I just thought I’d mention that I’m not a big fan of United Airlines. Their business plan seems to be a matter of shifting all burdens of uncertainty onto their customers such that they have full plane loads of people ready to take off at their own convenience. I expect some hassles when flying. It just goes with the territory. But, somehow, with United you just get an extra feeling of indifference on the part of the company toward its customers.
I probably wouldn’t mention it if this is the first time I’d been on a trip and felt particularly annoyed by United. Most notable on this trip was the hour long delay at Dulles in getting our bags. The flight itself was only an hour from wheels up to wheels down. Then, while we were waiting for our trip back, they had apparently overbooked three or four different flights, including ours.
I don’t have any particular loyalty to any other airlines, they’re mostly just a commodity with similar levels of service — at least to an occasional traveler such as myself. But, in the future, I’ll probably spend a couple of extra bucks to avoid United and see if they’re unique or whether I just haven’t had bad luck with the other carriers yet. Apparently, I’m not the only one with a low opinion of United. In fairness, I do have to mention that there was an extremely pleasant and helpful counter person when we were checking in. We tried to use one of the self-check terminals and just got an uninformative “unable to process, please see attendant” message. The attendant was fast, pleasant, and got the job done.
When we tried to depart on United from Indy to New Hampshire via Dulles a couple of weeks ago, we got to the check in to find a couple hundred people sitting, standing, or lying down in line, and two agents. No announcements about what was going on, just two agents methodically trying to help one person at a time. I cut to the front of the line to use an unused self-check kiosk, to discover my flight would be delayed, making me miss my connection. They helpfully told me I could get there by noon the next day.
U.S. Air got us to New Hampshire (via Charlotte) at midnight. Apparently the guy who wanted an exit row/aisle/pillow fluffed (because he was important or something) distracted the woman helping us, such that our bags only got tagged to Charlotte. Backpacking’s no fun without a backpack, tent, boots, clothes, etc. Once in New Hampshire, there was nothing we could do to get anyone to really care about the bags. Eventually the national hotline reported a day later that our bags had arrived, and the airport called up with that info about four hours later, offering to deliver it all the following day, which was less effort from them than I was looking for. The first day of our trip was two extra trips to the airport because the lost luggage office doesn’t answer phones and doesn’t return messages until whenever they decide to come to work, which was almost noon on a Monday. We were just glad we finally got the gear, as their $200 compensation per lost bag if they had stayed lost would have been about $1200 short of covering the loss.
Recalling Continental did that to Doug and me, too, sending us to Oakland, our backpacks to San Francisco, and informing us we could take a cab at $90 out of our pockets to fix their error.
They all suck major ass. Except Frontier has been not half-bad.
Oh–I almost forgot that we took off in the middle of that huge storm that caused all the flooding everywhere a couple of weeks ago. The plane was loaded, we’d had the little safety talk, and had started to push back from the terminal. The big black wall cloud was off in the distance. Then we sat there for an hour, not moving. Once the clouds were on top of us and we were getting poured on, we went ahead and executed a very turbulent departure up through the crap. This was at Indy, which isn’t exactly the busiest place in the world, so not really sure what the delay was about.
Is it just me, or do the people sitting in first class just look a little too world-weary and annoyed? There’s almost never a smile among them. Back in coach, people are chatting away, making new plane-ride aquaintances, etc. Not the first class folks. No, they’re just a dour, glum-looking lot.
Unless you get a first class voucher to fly round trip for coach price. My wife and I had that opportunity 14 years ago. (Maybe it wuldn’t happen today. And the airline it happened on, TWA, no longer exists.) There was no one else in first class with usw. We enjoyed all legs of the flight from the Twin Cities to St. Louis and eventually to Boston. Even remember a male flight attendant hearing my wife’s (then) really strong southern Indiana accent and asking her where she was from. When he found out she was from Evansville he said, “Oh, that’s where Madonna filmed a League of Her Own!” He sat down and rattled on about Madonna for the last fifteen minutes of our flight.
But we’re not your typical first-class people.
I personally really like Southwest. You know what you’re paying for, but somehow they have always seemed to rise above the level of service I’ve received on the bigger boys. And I don’t mind the cattle-call seating; especially since you can print a boarding pass 24 hours early and get in the fist boarding group. This assures me my window seat-which is all I care about.
It sounds like your hotel was out in the burbs, which would be a good enough reason to fly into Dulles. If you ever have to go back with the city as your primary destination, National is one of the most convenient airports in the country, both internally and in its proximity to the city via Metro. Unfortunately, your Dulles experience matches its reputation.
I was second (and third!) John M’s suggestion of Reagan National (DCA). Wonderful little airport and you literally walk out of the airport and onto the Metro. The only caveat is that there are rigid restrictions on how late in the evening a plane can take off and land so if you have a late flight and it is delayed you might find yourself paying for a night in a nearby hotel.
Dulles was closest to the location of the wedding we attended, which is why we chose to fly in there. Having never flown to DC before, we didn’t know any better.
I’m sure it made the most sense then, as it is definitely out in the boonies. In future, though, if your destination is DC itself, DCA is the way to go. By the way, kudos to the people who ordered you the cookie and Metro card gift basket – that is waaay cool!