United Airlines | Exigency In Specie

I did my trip to the US on United Airlines, who you may well know were trading under protective bankruptcy until February this year. Not surprisingly they seemed pretty keen to get feedback from their customers over the service – giving out a survey to all the passengers on two of the four flights I was on. Unfortunately they were the two outgoing flights, and my experiences on the way back probably were worth talking about too. So in the spirit of giving feedback my impressions with United…

As I detailed last week we had an interesting time booking the flight thanks to confusion between our US and UK offices, which resulted in a number of phone calls to the United UK call centre – which wasn’t overly helpful in it’s advice. The changes actually made checking in a bit more difficult as the computerised check-in machines refused to allow me to check in and directed me to queue up. The suggestion on the United UK Website that there is an express hand baggage only check-in at the rear of island F at terminal 3 proved to be out of date. Going over I was in a regular economy seat, on a comparatively quiet flight. I had a free seat next to me (and Nick Higham, the BBC media correspondent in the next seat), however I also had someone who wanted to sleep directly in front, so with the 31 inch seat pitch, things were a bit cramped. The plane had seat back screens for entertainment, but unlike some airlines they weren’t adjustable – an issue especially with the person in front of me as with her seat fully reclined, the viewing angle on the LCD screen was such that you couldn’t really see that much.

Compared to our main transatlantic carrier, Air Canada (most often we’re heading for Calgary) the food was a definite improvement. Like many carriers both United and Air Canada offer a hot meal towards the start of the flight, and a snack service towards the end. In the case of Air Canada it is a micro-waved pizza, and to be honest whenever it comes out it usually makes me want to heave. By comparison United produce a little packed lunch type snack, with a filled roll, a packet of crisps and a chocolate bar or biscuit, which from my point of view is a lot more appealing.

Aside from the viewing angle issue, the entertainment was pretty good, with a multi-channel tape based system. The downside is that the system loops round when the cabin crew spot the tape has finished – and only when the longest channel has finished – so on the way out with one film about an hour longer than all the others there was a bit of waiting around. Assuming that the cabin crew rewind the tape promptly, there is time for three movies on the transatlantic flights, and in terms of the selection there was a good choice of new movies across the nine video channels. Certainly I saw six movies that I wanted to see, and there were more listed that I didn’t get to. The main improvement I’d make is to go for a digital video on demand system, as aside from the looping issue with the tape system, the tape was starting to show signs of wear with tracking issues with the picture and sound on some channels. Take a look at this overview of the systems available for examples of airlines that do this.

On the way back I flew in an Economy Plus seat. On the planes used for the transatlantic flights about half the economy cabin was devoted to Economy Plus seats, which were identical to the economy seats, but with four inches extra seat pitch. At check-in in Atlanta, the self-service check-in offered me the option of upgrading to Economy Plus, which I turned down. However I had not previously been allocated a seat, so when the machine produced my boarding card it put me in an Economy Plus seat anyway. Since the flight back was absolutely full, and I had been seated in the middle of a row, the extra legroom was welcome, however in general I wouldn’t pay the extra for the small amount of extra space. Certainly, if you look at some of the prices you pay a lot more for the extra few inches, and compare that Thomas Cook Airlines offer 35 inches of seat pitch as standard to all economy passengers on their flights to Eastern Canada you can see there is quite some variation.

On the ground organisation was generally okay. Washington Dulles airport was particularly chaotic in the United area at the end of concourse A, with multiple flights going from the same gate, and passengers being directed to the correct plane across the tarmac, and a general lack of space at the gates on concourse C. However the building work at the airport seems to imply that these issues are being addressed. The only bit of wrong information came at Atlanta where when I checked in my boarding card listed my departure gate as T15, whilst the information boards displayed the departure gate as T14. When I got to the gate area, the plane actually left from T13, and right up until departure ground staff were having problems with people coming to the wrong gates.

In terms of whether I’d fly United again, probably yes, as they are part of the Star Alliance so I can collect frequent flyer miles for our trips to Canada with them. Having said that, it is the attraction of the frequent flyer miles, rather than anything particularly stand-out about the airline that prompts the yes. In terms of changes that would make me want to fly United in preference to another airline, chief among them would be making all the economy seats economy plus. A look at the Seat Guru comparison page shows that with their 31 inch pitch United are towards the bottom of the pile in terms of space – going for 34 or 35 inches across all economy seats would make a big difference and put them towards the top.

United Airlines 777 originally uploaded by So Cal Metro.

It’s interesting some of the things you miss about a big company when you go back for working at a small company. I came across one of those things this last week, the Travel Desk.

In SSE, any corporate travel goes through a team based at head office, who sort out flights, hotels and hire cars for you. You very rarely have to pay for anything on expenses – the hotels bill the company directly, and flights and cars you pretty well just turn up.

It’s a bit different at a small company. Our US office needed a techie to go along on a customer visit, about 100 miles from Atlanta, and on this occasion I was the person selected for the trip. A date was booked for the visit – a Thursday – and since it was their project, the US office started to make arrangements for the trip.

The first issue was when an e-mail came across saying that they were booking my return flight for the Sunday. Now if you’ve looked at airline price structures you’ll realise why – going home on Sunday meant that I was in the US over a Saturday night and it would about halve the cost of the flight, which was being paid by the US office. However it would also rack up a load of hotel expenses for the extra two nights, and I’d also not be working on the Monday, which would also cost the company money. The UK project manager scotched that idea.

The next issue was the planned routing. Our US office is in North Carolina, and the customer was paying expenses for two staff to fly from there. So the US office proposed to fly me to and from North Carolina, and then from there to Altanta, despite the fact that there are two airlines that fly direct from London to Atlanta. That idea was scotched too, and I looked up flights into Atlanta going over on the Wednesday, and back on the Friday, getting back to London by 10pm on the Friday.

Our US office then attempted to book the flights, but apparently had problems, and came back with return flights that were fine, but a seventeen hour epic journey over. At this point my UK manager got somewhat fed up, and got one of the UK staff to phone United reservations to sort out the flight going over – this he did relatively easily.

However then we had one final problem – the credit card. The ticket was booked on the company credit card in the US, and United, in common with most other airlines only allows you to book a ticket online on the condition that you can produce it at check-in. If it is booked elsewhere, the rule doesn’t apply, only direct with United. According to the revised schedule that United e-mailed, the change had resulted in us now having to show the credit card something we couldn’t do. The best suggestion we could come up with at this point was to cancel the whole lot, and rebook on my credit card, and then claim the whole thing back on expenses – however by that point there were no available seats on any flight back at all on the Friday, and the cost of the whole ticket was more than double the price we’d been quoted in the UK before the US office tried to organise it.

What I wanted to do at this point is talk to somebody at United at Heathrow to get a definitive statement as to whether they’d let me check in – not a chance – there appear to be no published numbers for United at Heathrow, or anywhere – everybody refers you to their call centre number, which is based in India, and can’t agree on the policy. We did finally get someone who went away to check the policy and claimed that we should be okay as we originally didn’t book with United. I’ve got the original e-ticket receipt which doesn’t state that I need the credit card, plus a revised booking, that isn’t an e-ticket receipt (I still need the original) which does say I need the card. On top of this I have the name of the person in United Customer Service who was adamant that I wouldn’t need the card. So it remains to see if I’ll actually manage to get to the US at all – have to keep my credit card handy just in case I suspect.

So although it was tedious and bureaucratic at times getting travel sorted at SSE, at least it wasn’t as much of a hassle as all of this!

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Thoughts from, and the lives of a Canadian and a Brit living in the UK.