Disassembled Airline (Formely United)

Clicker wrote:After being subject to their tender mercys during a trip to Calif back in Oct, the wife and I were truly flummoxed at the shabby, uncaring, disjointed ineffective service we received on that trip via United.  To make a long stry short, we were supposed to fly from John Wayne in Calif to Springfield Mo on a Saturday. We finally made it home on Monday night around 11 p/m.  After pitching a giant bitch and enduring interrogation by 3 different PR types we managed to wring a couple of $400 vouchers for our trouble.  Airlines in general have become the worst offenders of the need to be treated like humans instead of herd animals headed to the slaughter.  I flew for almost 40 yrs on business and saw the evolution of the business from top of the line operations to being run like a Central American Bus company. They no longer offer cash when you are displaced they give vouchers, mostly because no one actually uses them, they are only good when booking thru the airline.  They do provide hotel and meal vouchers but again the meals are only good at the airport and not all vendors honor them so when you get to the hotel you're on your own.  I've learned some things due to this latest fiasco with the Dr removed from a United flt in Chicago.  If you hold out long enough they just might offer a real cash incentive like they did years ago. Also there is a classification of passenger called a "Must fly" passenger.  In this case that seemed to apply to aircrew being ferried to another airport to pick up a plane.
We're flying United again Jne 30th on the vouchers we got.  Perhaps if we get screwed over again we can perpetuate the saga of free flying forever!!!!!

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/04/13/united-passenger-says-suffered-concussion-broken-nose-lost-teeth-during-incident-lawyer-says/22038608/

Darth Cheney wrote:I fly united fairly often and have never had anything but great service. I hope and pray they drag me off a plane some day and Ill put on a show that will make our Vietnamese doctor look like a picker. I can guarantee there is a lot more to this story...oh, he'll make a killing.

Jammer wrote:

Clicker wrote:After being subject to their tender mercys during a trip to Calif back in Oct, the wife and I were truly flummoxed at the shabby, uncaring, disjointed ineffective service we received on that trip via United.  To make a long stry short, we were supposed to fly from John Wayne in Calif to Springfield Mo on a Saturday. We finally made it home on Monday night around 11 p/m.  After pitching a giant bitch and enduring interrogation by 3 different PR types we managed to wring a couple of $400 vouchers for our trouble.  Airlines in general have become the worst offenders of the need to be treated like humans instead of herd animals headed to the slaughter.  I flew for almost 40 yrs on business and saw the evolution of the business from top of the line operations to being run like a Central American Bus company. They no longer offer cash when you are displaced they give vouchers, mostly because no one actually uses them, they are only good when booking thru the airline.  They do provide hotel and meal vouchers but again the meals are only good at the airport and not all vendors honor them so when you get to the hotel you're on your own.  I've learned some things due to this latest fiasco with the Dr removed from a United flt in Chicago.  If you hold out long enough they just might offer a real cash incentive like they did years ago. Also there is a classification of passenger called a "Must fly" passenger.  In this case that seemed to apply to aircrew being ferried to another airport to pick up a plane.
We're flying United again Jne 30th on the vouchers we got.  Perhaps if we get screwed over again we can perpetuate the saga of free flying forever!!!!!

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/04/13/united-passenger-says-suffered-concussion-broken-nose-lost-teeth-during-incident-lawyer-says/22038608/

United has always been one of my least favorite airlines.  They are literally my last choice when I have to fly as it is an airline completely run by LIBERALS.  Liberals always try to impress you with their words, but they absolutely do not care about people.    My first choice is always to jump in the car and drive if at all possible.  If more people did that and voted with their pocketbooks, perhaps some airlines would eventually come to their senses.

Darth Cheney wrote:I was in the Denver airport yesterday...the were over booked for a flight to El Paso. First announcement $300...5 minutes later $700 and meal voucher. Another flight was later in the day. Someone must have made the deal. Then they boarded the airplane and three or four people never showed up for their flight so they never were over booked as it turned out but paid $700+ and didn't get to fly with a full plane. People are swine...

Jammer wrote:

Darth Cheney wrote:I fly united fairly often and have never had anything but great service. I hope and pray they drag me off a plane some day and Ill put on a show that will make our Vietnamese doctor look like a picker. I can guarantee there is a lot more to this story...oh, he'll make a killing.

Darth, you bring up several good points.  The first is that the perception of a company’s level of customer satisfaction is completely personal.  I have two friends who fly often and think United is the best.  They go out of their way to fly United, unlike me who would do anything possible to avoid using United Airlines.

However, I will toss a second data point in on that particular issue and it is the following link to a JD Power Airline Customer Satisfaction Survey for 2016:

http://www.jdpower.com/press-releases/2016-north-america-airline-satisfaction-study

It is possible to conclude from that survey data that United Airlines is at or very near the bottom of all airlines when it comes to taking care of their customers.

A good second point that you also bring up is that there is probably “more to the story”.  I would not doubt that for a minute.  I suspect that the “victim” in this case is anything but a “normal” person and probably contributed to the events that occurred.

Finally, I will inject an opinion.  I believe there are TWO SEPARATE issues in this incident.  The one that everyone is focusing on is the physical violence involved in the man being drug off the aircraft.  I suspect that United had virtually nothing to do with that.  I will bet they turned it over to some type of security or police force.

So, while United will get vilified for this violent action, it is really some type of UNION led thuggery that perpetrated this act.  Knowing how Chicago operates, nothing would surprise me on what was really the root cause of this incident.  I just know that UNIONS run Chicago and they are all REPRESSIVE LIBERAL THUGS.

My dislike for United Airlines would cause me to focus on their policies on “overbooking” and “how to deal with an overbooking situation” and not the violent dragging of the man off the plane.   Here again United is a Chicago based company and that is often not good.  They probably have some conservatives somewhere in management, but their bureaucracy will be cluttered with REPRESSIVE LIBERALS and there will be several UNIONS involved.  

It is this REPRESSIVE LIBERAL culture that leads to the employees thinking they are kings and the customers are merely peasants who should follow their directives.  “Do this and do that – BECAUSE WE SAID SO”.  That is just how REPRESSIVE LIBERALS think.

For comparison take an airline like Delta.  While they also “overbook” their flights, they have very few of these types of customer complaints.  And why is that?  Well for one, they treat their customers LIKE CUSTOMERS.  They actually offer something of value for the customer’s inconvenience while United usually only offers a few hundred-dollar voucher for use on a FUTURE CRAPPY UNITED FLIGHT.

Shortie's Ex wrote:

Darth Cheney wrote:I was in the Denver airport yesterday...the were over booked for a flight to El Paso. First announcement $300...5 minutes later $700 and meal voucher. Another flight was later in the day. Someone must have made the deal. Then they boarded the airplane and three or four people never showed up for their flight so they never were over booked as it turned out but paid $700+ and didn't get to fly with a full plane. People are swine...

Those bump deals are usually not completed until after the plane has boarded.  You agree to surrender your seat contingent that it is actually needed to accommodate another passenger. The gate agent will take or cancel your original boarding pass and ask you to remain in the gate area until after the flight has departed the gate.  In the final 15 mins prior to departure, this is sorted out.  Passengers either show up, or they don't.  
In the final moments prior to closing the flight, if there are empty seats on the flight, those who volunteered to surrender their seat get re-assigned to those empty seats.  
After the hub bub of boarding and departure from the gate is complete, the gate agents process the details of compensation for any volunteers who actually had to be displaced from that flight.

Jammer wrote:

Darth Cheney wrote:I fly united fairly often and have never had anything but great service. I hope and pray they drag me off a plane some day and Ill put on a show that will make our Vietnamese doctor look like a picker. I can guarantee there is a lot more to this story...oh, he'll make a killing.

Darth, you bring up several good points.  The first is that the perception of a company’s level of customer satisfaction is completely personal.  I have two friends who fly often and think United is the best.  They go out of their way to fly United, unlike me who would do anything possible to avoid using United Airlines.

However, I will toss a second data point in on that particular issue and it is the following link to a JD Power Airline Customer Satisfaction Survey for 2016:

http://www.jdpower.com/press-releases/2016-north-america-airline-satisfaction-study

It is possible to conclude from that survey data that United Airlines is at or very near the bottom of all airlines when it comes to taking care of their customers.

A good second point that you also bring up is that there is probably “more to the story”.  I would not doubt that for a minute.  I suspect that the “victim” in this case is anything but a “normal” person and probably contributed to the events that occurred.

Finally, I will inject an opinion.  I believe there are TWO SEPARATE issues in this incident.  The one that everyone is focusing on is the physical violence involved in the man being drug off the aircraft.  I suspect that United had virtually nothing to do with that.  I will bet they turned it over to some type of security or police force.

So, while United will get vilified for this violent action, it is really some type of UNION led thuggery that perpetrated this act.  Knowing how Chicago operates, nothing would surprise me on what was really the root cause of this incident.  I just know that UNIONS run Chicago and they are all REPRESSIVE LIBERAL THUGS.

My dislike for United Airlines would cause me to focus on their policies on “overbooking” and “how to deal with an overbooking situation” and not the violent dragging of the man off the plane.   Here again United is a Chicago based company and that is often not good.  They probably have some conservatives somewhere in management, but their bureaucracy will be cluttered with REPRESSIVE LIBERALS and there will be several UNIONS involved.  

It is this REPRESSIVE LIBERAL culture that leads to the employees thinking they are kings and the customers are merely peasants who should follow their directives.  “Do this and do that – BECAUSE WE SAID SO”.  That is just how REPRESSIVE LIBERALS think.

For comparison take an airline like Delta.  While they also “overbook” their flights, they have very few of these types of customer complaints.  And why is that?  Well for one, they treat their customers LIKE CUSTOMERS.  They actually offer something of value for the customer’s inconvenience while United usually only offers a few hundred-dollar voucher for use on a FUTURE CRAPPY UNITED FLIGHT.

Darth Cheney wrote:I was in the Denver airport yesterday...the were over booked for a flight to El Paso. First announcement $300...5 minutes later $700 and meal voucher. Another flight was later in the day. Someone must have made the deal. Then they boarded the airplane and three or four people never showed up for their flight so they never were over booked as it turned out but paid $700+ and didn't get to fly with a full plane. People are swine...

Clicker wrote:Delta is an acronym. It means "Doesn't Ever Leave The Airport".  Didn't believe it till I saw it in practice at DFW back in the 90s.  Wife and I were on a long layover at DFW (5hrs) When we noticed that a departing flt came right back to a different gate.  We saw the same passengers doing U-turns, off one plane on another and different planes jumping from gate to gate.  I got really curious and noted the tail number of one of the planes.  The same plane left a gate three times and returned within 10 min.  What they were doing was using planes that couldn't fly to meet their departure times, when the plane was pushed back from the gate. Thus the acronym.

The Chicago Tribune wrote:
Working at the city's two major airports, they are a mix of part- and full-time cops, and some work as police in other departments, said Adam Rosen, a spokesman for Service Employees International Union Local 73, which represents them. Full-timers earn between $50,000 and $88,000 a year and cost the city about $19 million a year.

We prefer to use the power of persuasion, but if that doesn’t work we use the persuasion of power.

Dr. Evil wrote:

Shortie's Ex wrote:

Darth Cheney wrote:I was in the Denver airport yesterday...the were over booked for a flight to El Paso. First announcement $300...5 minutes later $700 and meal voucher. Another flight was later in the day. Someone must have made the deal. Then they boarded the airplane and three or four people never showed up for their flight so they never were over booked as it turned out but paid $700+ and didn't get to fly with a full plane. People are swine...

Those bump deals are usually not completed until after the plane has boarded.  You agree to surrender your seat contingent that it is actually needed to accommodate another passenger. The gate agent will take or cancel your original boarding pass and ask you to remain in the gate area until after the flight has departed the gate.  In the final 15 mins prior to departure, this is sorted out.  Passengers either show up, or they don't.  
In the final moments prior to closing the flight, if there are empty seats on the flight, those who volunteered to surrender their seat get re-assigned to those empty seats.  
After the hub bub of boarding and departure from the gate is complete, the gate agents process the details of compensation for any volunteers who actually had to be displaced from that flight.

Awww Shortie, don't you see?? He's trying to blame the passengers for this guy being beaten to a bloody pulp. Just like he would blame his ex for having to give her a black eye or a bloody nose. You'd better stop ruining his fun or there'll be consequences....