A message to United Airlines
April 3rd, 2008 • Business, Life
You can usually tell when a company has wandered off the path. It’s the atmosphere in the reception, a shared look on the face of the staff, or maybe an indiscrete comment from one of the juniors on the team.
I’ve just arrived in Las Vegas from London, having flown via San Francisco with United Airlines. I chose United because of the price: it was lower than any rival fare. After booking the flight and hotel through Expedia, a little research revealed that I could upgrade my United seat through their Economy Plus Access scheme - $349 would buy more legroom for myself and one other passenger. I’m 6ft 4in tall and my son’s a good 6ft, so we paid.
I arrived at Heathrow to see the longest damn queue I’ve ever witnessed - hundreds and hundreds of United passengers weaving through Terminal 3. Luckily for us, this seemed to effect a flight to Chicago and not our flight to San Fran. We were ushered through to the auto check-in machines, which proceeded to issue us with the wrong tickets (different passenger names). One of the United staff was quick to spot that this may be an issue, and led us through to the front of the check-in where the error was put right (although the girl behind the counter looked shaken, no doubt realising that the machine may be issuing wrong names for the rest of the day).
As I walked back through the terminal, a United member of staff was addressing the penned-in crowd waiting for the Chicago flight. The tone was too firm - almost aggressive. I can well imagine a restless mob of several hundred people could require clear communication and a loud voice. But as I stood watching, I wondered why staff hadn’t been allocated to the terminal entrance doors, holding cards that explained the delay and any next steps.
In the end, we didn’t sit in Economy Plus - a row of four bulkhead seats in Economy were available, so I grabbed them. Then projected video worked erractically throughout the 10-hour flight. A United member of staff walked the cabin, asking which people had ordered special meals. When someone asked a question, she explained that she was too stressed to answer right now. Ten minutes later, another member of staff told me that they were upgrading many of the planes with better in-flight entertainment systems, but that these did not stretch to back-of-seat individual screens. ‘It’s just not competitive,’ he admitted.
This isn’t some knee-jerk attack on United. I’ve flown some bloody awful airlines, and United is far from being in that club. But if by some one-in-a-million chance a member of United’s senior management should read this, here’s a message - your staff are trying to tell you something. If I were you, I’d listen.
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