Oh United. I’d forgotten how much I loathe you. Your customer service agents who can’t. Your stupid little rules and subtle ways of making travel miserable. The way to abuse frequent travellers.
I had gotten used to taking flights on an airline with great customer service. Flights with personable stewards and pilots. Fights that are never cancelled. Automatic upgrades and flights with an entertainment system on modern technology. Great landings, real beverages in real cups, and heated cashews… I love the heated cashews. But you tricked me away from my cushy flight experience. You wooed me onto a flight from Burbank to Calgary that promised an easy flight time, a simple airport experience, and a Thursday night arrival in Calgary. Something I dearly miss now that I’m in LA.
It started great: Burbank airport. Easy security. Polite, smiling people. I felt like I was flying in the 1950s. The only things missing were saddle shoes, stylish hats, and large metal suitcases. You earned my admiration and I was rethinking all my future flights.
I arrived in San Francisco: an airport I am familiar with. I casually meandered to one of the comfy seats by the eating area and smugly thought to myself how much I missed working in San Fran and having a full Friday in Calgary. You wooed me into a false sense of security, you bitch.
This is when I received the cancellation text for my flight… because of the weather. I didn’t believe it. SF had the clearest sky I have EVER seen in that city. There was great weather in Calgary. Why would the flight be cancelled? So, I went to customer service to ask why. There’s a snowstorm in Calgary, I was told. They’ve cancelled the flight because of the storm.
I pinged friends to see if it was true. But alas, you lied to me. It’s +17C in Calgary and the tulips are starting to come out. The grass is turning green and little doggies are frolicking happily in the park. Why would you lie to me? I know why: you don’t want to pay for my hotel room. So, not only are you a liar, but you are a cheap bitch too.
I need to be back in Calgary tonight, I said. I have a little girl that I need to get to another city by noon tomorrow. The whole purpose of taking this flight is to be in Calgary tonight. If I needed to be in Calgary tomorrow, I would have taken a flight tomorrow. I’m perplexed that she doesn’t see the natural logic in this statement.
We can send you to Vancouver and then Calgary. Wait… that flight is full. We can send you to Denver and then Calgary… no, that flight is full too. It looks like we’re not going to be able to get you to Calgary from San Francisco at all… (even though it is still early in the day and none of those flights to Calgary are cancelled). Apparently, every flight to Calgary has been filled with people who want to see tulips and frocking dogs. But, I don’t really believe you because I already know you are a lying, cheap bitch.
Poppycock! I said. You are part of the Star Alliance and I know there are plenty of Rouge flights to Vancouver. You can fly me through Salt Lake City. You can fly me through Edmonton. You can fly me through Seattle. Let me explain the flight routes to you and also the guaranteed seat policy for 100k fliers. Why are you treating me like a vacationer who flies once every 5-years and has plenty of time to meander through airports?
I’m sorry. All of those flights are full. We are going to have to send you back to L.A.X. I interpreted this as: Go back from whence you came, you frequent flier on a non-United plan. If you suffered 100K a year with us, we’d have you on one of those flights; and, it doesn’t matter that most of your suffering last year was on United… on the very flight that we just cancelled. And, now I’m going to go take a coffee break because they just announced the flight cancellation and I don’t want to be here when all the people arrive.
So, I was heading back to L.A.X. The place where I had a hotel room that I’d checked out of. The place where it takes 45-90 mins to get out of of the hell that is omg-are-there-really-8-lanes-of-shuttles-squished-into-5-lanes-of-road. The place where you can’t request an UberX from the airport and where a cab ride costs 8x past reasonable. And, somehow, the 60-minute flight I just took grew to a 2-hour flight. Is this the cost of flying through LAX? You lose 1-hour of your life to the length of a runway?
And, chew on this United: if you’d held me back in LA, I could have had a reasonable workday (without using a vacation day), I could have had a nice meal, I could have had a relaxing Uber to the hotel, and I could have had a good sleep. Instead, you decided to upset my plans, upset my family, starve me, steal the upgrade I paid for, waste 7-hours of my extremely precious time, and best of all: destroy any hopes and dreams that I had about flying out of Burbank instead of LAX. I really wanted the 50s saddle shoes, stylish hat, and metal suitcase experience. You stole that away from me.
To add further icing to the first-world-problems cake: you only credited me half the flight points and checked me into the Air Canada flight without my status level or my TSA-Pre/Nexus number. So, not only am I not eligible for seating reassignment from the back of the plane where you put me, but I can’t use the priority lanes or expedited security lines, which adds another 30-minutes to my already early 4:30am start. And, when I arrive in Calgary, I have to get in a car and drive for 3-hours.
Fuck you, United: We are done.