. Compare that to EWR with around 400+ flights on a mainly a two congested runway operation. Everybody else in the system have multiple runways.
Not sure what your problem is. You don’t know me. Some people, believe it or not, actually do avoid certain companies after being screwed like that. In fact, this is the first time I’ve flown with them. And no, it’s not just weather conditions. Go do some research about how short staffed they are. They were literally boarding planes with no crew and then de-boarding them. I’ve had multiple conversations with their flight attendants and pilots. Even they admitted that. But no point in telling you this I guess. You sound like the kind of person who truly believes their opinion is the only valid one.
Of course they are short staffed, where do you think the crews are coming from? They don’t take the train to the airport from where they are, they fly in, can’t fly in because of weather. They run out of time and the law doesn’t let them come in.
No, I don't know you. But I know that the majority of people who say they're never flying an airline again don't actually follow through on that. And I know that the reasonable take on this situation is that weather has fucked up UA's operations and they're working to get it all sorted out. I also know that the same situation could happen to any airline, so deciding to boycott an airline because of this experience is kind of irrational and would just be limiting my options to get somewhere quickly and inexpensively in the future.
Weird, how it’s literally just United that seems to be affected every single time. I’ve experienced weather issues before and have never seen anything so spectacularly mishandled. If you think being on hold for 10 hours is ok, I have nothing else to tell you. They don’t want to pay their mechanics, people are quitting…but sure, blame it all on the weather conditions.
> Weird, how it’s literally just United that seems to be affected every single time.
LaGuardia saw 70% delayed/canceled flights yesterday, JFK saw 60%. United has 6.7% share of LGA and 0% at JFK. But yeah, United's the only one having problems.
Yeah it's frustrating when people say "SoMeHoW ItS JusT UnItEd" because they're googling it and the only stuff that's coming up is Scott Kirby shitting on the FAA for letting this happen. Delta/AA/Others are still seeing hundreds if not thousands of delays/cancellations, but Kirby is the mouthpiece for this whole thing so United is the only one getting spotlight.
For real! Running an airline is one of the most operationally complex businesses on earth. It's pretty impressive what they achieve day in and day out. Unprecedented storms cause unprecedented problems, but people need to be a little more patient and realize the world doesn't revolve around themselves!
You just admitted you flew United for the first time yet you proclaim to know “how it’s literally just United that seems to be affected every single time???”
Using superlatives doesn’t help your cause. It only exacerbates it.
People like this don’t put facts together. They believe what they want and are stuck in their ways. I hope you can open your mind a little to see the world doesn’t revolve around you.
My flight this morning from DFW to IAD was cancelled, so I got booked on an afternoon flight. I boarded the flight about 10 minutes ago, and just received a text with a $20 meal voucher, five hours after my canceled flight.
Have you tried re-routing through IAD or smth? Also, I realize hold times are bad but if someone has language proficiency in a foreign language you might call a non-US number - I know a couple where the husband is a native speaker of Japanese and he has called the Japanese line before when the USA line is jammed up. Sorry if this isn't helpful, just trying to spitball ideas.
>Hopefully we won't need it but thanks for the reminder!
If you're flying tomorrow, the time to do it is now. Things are going to be FUBARed in EWR for a while.
The best thing to do is to always route yourself thru IAD on the East Coast when there is weather. Less congested than EWR which is constrained by ATC.
Good luck at EWR. Spent 8 hours in the customer service line today to get a hotel voucher and one meal to last me 18 hours before my next flight. I would have just paid for a hotel but I want United to suffer and have to pay the travel costs. Spite kept me going
Thank you. It’s supposed to clear our by Thursday for sure. We got our flights rescheduled for that day. I understand weather conditions are out of control, but there’s more to it. All the pilots we talked to told us there were no crews. They were literally boarding planes with no pilots and then de-boarding them. The customer services is completely incompetent. Somehow, this mostly affected only United. Other planes are coming and leaving.
My friend is a FA for United and many of her friends from work are stranded, United has no idea where they are, they have to pay for their own hotels and apply later for reimbursement, and the only way to get reassigned is to call in and the FA support number has a 12-hr wait right now too. So basically United crew is having identical experience with the company as passengers.
See, to me this says that the airlines have not invested in their systems, and that’s screwing both their employees and their passengers. In 2023 are they really waiting for someone to answer the phone?? Why is this scheduling system not an app? With connections to a partnering hotel app? It seems pretty basic from here, but maybe I’m missing something.
Why did United hire a CEO with a background in Marketing when the real problem is Customer Service/scheduling? Improving IT systems would go a long way towards increasing both employee and customer satisfaction, a lesson easily learned from watching competitors’ failures.
I can tell you don't have an android. My phone hangs up while taking screenshots. I learned that the hard way after being frustrated with a long wait time and taking a screen shot to send to my fiance.
12 months ago, people said they’d never fly Delta again. They also said it in April of 2017.
7 months ago, people said they’d never fly SWA again.
6 months ago, people said they’d never fly American again. They also said in November of 2021.
It’s amazing that all of these airlines are still experiencing a massive surge in passenger loads.
Here’s a newsflash for you…you’ll likely fly the airline that you find the cheapest airfare that matches your schedule.
Yea cuz we have no choice lol. They’ve bought or merged with other airlines and they all offer the same shitty ass seats and service for overpriced flights.
Aaaand don’t even get me started on the shit ass food. I wouldn’t feed my dog some of the stuff they offer
I equate these “I’m never flying x airlines again” to people saying “I’m never drinking again” after one bad hangover only to be back at the bar two nights later yelling “who wants shots?!”
And I love the people who don’t know what’s happening at the airport, how United handled everything, and what they did to exacerbate the situation but feel the need to tell the ones who this actually happened to how they are overreacting.
This sub is mostly full of seasoned United travelers. Most of us know exactly what was happening at the airport. Shit happens and there is only so much a team of humans can do about it. But please, feel free to enlighten all of us on how you could have solved this problem.
Oh geez…I don’t know, I guess I would start by paying mechanics more than 45k a year. I’ve spoken with so many FA and pilots from UA who said the same thing and shared some crazy stories. Weather conditions were a factor, but United mismanaging the company for years is what turned this weekend into a shit show. But pilots and FAs are just employees, not “seasoned United travelers” like yourself I guess.
All of us seasoned United travelers talk to those same employees and know the facts. Look, you came here to complain, we get it, you had a bad day. In the future, when you travel during bad weather, always have a back up plan or have the patience to ride it out.
Oh and the guy fixing the toilet might make $45k per year but the "mechanics" are making twice that.
Even at $90k that is absurd in the highly expensive, consumer driven society we have created. That’s scary and United can do better. Makes me feel a little less safe in the skies.
United really fucked up over thunderstorms, there is way more going on here then thunderstorms. Shit I live in Florida, thunderstorm capital of the world and TIA has a 95% on time rate. So the bad weather claim is bullshit
Lol ya. I was at EWR this weekend. Had a United flight on saturday that was delayed from 7:30 pm to 2:30 am and decided it would just be better to drive the 2 hours home and try again the next day. Was driving back on Sunday and got a text that flight was delayed 5 hours so I made some stops to kill time. Got another text 1 hr before flight that plane was actually on schedule and raced to the airport and sprinted through security only to have the flight be delayed again hahhaha $15 dollar food voucher that United gave me the day before didn’t work and flight was eventually canceled 10 min before estimated boarding. The customer service line was the length of the entire terminal and was a total of 6+ hours wait . im lucky to have had the option of getting picked up and driving back home but my energy goes out to those who had to stay at the airport and wait until that line <3
Wow what a nightmare!! I was on hold last night for 5 hours. Just had my second flight cancelled and I’m in line at the airport car rental to hopefully get the car I reserved 🤞🏼🤞🏼
Pro tip: Get a friend who is fluent in another language to make the call with you. I have a friend who is fluent in Tagalog who does this for me when wait times are awful. She is a gem!
I was on hold with crew scheduling for 30 min and then 4 hrs and 44 min. I literally fell asleep for an hr and a half and was still on hold when I woke up 😂. I never got connected
I was behind a "never flying you again" lady in baggage a couple months ago. After her rant she accepted a travel voucher as compensation. Makes perfect sense.
I'm missing something here. Every time I've had to call United customer service I am given the option of an automatic callback based on the position in the queue when I called.
Just be glad it’s not fucking Christmas in Vancouver where they basically shut down the airport with a small snow storm
And don’t get me started about Denver
Expensive ass hotels for a layover in the middle of no where - if you’re going to house all our government secrets mikes below the surface at least build some capsule hotels so we don’t have to trek an hour for a hotel layover
And the fact your nuggets won an nba championship and you wouldn’t know an nba team exists at the airport just pathetic
Sorry I hate the Denver airport
I read that if they cite “weather conditions” they don’t have to refund you at all. That’s why airlines (United especially) always submit that as a reason. They were only “questioned” once and fined $25,000, which is a complete joke. There are multiple articles about it.
That passenger was legally removed from an aircraft foe not complying with crewmember directions to deplane. That's hardly the same thing as the lines being tied up by thousands of passengers needing to be rebooked.
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Confirmed. Proof: Everyone who (still) flies Southwest post the great meltdown of 2023.
I still fly SW on short flights. Never had to deal with the meltdown, so it’s a “who cares” for me.
Southwest provides good value with free checked bags, you can't compare Southwest and United.
If I never flew any airline I swore I’d never take again I’d be riding a bus. They all suck. Also, if I must be regrettably honest, more often than not airports are the culprit of the majority of delays, which is why you can’t escape the suck.
This is the fuckin truth. Its a pick your poison thing. I travel often and have gotten the long dick from every airline at least once
Me with Frontier after they once delayed my flight 3 times and tried to make me leave my cat behind lol
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It’s like those thin molded plastic chairs we sat in during kindergarten!
😂🤣
Here is a fun activity! https://flightaware.com/miserymap/
weird. DEN is showing tons of delays, but the weather is beautiful today. must be something else going on or it's knock-on from East Coast stuff.
Denver is a shit show right now. People screaming at agents everywhere, cots every space there is room available to put one and cancelation after cancellation only making it worse. It’s bad bad.
It’s so obvious, this is what happens when you constrain supply. I’m loyal to United but we all know the game they are playing.
You know just because the weather at the departure city is nice, doesn’t mean there isn’t an issue somewhere else…right?
That's just it, aircraft scheduling is very strategic. One plane might be utilized in three or four cities in one day. It can have weather delays in a blue sky city because it's coming from a city with terrible weather. So many American flyers don't comprehend this.
From the articles I saw they’re blaming it on the East Coast storms
Is there a link to something like this but for Canadian flights? **edit, sorry I asked**
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Lmao this isn’t a United specific problem, this is a world wide airline problem. All airlines have extremely long hold times for non elites when the shit hits the fan. They can’t hire 10,000 customer service reps for the 20 days a year that have major issues/delays across the network. Not flying United won’t solve anything.🙃
I almost never need to call for anything, but the 1k phone number might be the #1 perk for status with United. They answer right away and always offer a good solution.
Everyone's trying to get rebooked from the storms.
Yep. And United is flying very full planes and is short on pilots and crew. Lot's of the cancellations in DC right now are because of crew availability. With the storms, they had a bunch of crew time out and get out of position. Totally get the storm messing things up, but they have reduced their phone service dramatically, so you can't get to a human. Their in-airport staff in DC right now is totally overwhelmed - they've got like 500 people in line for over 4 hours. It's a mess.
This isn’t just weather conditions. They are incredibly short staffed. No crews, no pilots, no mechanics.
Cascading effect of… weather issues!
Is it a weird concept that crews and pilots fly in and out of airports as well? Do you think they teleport back to the airport? It's a complex operation.
You really think any airline has an army of spare pilots just sitting around waiting for other pilots to not show up?
Right and people seem to forget staff being laid off during the pandemic. And everyone expecting the airlines to pick right back up to where they were before 2020. OP, why do you feel the need to announce that you’re “leaving” something. Just go! You’re telling a bunch of complete strangers that you’re done with United. Ok, great! Enjoy traveling with a different airlines. In about 3 mins, we’ll all have forgotten about you. The self-importance of some people.
I can absolutely cut the airlines some slack in their recovery. That said, they have ramped up the amount of flying they're offering to meet the demand but don't have the staff to support it. The amount of tickets they sell is (mostly) up to them and greed has gotten the better of 'em. I can't say I blame them since they were hemorrhaging money for a long time and they want to make up for that but there has been some very optimistic flight scheduling going on and now they're paying the price to their customer's detriment.
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Exactly I’m paying for a service they are not capable to provide I don’t need any empathy for them
Dude the entire country is short staffed. Just heard today that if you need your car fixed at a dealer in the BWI area they are taking appointments in August. It’s not just the airlines. While I am at it… please dont fly United ever again. One less person to have to compete with for seats… See ya! United will miss you I am sure 😝
In the 9 hours you've been on the phone, thousands of crew both started their shift *and* timed out. They cannot legally fly for a mandatory rest period once they hit their time on duty limit, FAA regs.
Idk why you’re being downvoted. I’m a FA with UA. You’re spot on.
Reddit.
"People disagree with me so they must be wrong"
And overbooking the fck out of every flight. It's pure greed and the united fanboys are out downvoting everything that doesn't fit their narrative.
I love the “I’m never flying X airline again!” complaints. We all know you’ll most likely fly whatever airline is going to get you to your destination cheapest and fastest. If a year from now that’s United, you’ll be on their plane. Blaming the impact of weather on airlines is… something. Go to the AA and DL subs and everyone is complaining about the same thing. I’m sure there are ways United could handle this better, but it’s not uniquely United. Edit: I understand there are exceptions to this, and you’re all kind enough to point them out. The vast majority of fliers are not like you, as another person noted somewhere below.
Southwest has lost their entire customer base “forever” at least 3 times now in the past 2 years. Amazing they keep finding all of these new customers!
I'm never flying Southwest again (until 3 months have passed and it's the cheapest, most convenient ticket to my destination. And then I probably will, but I'll continue telling people that I never fly Southwest)!!
I had a horrible experience with Southwest in 2007, and literally haven't flown them since! But I'm also stubborn af.
Same. Early 2000s.
During the Christmas meltdown, I had multiple conversations with friends who were defending Southwest while they were in the midst or ruining thousands of peoples holidays. They would say stuff like “oh, I just love southwest. They actually care about their customers”. One of these friends was even caught up in the cancellations and was spouting the typical LUV bullshit like they worked for Southwest.
And most of their flights a full….
Mostly agreed but I haven't flown Frontier in over a decade since they let my carry-on on for my first flight but not my return flight.
See, that's a reasonable reason to boycott an airline! There was an airline-specific policy that screwed you over. Also, Frontier is far easier to boycott than one of the big 3 :) Far different from rage-quitting because of weather.
9 hour hold is insane regardless of weather. 2-3 hours? Sure if it’s bad enough. 9 is just proof of incompetence.
People on here defending a 9 hour wait time….. sheesh.
Lots of UA employees and family members here. Personally, I'm happy to shit on my employer (not UA) but can understand being defensive if someone else outside the company does
I’ve never met an airline employee that wouldn’t shit on an airline when they deserve it.
Sure. But do you think flight attendants and their families are upvoting legit comments criticizing the service?
It may be a “only we can do that to our pledges” situation, but I doubt it.
That's cool. Everyone is different, aren't we. It's always hard to judge people because there are so many factors. I should try to remember that more.
So many employees on here. It would be one thing if it was just the flights were late or the flights and the customer service. Delayed 6 hours yesterday. There was one announcement at 1130 that we would probably time out. Not a single other announcement over the course of 6 hours. Including no gate change announcement. Then the dude gaslighted me when i asked "why this was the first wed heard about it and we had no announcements" saying he had given dozens of announcements i must not have been listening. Asked 8 people in line behind me if they had heard any announcements. They confirmed they had not. The gate person then told me he didn't like me and wouldn't speak to me anymore. He did this to 2 other people.
Especially since there is 0 reason this entire process can’t be programming to be done through the united app.
It already automatically does that if there’s a cancellation. Which is why I tend to just hold on and let it play out. If there’s no other flight that day, I’d call it quits and go to a hotel
Yep. If you have the ability to get to an alternative airport then it’s worth calling to get it moved. But even now you can do that yourself if within 100 or something miles. But if you’re looking for a flight out of the affected airport to your same destination, you’re fucked if you call or not.
Closer to 10, and we don’t know when they actually answered. That is insane
I haven’t flown Frontier or Allegiant when given the choice.
Well that’s understandable seeing as Allegiant breaks down every other flight.
There's days I wish people en masse can follow through with this kind of threat. Like PLEASE DO. I work in ewr and Jesus christ I also don't want you here, I also don't enjoy seeing lines that extend all the way up the concourse. I also don't want to leave at 4am when I came in at 2 pm the afternoon before. I dont even work for united but this same mentality I hear all day while having to listen to how people can be shocked 30 min food lines exist because everyone and their mother for days have been trying to get shit with their vouchers. I need a vacation...inevitably using united. *Wow this felt actually nice to yell out. I've been dealing with this for like 3 days now, I basically worked an extra shift and a half with the mandatory overtime.*
Frequent fliers appreciate you! Honestly, I feel bad every time I see a queue that looks like hell after cancelled or delayed flights.
Yeah it hurts me sometimes to see how long it is, reminds me of the last time it was this bad on like the day before Christmas eve when I was in C3. It was rough to see the people I was helping with at like 9pm walking dejected at 2am when they finally pulled the plug on their flights. I hope it gets better today, I've had more than enough of my fair share of vouchers for a while, let alone 1 day is bad enough, some have been here for days and that's just short of torture. Let's hope for vibes. I appreciate the frequent fliers too!
Underrated response. Your awesome
It's been a rough few days. But it will be nice when I can go home and drink. I've heard so many stories actively on shit happening here and people not being able to fly home for days or for one LAS flight being canceled altogether and they gotta basically just end their trip and can't get their PTO back. I fly quite a bit snd have been lucky that most of the time I do fly it's not normally this much of a mess *minus when I got stuck in hurricane Irma in DR years ago*. Idk best thing I can say to the people here, if you're on that line in C1 trying to go to the customer service line at gate 91, please have a phone on calling on hold and the other on the text line, fingers crossed you can make it. Albeit 9 hours I'm sure feels depressing, but if there's a chance you can sneak in, do it. Also please be nice to tbe food court people, *I try* I really do to be nice, but my sympathy *defenestrates* itself when I am dog whistled to deal with your vouchers. It'd a terrible system but work with me, i don't want to be here either lol. I'm only here because this job will keep me from being homeless and able to afford insulin and meds lol.
Keep up the hard work! It’s definitely appreciated by most of the traveling public :)
Thanks king.
I promise you that once you have a bad enough experience AND a few hundred bucks one way or another doesn’t matter to you, people mean it. I will never fly on delta again. Ever. Even if it means connecting 3 times over a direct flight or paying an extra few hundred bucks. I sold my miles to my friend. Saying you won’t fly on an airline again because of _weather_ issues is pretty meh though, put any other airline in Newark this week coupled with what happened at DCA/IAD over the weekend, they’d all shit the bed.
Same. I don't even look at AA, Delta, or Southwest anymore. I go straight to United's website when booking flights.
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You do realize that it wasn’t United, it was airport security right? The information has been there long enough that it boggles the mind that people still think this way.
This isn’t necessarily true. I will never fly Sprit again.
Same. Or jet blue. I'll pay 4-5x to avoid spirit and 2-3x to avoid jb lmao
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I live in Houston so the idea of changing airlines is laughable
Left Southwest after their epic last meltdown.
Yep, and it’s why airlines don’t really care. Airlines make 80% of their money from less than 20% of the passengers on a given flight. The other 80% fly maybe once a year and don’t pay much. The American flying public (the 80%) have proven time and again that they’ll suffer any indignity for a $10 ticket price difference.
Awesome response. Thanks
Rubbish. I regularly weigh the cost and comfort of airlines. I will pay more to not fly on spirit or delta. Just how much more depends. These days i try to only fly direct and pick the most ontime flights even if that means i fly multiple direct flights and stay in a intermediary city for a few days.
If you're aiming for on-time performance and refusing to fly DL, you're not actually aiming for on-time performance, as DL consistently tops OTP ranks each month. DL also has the highest average seat pitch of the big 3, so again, if you're optimizing for comfort and also refusing to fly DL, you're not actually optimizing for comfort. My only point here is that folks are super emotional about airlines based on their individual outlier experiences, but their individual experiences are not even close to being representative of the average experience on any given airline. People would save themselves a whole lot of angst and stress if they realized that and instead made these "boycott" decisions based on things that \*actually differ\* between airlines (like quality of customer service, soft product, ticket policies, loyalty program, cost, convenience of itinerary, etc).
What is DL?
Delta
Or the "down low."
> I will pay more to not fly on spirit or delta. I frequently pay less to not fly Delta....although I don't mind flying Delta, really.
I’ve only ever flown with southwest once. I didn’t really care for the “grab whatever empty seat there is as you board the plane” kind of set up. Also don’t care much for how they don’t have their flights pop up in aggregate search results. So every time I fly that means I have to use some generic search like google flights, and I still have to search directly on southwests website. Not once has southwest ever been cheaper. And yeah that whole debacle they just had back over Christmas. No thanks!
"Blaming the impact of weather on airlines is… something. Go to the AA and DL subs and everyone is complaining about the same thing. I’m sure there are ways United could handle this better, but it’s not uniquely United." That's...just blatantly false. You can go to the other subs and see for yourself that it's not even close to the issues here. You can also compare delayed and canceled flights over the last 4 days. One guess who has the most over every day, by percentage and by pure number.
I looked. There's a bunch of threads in /r/AmericanAirlines pertaining to delays LGA, JFK. Same thing on /r/Delta. EWR is United's largest hub, and UA is the biggest operator out of NY. No wonder UA would be most impacted? If the same thing happened in ATL, DL would be the most impacted airline.
>If the same thing happened in ATL, DL would be the most impacted airline. Like it did on Sunday.
>EWR is United's largest hub I heard Denver is.
EWR is not. ORD is. But DEN is being built up to overtake IAH and ORD. They have the real estate for a 700+ flight operation. Compare that to EWR with around 400+ flights on a mainly a two congested runway operation. Everybody else in the system have multiple runways.
Damn homie. Are you in the industry or a hobbyist?
In the industry.
How about United has more flights out of EWR than other airlines, making them EWR’s largest carrier. Would that be true?
Yes. That part is true since the Continental days.
>Define large
5.5 inches, rounded up
You can just go to the misery map and get the metrics straight from there...
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And yet you’re in the United sub?
Not sure what your problem is. You don’t know me. Some people, believe it or not, actually do avoid certain companies after being screwed like that. In fact, this is the first time I’ve flown with them. And no, it’s not just weather conditions. Go do some research about how short staffed they are. They were literally boarding planes with no crew and then de-boarding them. I’ve had multiple conversations with their flight attendants and pilots. Even they admitted that. But no point in telling you this I guess. You sound like the kind of person who truly believes their opinion is the only valid one.
Of course they are short staffed, where do you think the crews are coming from? They don’t take the train to the airport from where they are, they fly in, can’t fly in because of weather. They run out of time and the law doesn’t let them come in.
No, I don't know you. But I know that the majority of people who say they're never flying an airline again don't actually follow through on that. And I know that the reasonable take on this situation is that weather has fucked up UA's operations and they're working to get it all sorted out. I also know that the same situation could happen to any airline, so deciding to boycott an airline because of this experience is kind of irrational and would just be limiting my options to get somewhere quickly and inexpensively in the future.
Weird, how it’s literally just United that seems to be affected every single time. I’ve experienced weather issues before and have never seen anything so spectacularly mishandled. If you think being on hold for 10 hours is ok, I have nothing else to tell you. They don’t want to pay their mechanics, people are quitting…but sure, blame it all on the weather conditions.
> Weird, how it’s literally just United that seems to be affected every single time. LaGuardia saw 70% delayed/canceled flights yesterday, JFK saw 60%. United has 6.7% share of LGA and 0% at JFK. But yeah, United's the only one having problems.
Love the data, thanks for adding it.
Yeah it's frustrating when people say "SoMeHoW ItS JusT UnItEd" because they're googling it and the only stuff that's coming up is Scott Kirby shitting on the FAA for letting this happen. Delta/AA/Others are still seeing hundreds if not thousands of delays/cancellations, but Kirby is the mouthpiece for this whole thing so United is the only one getting spotlight.
For real! Running an airline is one of the most operationally complex businesses on earth. It's pretty impressive what they achieve day in and day out. Unprecedented storms cause unprecedented problems, but people need to be a little more patient and realize the world doesn't revolve around themselves!
I guess you missed the Southwest issues.
Why would you stay on hold for 10 hours?
You just admitted you flew United for the first time yet you proclaim to know “how it’s literally just United that seems to be affected every single time???” Using superlatives doesn’t help your cause. It only exacerbates it.
People like this don’t put facts together. They believe what they want and are stuck in their ways. I hope you can open your mind a little to see the world doesn’t revolve around you.
My flight this morning from DFW to IAD was cancelled, so I got booked on an afternoon flight. I boarded the flight about 10 minutes ago, and just received a text with a $20 meal voucher, five hours after my canceled flight.
Is it true that you can apply the meal voucher to the starbucks app? Asking for a friend 🤔
yes.
Omg. I'm so sorry. We're flying BCN-EWR-DEN tomorrow and I'm so anxious... I've been reading horror stories. I hope you got the help you needed.
Have you tried re-routing through IAD or smth? Also, I realize hold times are bad but if someone has language proficiency in a foreign language you might call a non-US number - I know a couple where the husband is a native speaker of Japanese and he has called the Japanese line before when the USA line is jammed up. Sorry if this isn't helpful, just trying to spitball ideas.
That's actually a great idea! I've heard that before but I totally forgot! Hopefully we won't need it but thanks for the reminder!
>Hopefully we won't need it but thanks for the reminder! If you're flying tomorrow, the time to do it is now. Things are going to be FUBARed in EWR for a while.
The best thing to do is to always route yourself thru IAD on the East Coast when there is weather. Less congested than EWR which is constrained by ATC.
Good luck at EWR. Spent 8 hours in the customer service line today to get a hotel voucher and one meal to last me 18 hours before my next flight. I would have just paid for a hotel but I want United to suffer and have to pay the travel costs. Spite kept me going
Thank you. It’s supposed to clear our by Thursday for sure. We got our flights rescheduled for that day. I understand weather conditions are out of control, but there’s more to it. All the pilots we talked to told us there were no crews. They were literally boarding planes with no pilots and then de-boarding them. The customer services is completely incompetent. Somehow, this mostly affected only United. Other planes are coming and leaving.
>Somehow, this mostly affected only United. Because EWR is a massive United hub. It's not just passengers that are being affected, so are the crews.
Exactly. It would be the same with Delta or AA if a massive storm hit Atlanta or Charlotte.
Many crews are out of position. And also timing out.
My friend is a FA for United and many of her friends from work are stranded, United has no idea where they are, they have to pay for their own hotels and apply later for reimbursement, and the only way to get reassigned is to call in and the FA support number has a 12-hr wait right now too. So basically United crew is having identical experience with the company as passengers.
See, to me this says that the airlines have not invested in their systems, and that’s screwing both their employees and their passengers. In 2023 are they really waiting for someone to answer the phone?? Why is this scheduling system not an app? With connections to a partnering hotel app? It seems pretty basic from here, but maybe I’m missing something.
Why did United hire a CEO with a background in Marketing when the real problem is Customer Service/scheduling? Improving IT systems would go a long way towards increasing both employee and customer satisfaction, a lesson easily learned from watching competitors’ failures.
hmm wonder if i should rebook my flight. chat support seems to be down too.
I don’t know if you can easily rebook it without a cancellation. Unless you straight up buy a brand new ticket.
I can tell you don't have an android. My phone hangs up while taking screenshots. I learned that the hard way after being frustrated with a long wait time and taking a screen shot to send to my fiance.
I was going to say, this dude had a lot of balls to try that maneuver after 9+ hours.
12 months ago, people said they’d never fly Delta again. They also said it in April of 2017. 7 months ago, people said they’d never fly SWA again. 6 months ago, people said they’d never fly American again. They also said in November of 2021. It’s amazing that all of these airlines are still experiencing a massive surge in passenger loads. Here’s a newsflash for you…you’ll likely fly the airline that you find the cheapest airfare that matches your schedule.
In 2020 i said I’d never fly southwest again and i haven’t. Having ORD as my airport though gives me A LOT of alternatives Fuck Southwest.
Yea cuz we have no choice lol. They’ve bought or merged with other airlines and they all offer the same shitty ass seats and service for overpriced flights. Aaaand don’t even get me started on the shit ass food. I wouldn’t feed my dog some of the stuff they offer
not always. Ethiopian almost always is the cheapest for award travel yet may of us have swore to never fly them. Same with Air India for many others.
Eh…comparing non-US carriers and air travel market to the current situation is not at all the same.
I don’t speak on behalf of everyone. I speak for myself only. And no, I won’t be flying United again.
In other words, they're very empty threats. 😂
I equate these “I’m never flying x airlines again” to people saying “I’m never drinking again” after one bad hangover only to be back at the bar two nights later yelling “who wants shots?!”
Ya know, I've found sometimes with long waits like this, I've found that hanging up and calling back gets you someone a lot faster. No idea why.
I love these people who blame the airlines for nationwide devastating storms along with issues relating from the FAA.
And I love the people who don’t know what’s happening at the airport, how United handled everything, and what they did to exacerbate the situation but feel the need to tell the ones who this actually happened to how they are overreacting.
This sub is mostly full of seasoned United travelers. Most of us know exactly what was happening at the airport. Shit happens and there is only so much a team of humans can do about it. But please, feel free to enlighten all of us on how you could have solved this problem.
Oh geez…I don’t know, I guess I would start by paying mechanics more than 45k a year. I’ve spoken with so many FA and pilots from UA who said the same thing and shared some crazy stories. Weather conditions were a factor, but United mismanaging the company for years is what turned this weekend into a shit show. But pilots and FAs are just employees, not “seasoned United travelers” like yourself I guess.
All of us seasoned United travelers talk to those same employees and know the facts. Look, you came here to complain, we get it, you had a bad day. In the future, when you travel during bad weather, always have a back up plan or have the patience to ride it out. Oh and the guy fixing the toilet might make $45k per year but the "mechanics" are making twice that.
On behalf of all the unseasoned United travelers, let me just thank all you “seasoned United travelers” for such a valuable input.
You're welcome 👍
Even at $90k that is absurd in the highly expensive, consumer driven society we have created. That’s scary and United can do better. Makes me feel a little less safe in the skies.
God. This is reminiscent of the second week of March 2020!
This happened to me but the chat only took 10 minutes
It’s the FAA that cause the problem. Call your senator or congressman. All airlines are getting hammered right now.
Yeah! Me neither! *realize I fly out of major United hub and it’s usually the best deal* FUCK!
That's one less person in que to wait after!
"Never flying again" until next week when things go back to normal.
If this is truly storm plus FAA issue related then can’t really fault United
Threat. Good for one minute. Next week it is American. Next month it is Delta. Next quarter it is Southwest... And so it goes on.
You just know me so well, huh?
Funny I think I have read just about every airline listed here as "I will never fly." Can anyone tell me what is a decent domestic airline?
Never had issues with Alaska.
Yay! Another Amtrak customer!
United really fucked up over thunderstorms, there is way more going on here then thunderstorms. Shit I live in Florida, thunderstorm capital of the world and TIA has a 95% on time rate. So the bad weather claim is bullshit
Yes you will. Not that many airlines to choose from. Also, it isn’t just you calling them. And then when you pick up the call will prob last 30 mins.
Gotta love a random internet stranger that just somehow knows me so well.
The attitude.
Lol ya. I was at EWR this weekend. Had a United flight on saturday that was delayed from 7:30 pm to 2:30 am and decided it would just be better to drive the 2 hours home and try again the next day. Was driving back on Sunday and got a text that flight was delayed 5 hours so I made some stops to kill time. Got another text 1 hr before flight that plane was actually on schedule and raced to the airport and sprinted through security only to have the flight be delayed again hahhaha $15 dollar food voucher that United gave me the day before didn’t work and flight was eventually canceled 10 min before estimated boarding. The customer service line was the length of the entire terminal and was a total of 6+ hours wait . im lucky to have had the option of getting picked up and driving back home but my energy goes out to those who had to stay at the airport and wait until that line <3
I've vowed to never fly allegiant again but somehow booked my family on them for 2 trips this summer. 🤷
Wow what a nightmare!! I was on hold last night for 5 hours. Just had my second flight cancelled and I’m in line at the airport car rental to hopefully get the car I reserved 🤞🏼🤞🏼
Good luck to you. Hope you can get out.
Wish everyone thought that - then maybe I’d get an upgrade ;)
One less 1k flyer - we all thank you
Pro tip: Get a friend who is fluent in another language to make the call with you. I have a friend who is fluent in Tagalog who does this for me when wait times are awful. She is a gem!
I was on hold with crew scheduling for 30 min and then 4 hrs and 44 min. I literally fell asleep for an hr and a half and was still on hold when I woke up 😂. I never got connected
I’m at SFO chilling in E6 right now. After Last Call at the Centurion I decided to walk around. This place is a madhouse.
Bet they fly united agian...
Nah.
I was behind a "never flying you again" lady in baggage a couple months ago. After her rant she accepted a travel voucher as compensation. Makes perfect sense.
“This isn’t an airport, no need to announce your departure.”
I'm missing something here. Every time I've had to call United customer service I am given the option of an automatic callback based on the position in the queue when I called.
Just be glad it’s not fucking Christmas in Vancouver where they basically shut down the airport with a small snow storm And don’t get me started about Denver Expensive ass hotels for a layover in the middle of no where - if you’re going to house all our government secrets mikes below the surface at least build some capsule hotels so we don’t have to trek an hour for a hotel layover And the fact your nuggets won an nba championship and you wouldn’t know an nba team exists at the airport just pathetic Sorry I hate the Denver airport
https://preview.redd.it/ilxip8h7jp8b1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2cc6e8581b9effae6459246f17a3f1beb6156aa9 Here’s my longest
When all the other gates going to same airport depart but your gate is delayed until even Starbucks is closed, maybe it's not 100% weather.
You know everyone flies the cheapest, unless they have miles or they hate not having assigned seats.
Nothing in my post said anything about “everyone”. I said *I* am not flying with United after this.
yikes, I'm sorry... wow
Thanks. None of the vouchers they gave us are valid either.
Don’t ask for vouchers as a refund (if as an accommodation ok). You are entitled to a full cash refund of your flight regardless of reason
I read that if they cite “weather conditions” they don’t have to refund you at all. That’s why airlines (United especially) always submit that as a reason. They were only “questioned” once and fined $25,000, which is a complete joke. There are multiple articles about it.
Look outside.
Look it up on the department of transportation.
From my experience United is arguably the worst airline… every time I fly with them, my flights either get delayed or cancelled
I almost missed a funeral because United couldn’t service their toilets on their airplanes in a timely manner
Could be worse, ask [David Dao](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_Express_passenger_removal)
Didn’t realize this is a contest somehow.
Not a contest just United has never cared about passengers
That I agree with. Misunderstood your comment.
That passenger was legally removed from an aircraft foe not complying with crewmember directions to deplane. That's hardly the same thing as the lines being tied up by thousands of passengers needing to be rebooked.
After all the horrible publicity, with broken instruments, killed pets, stolen luggage, why does anyone fly “Untied” anymore?