Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Credit where credit is due: United

As you may know, I've had beef with United Airlines for quite some time.  One time, hilariously, I went to Arizona through LAX and United fucked up 3 out of the 4 segments. But if it's fair to bitch about it when things go wrong (and my oh may do I enjoy that), you must also give praise when things go right.

SO GOOD JOB UNITED ON THIS LAST TRIP.

Once again we were off to see Mom in Arizona.  The less said about what actually happened there the better, but if you follow me on Twitter you know it wasn't particularly fun.  Anyway, instead of giving United 4 chances to fuck it up, we booked a direct flight from SFO to Tucson.  Slightly more expensive (about $370 apiece) but hopefully worth it in the reduced chances of fuckup.  Also, with a kid it's nice because it's one straight two-hour shot instead of flying to LA, getting off one plane, getting on another plane, blah blah blah.

Both flights were on one of those smaller planes, namely an Embraer CRJ-200.



PHASE ONE: SFO TO TUCSON.  It went great!  The Wife and I were separated by a few rows, and I was handed Beyonce and told to look after for two hours.  Meanwhile, The Wife enjoyed two hours of uninterrupted reading time, something she does not normally get.  I was in seat 1A and guess what?  I was surrounded by a group of 8 women off to a spa resort weekend.  You can imagine the reaction Beyonce got.  That 2 hours fucking FLEW BY.  We got to Tucson 1 minute early.  GOLD STAR FOR YOU UNITED.

PHASE TWO; TUCSON TO SFO.  After a few days with Mom, we were a little PTSD-y and really needed things to work.  I was just waiting for United to cancel the flight.  They did not.  We were sitting next to each other this time which was fine.  The flight left on time and got to SFO 15 minutes early.  Here is Beyonce pointing at Watsonville.



So, all in all, a total success.  Maybe because United Express is operated by Skywest Airlines, posing as United, and not actually United?  Maybe Skywest should take over all of United's routes! Then we'd actually get somewhere.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We also flew United last week (to Mexico) and it was shockingly normal. Also, WiFi. I seriously had to double-check to make sure we got on the right plane.

Tamagosan said...

Clearly the threat of a bad write-up by you was enough to prompt them to get their act together. Well done and thanks from the rest of us!

Your Phase One reminds me of a friend who switches off getting up with the babies (twins!) on weekends so the other parent can sleep in. Of course, when it's my friend's husband's turn, they always seem to sleep in... Well-played, sirs.