Ranting About United Airlines (Part I)

In October of 2010 I was flying from Dulles International Airport to San Diego on what should have been approximately a 5 hour flight arriving in San Diego at 10:35AM.  I was looking forward to spending the entire day with a friend that I was meeting there who was flying in from NY around the same time.  I had rented a car for both of us and we had plans to explore San Diego together that day.

The plane started to descend on time.  We were heading into the landing when the plane shot back up into the air again with quite some force.  Passengers looked at one another and we joked, "oops must not have been our turn to land", trying to make light of the fact that we may have just avoided a dangerous/fatal collision.  A few minutes after we were back into the air the pilot announced that, "due to an issue with a short runway we'll be landing at LAX in Los Angeles instead of San Diego" and that was it.  At this point we were all annoyed and asking out loud, "wouldn't they know that this plane couldn't be landed in San Diego?" and that didn't make sense anyway because it was an ordinary Boeing 757 and San Diego isn't a tiny airport.

About an hour later (11:30 or so) we were at LAX and ready to land in Los Angeles which is about 125 miles away from San Diego.  This time the pilot announced that there was a problem with the flap and we needed an extra long runway for the landing.  It was one of those "everyone needs to be buckled up and secured to prepare for a dangerous landing" moments.  I wasn't really worried at this point, I was somehow comforted by the fact that JetBlue once made similar landing on live television due to faulty landing gear and it was one of the smoothest landings ever seen.  Other passengers were a little more worried at this point.

As we approached the ground we saw an impressive group of fire & emergency vehicles waiting for us and following us (waiting for a crash and burn?).  We landed successfully, a bit fast, but w/o incident or injury.  The emergency vehicles turned away, almost appearing sad at the lack of action ;)

Some official people inspecting the plane after we landed at LAX

OK, so at this point I wasn't upset with United Airlines.  Stuff happens (although I suppose it's possible they hadn't properly inspected the plane before the flight), they safely avoided an airplane accident, and it's OK that I am deplaning more than an hour after I was supposed to in a city that I did not want to be in.  The problems started after we safely landed.

They didn't offer anyone a flight to San Diego.  They said there were no flights that would get people there and they really discouraged such a thing.  As we were deplaning they told us where our luggage would be and that there would be buses arriving to bring us to San Diego.  There was no one from the airline to meet us in the luggage area and provide additional information.  We weren't sure where the buses would be or when they would get there.  We got our luggage and made our way outside to where we understood the buses would be.  I think it was around 2:00PM or 2:30PM when an employee from United Airlines kind of gathered us up and told us the buses were coming and took our names as we boarded the buses.  They never once during this time offered us food or water.  There was no mention of any vouchers.  After a long bus ride I arrived in San Diego around 4:30/5:00PM.  My friend had already paid for transportation out of the airport when his flight arrived at 11:30AM.  I now had to get the car that I rented and had expected to pick up in the morning.  After all of that I was basically exhausted and very hungry; too tired to fight with the airline and demand some kind of compensation.  I wouldn't have been that upset if they had taken better care of us after we landed at LAX.

After a few days I called the airline and requested some kind of compensation for my flight, whether that was an upgrade on my next flight or a voucher, I didn't care.  I wanted something.  I called and spoke to an agent who apologized for the incident and offered me a $250 voucher which she said would be emailed to me in a couple of weeks.  I was satisfied with that outcome and thanked her.

About a month passed and I didn't receive my voucher.  I emailed United's customer support address and days later received a response saying that my voucher had been emailed to me.  This email said my voucher was included in this email as well and that I needed to use it within one year.  I scanned the email over and over again and couldn't find a voucher or how to use it.  I emailed them again and asked for further instruction.  The emails were a bit difficult to understand since they were all coming from India and there were a lot of serious grammatical errors as well as generic copied and pasted pieces of customer service "pleasantries" that made me wonder if they were actually responding to my question.  After contacting them a couple of times I finally received my voucher/ETC, but I soon realized that it was only worth $150 and not the $250 that I was told over the phone.  I decided that it wasn't worth my time to try to get that extra $100 and left it as it was.

I'll write another post about what happened when I tried to use the voucher; a credit that they owed me for something that they did.