Yet another reason NOT to fly United

Bill Hinton — a vice president at AOTMP, a firm with whom I’ve collaborated with in the past — had a family emergency that let his stepfather unable to travel. He had to talk with two airlines, each one responsible for a leg of the trip. One of the airlines was JetBlue, the other was United. Here’s his summary of what happened:

With JetBlue, the Customer Service Representative with compassion and immediacy provided a full credit for the flight – a fantastic customer experience and clearly positioning for additional business with any future travel plans as well as sharing the story of such great customer service.

With United Airlines, the Customer “disservice” Representative indicated the only thing United could do was charge a cancellation fee or a change fee and when the flight is re-used a ‘re-booking’ fee would be applied. When a Doctor’s note was offered along with escalation to a “Supervisor” nothing changed. So the leg of that flight will go unused as the most economic choice – a horrendous and despicable customer experience which will be considered for all future travel and shared.

Sadly, Bill wasn’t the worst-served customer in recent United history. All these incidents took place after the David Dao “re-accommodation”:

• United Flight Nearly Takes Off With Fuel Leak Until Passengers Convince Crew There’s a Problem
• United Airlines: Couple who raised alarm over plane fuel leak forced to spend night in airport lounge
• Musician says United Airlines agent ‘attacked’ her, tried to grab 17th-century violin
• United sorry for falsely accusing gay father of fondling his child
• United Airlines and top Chinese tennis star in bust-up over ‘excess baggage’

And yet, people will still fly United, even if they don’t want to. One reason is that airline passengers are price-sensitive and convenience-driven, but there’s also that fact that consolidation has reduced the number of major U.S. airlines down to four. Thanks to United’s 2010 merger with Continental, it handles more than half the passengers in Newark and Houston, and one in three fliers from Washington Dulles and San Francisco is boarding a United flight.