Tag Archives for united airlines.
About six months ago United put a new status match system in place. It automates the process of considering credentials that a member is asking to match against. It looks at the status you already have and decides whether it looks valid and regularly approves status matches instantly.
However it appears that this new system doesn’t actually check whether what you’ve submitted as proof of status from another airline is… real.
Sunday morning’s United flight 1116 from Washington Dulles to San Francisco cancelled… after passengers waited around for about 17 hours.
Several issues compounded here – from weather delaying the inbound aircraft, mechanical problems and an aircraft swap, to crew timing out and exceeding their maximum duty hours. Passengers made it onto the Boeing 787 twice and even pushed back from the gate. That’s a miserable travel day that, paradoxically, highlights something that United does really well: communicates with customers throughout.
Delta’s outsourced Sky magazine laid off all its staff at the start of the pandemic. American, which outsourced American Way starting with US Airways management’s takeover in 2015, followed suit a year later despite The Onion once suggesting that the airline stop flying passengers to focus on its core magazine business.
And now United Airlines has followed suit axing its Hemispheres magazine from seatback pockets.
United has been promoting ‘epic’ deals on award travel this week, with a different mystery destination each day – and sale prices available that day only.
United Airlines offers less value on a basic economy ticket than competitors do. They don’t allow basic economy passengers to bring a regular carry-on bag on, and they haven’t allowed basic economy passengers to check in online, wasting passengers’ time. Fortunately they’re relaxing the online check-in rule but they’re doing it in a strange and troubling way.
Most people don’t realize that basic economy restrictions aren’t the same across airlines and that United Airlines offers much worse value than competitors.
A United Airlines passenger sitting in first class – he and his family were all upgraded – snapped a photo of a woman in the cabin texting racial epithets about him. (He and his family are black.)
The flight was rom Charleston, South Carolina to Denver. Boarding was delayed, and he says the woman was rude to him from the start. She winds up as the passenger in front of them in the first class cabin.
United Airlines was overbooked by 14 passengers on a flight to Las Vegas. They hadn’t even sold more tickets than seats.
Word broke yesterday that United Airlines was putting bigger regional jets – Embraer 175s – on its Aspen routes. This was surprising since the airport doesn’t support these planes, and has blocked attempts to require that they make very modest changes in order to do so. How did United make this happen?
Delta and United have suspended service to Tel Aviv, in anticipation of an escalation in hostilities between Israel and Iran, Hezbollah, and other Iranian-backed groups after Israel struck Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh while at his home in Tehran.
It was something so bad that “with this kind of being a biohazard, I think we need to get this plane on the ground ASAP” according to a doctor on board. “The crew is vomiting and passengers all around are asking for masks…I talked to the crew and it sounds like it’s quite bad back there.”
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
