United Airlines sucks... They can't seem to help it...
with so many other important things going on in the world, it seems a shame to waste time with corporate incompetence, but this takes the cake...
as a former employee, united and i have been on the outs since well before i left... only a couple of years after i started working there, as part of my job, i found out the grim reality of the company, namely, that its so-called leadership exhibits all the characteristics of our esteemed bush administration... now that they've emerged from bankruptcy and it's apparent that the "leadership," despite the infusion of fresh blood, is just as rotten to the core as the previous regime, let me relate my experience of last night and this morning... (please understand, however, the front line employees of united are, by and large, very good people, just working stiffs trying to get by in an environment of serial management abuse...)
last night, my daughter was flying on united from minneapolis via chicago to buenos aires to visit me... a major snowstorm unexpectedly created problems in minneapolis and her 6:50 p.m. departure didn't get off the ground until nearly 11... we had been sending text messages back and forth and i had talked to her twice by phone... i was monitoring the status of both flights on the united website... the website showed that the chicago-buenos aires flight had departed a half hour late so i knew she was going to be stuck at o'hare when she finally arrived... once she finally got airborne, it was 1:30 a.m. so i decided to hit the sack...
this morning, i awoke fairly early and checked both flights again on the united website... here is what i saw...
the website said that the minneapolis-chicago flight had been diverted to indianapolis and was still there... it showed the same information about the chicago-buenos aires flight that i had seen last night only updated to say that it would arrive in buenos aires approximately four hours late...
i called my daughter and announced myself by saying, "so, how are things in indianapolis?" trying to be cute... she told me she had just landed in chicago about 10 minutes before i called, that the plane had landed in indianapolis at about 1:30 a.m. and that they had arrived in chicago at about 4 a.m... she was on the customer service phone at the same time checking on whether or not she would be able to get out to buenos aires on tonight's flight... i heard her say, "oh, so it's not departed yet...?" it turns out that last night's chicago-buenos aires flight had been CANCELLED...
bottom line...? using the united website to check on flight status is not only a waste of time, it's also dead wrong... had i not been in direct contact with my daughter and been relying only on the website for information, i would be heading out to buenos aires ezeiza international airport in a couple of hours only to find out that my daughter is still in chicago and that the flight she was supposed to be on didn't even depart last night... this is pathetic performance... if i didn't know how much the peons who work there need their jobs, i would have been happy to see this sorry excuse for a major airline go permanently and irrevocably belly-up...
meanwhile, my daughter is still in chicago, cooling her heels, waiting for tonight's flight...
p.s. note the proud statement on the flight status screen: "here is the LATEST information about the flight you have selected..." those screen shots were taken at 11 a.m., argentina time, 9 a.m. u.s. eastern time... did i mention that i hate united...? Submit To Propeller
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as a former employee, united and i have been on the outs since well before i left... only a couple of years after i started working there, as part of my job, i found out the grim reality of the company, namely, that its so-called leadership exhibits all the characteristics of our esteemed bush administration... now that they've emerged from bankruptcy and it's apparent that the "leadership," despite the infusion of fresh blood, is just as rotten to the core as the previous regime, let me relate my experience of last night and this morning... (please understand, however, the front line employees of united are, by and large, very good people, just working stiffs trying to get by in an environment of serial management abuse...)
last night, my daughter was flying on united from minneapolis via chicago to buenos aires to visit me... a major snowstorm unexpectedly created problems in minneapolis and her 6:50 p.m. departure didn't get off the ground until nearly 11... we had been sending text messages back and forth and i had talked to her twice by phone... i was monitoring the status of both flights on the united website... the website showed that the chicago-buenos aires flight had departed a half hour late so i knew she was going to be stuck at o'hare when she finally arrived... once she finally got airborne, it was 1:30 a.m. so i decided to hit the sack...
this morning, i awoke fairly early and checked both flights again on the united website... here is what i saw...
the website said that the minneapolis-chicago flight had been diverted to indianapolis and was still there... it showed the same information about the chicago-buenos aires flight that i had seen last night only updated to say that it would arrive in buenos aires approximately four hours late...
i called my daughter and announced myself by saying, "so, how are things in indianapolis?" trying to be cute... she told me she had just landed in chicago about 10 minutes before i called, that the plane had landed in indianapolis at about 1:30 a.m. and that they had arrived in chicago at about 4 a.m... she was on the customer service phone at the same time checking on whether or not she would be able to get out to buenos aires on tonight's flight... i heard her say, "oh, so it's not departed yet...?" it turns out that last night's chicago-buenos aires flight had been CANCELLED...
bottom line...? using the united website to check on flight status is not only a waste of time, it's also dead wrong... had i not been in direct contact with my daughter and been relying only on the website for information, i would be heading out to buenos aires ezeiza international airport in a couple of hours only to find out that my daughter is still in chicago and that the flight she was supposed to be on didn't even depart last night... this is pathetic performance... if i didn't know how much the peons who work there need their jobs, i would have been happy to see this sorry excuse for a major airline go permanently and irrevocably belly-up...
meanwhile, my daughter is still in chicago, cooling her heels, waiting for tonight's flight...
p.s. note the proud statement on the flight status screen: "here is the LATEST information about the flight you have selected..." those screen shots were taken at 11 a.m., argentina time, 9 a.m. u.s. eastern time... did i mention that i hate united...? Submit To Propeller
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posted by profmarcus at
3/13/2006
