bad day at Dulles

[dd74]

Originally posted by imcarthur
I go out of my way to NOT connect in ATL, IAD or ORD.

Ian

Hartsfield (ATL) is an enormous airport/hub. I think it's larger than LAX, so good luck connecting there unless you're quick on your feet and can catch in time those little subway cars that go under the runways. BTDT from NY to LA w/o even knowing the airport. Made my flight in minutes flat.

Oh, both United and Delta suck so bad, I expect them to suck, so I'm not surprised.

Southwest Airlines is about all I can stand - from LA to Vegas, you basically go up and come back down.

[Don Plumley]

I'm a lifetime AA Platinum and a current Premier Exec on UA. So I've flown a few times.

My last few trips on UA have demonstrated to me that the average employee is just plain angry. There are a couple of exceptions, but for the most part I've never received such poor customer service in any industry (okay, except for Dell tech support in India). The cuts they are enduring is not enabling them to deliver a reasonable service - so they are just acting as surly as they think they are being treated.

Flying from SFO to ALB via ORD a couple weeks ago - Every 15 minutes they push out the departure time 30 minutes. So I look into an SFO-IAD-ALB routing and find there is a flight leaving in 30 minutes that will do it. So I go to the counter to ask for help. "Hello, could you tell me if there are any seats available?" I ask to the man in the counter area. Having no response for a few minutes, I repeat my question figuring he could not hear me. "I heard you the first time." was the surly response I received. My jaw hangs open. I few more minutes lapse and he says with great disgust, "I'm not working this gate. I am training the agent to be able to handle the gate by herself, so I'm not allowed to help you. Just stand over there and she'll get to you eventually." The expression on my face must have said something - he then said, "Look, I'm sorry, but this is just the way it is now. We are reducing staff again and I have to train her to manage the gate alone." And I look over, and his supervisor is standing watching the one gate agent act like a one armed paperhanger. I mention, "If this is a trial, you can let them know I think it is failing." His response, "It's not a test, we are rolling it out." So I watch as the boarding lounge empties, the one gate agent is boarding the plane as two UA people watch her. I never got to ask if the plane had seats before she closed the door. With lots of time to kill, I waited in a 15 person long customer service line with one agent. I mentioned they seemed a little understaffed - he said, "This is the wave of the future, they are replacing us all. What can't be done with self-service will be with phones at the gate connected to an agent in India." Quite the company cheerleader. Yup, UA sucks. But they have really great commercials.

I just flew to Singapore on Singapore Air, using the Exec Economy non-stop out of LAX (17 hr flight). I have never felt that whenever I asked for anything, no matter how minor, that the person acted as if I just fulfilled their lifetime destiny to serve me. The smile, the attitude - wonderful. And Singapore Air is quite profitable with an extraordinary level of customer service. Go figure.