United Airlines Just Does Not Care!
My flight from Salt Lake City was supposed to have a short layover in Denver and then land in Reno at 5:30 PM.
At the gate, I was told that my flight was delayed. The estimated arrival time in Denver was now going to get me there just minutes before my connecting flight was scheduled to leave.
I asked the representative if there were another flight I could take that would get me there sooner. He seemed annoyed that I was bothering him and while I was waiting for his answer, he took two phone calls and spent at least 5 minutes small talking with a female employee. After 10 minutes, he told me: "There's another flight that will get you there by 11:30 PM. If that doesn't work for you, you can come back tomorrow and try again."
I explained to him that I had to make it to Reno tonight as I had roughly four hours worth of extremely urgent work that I had to do there that night. He responded very un-apologetically, once again stating that there were no other options.
Later they told us it was being delayed even longer; the new expected arrival time to Denver was 10 minutes after my connecting flight was scheduled to leave. In my vast experience flying with Southwest Airlines, I have seen them bend over backwards to help people who they have inconvenienced due to a late or canceled flight. Multiple times over the years a Southwest Airlines flight I have been on has waited an extra 5-10 minutes before taking off in order to allow passengers from another flight make the connection. I asked the United Airlines agent if he had any way to contact that flight to see if it were a possibility. He was offended that I had asked and told me he couldn't.
About 15 minutes later, I heard an announcement for a nearby gate stating that the United Airlines flight there was going to Denver also, and it was now boarding! I immediately ran to that gate and found that it was expected to arrive soon enough that I should be able to make my connection.
The plane landed in Denver ten minutes before my connecting flight was scheduled to leave. When I have flown with Southwest Airlines and a flight had been running late, or when passengers on that flight had close connections, the flight crew would announce the gate numbers for them over the intercom and allow those passengers to exit the plane first. United Airlines does neither of these things.
There were several people near me on the plane who were in similar situations and one of them asked the flight attendant which gate she had to go to as our boarding passes didn't show a gate number. The attendant, just said: "You will have to check the monitors once you deplane." Once again, no effort to be even a little friendly or helpful.
By the time I got off and literally ran to to the monitor showing departures, it was two minutes until the time my flight was suppose to leave. I quickly found Reno on the list, but the next flight it was showing wasn't leaving for hours. I frantically looked for an agent but there was no-one in sight! I spent 5 minutes running around the terminal before I finally found a gate that had a person behind the counter. He ignored the boarding pass I was trying to hand him and acting very annoyed and put upon asked me in a very belittling tone of voice if I had checked the monitor. He finally took my boarding pass, looked it up and told me that the plane had just barely left.
I got to the so called "Customer Service" area mad as hell. The unsmiling people there looked at me with disdain and didn't once try to calm me down or apologize to me. The lady who looked my flight up just snapped at me that the flight already left and that I should have planned better!!! "Didn't you look at the monitor?" she demanded of me.
I angrily told them that I couldn't believe how un-coordinated United Airlines was. They got me there in time to catch my flight only to let me miss it because of their inability and lack of desire to do a little bit extra to help people. The woman angrily snapped back at me that there was absolutely nothing they could have done. I pointed out to her that I only missed my flight by two minutes or so and that they knew I had just landed. She rudely told me that they couldn't make a flight wait, not even for two minutes.
I got absolutely no apology, no sympathy, and was treated as if the entire thing were my fault. I will now have to wait in Denver for five hours and won't make it to Reno until 11:40 PM!
Due to United Airlines' lack of service, I find myself sitting here at the Denver airport with hours to kill and nothing better to do than share my story so that hopefully others out there will read it and save themselves the horror of having to ever deal with United Airlines.
I am not upset with United Airlines for having flight delays;I am furious with them for the way they treat their customers. They were angry at ME for being upset at them for being incompetent!
NEVER AGAIN, UNITED! read more