I spent most of Saturday stuck in Dulles - my flight was supposed to get into Detroit at 2 p.m. but I finally got to my car at 8:30 p.m. Yep, the flight was delayed for over six hours. I’m not really sure who to blame - United, United Express, Mesa (the company that actually operated the United Express flight), or Dulles. I’m not sure if United is as crappy as United Express. United Express seems to be its own rogue insurgency within the company. The entire ordeal was both frustrating and amusing, and a total failure in customer experience. We never received an apology or a complete explanation of why it took them so long.

To get the full story, read the following two entries that I wrote offline during the ordeal.

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Dear United,

It is 3:11 p.m. on Saturday, July 15, 2006, and I am currently sitting in Dulles International when I should be in DTW. Why am I still in Dulles? Because your company is incapable of actually running an airline.

My flight was supposed to leave at 12:26 p.m. and arrive in Detroit at approximately 2 p.m. When I arrived at the airport this morning at 11 a.m., I was informed that the flight was delayed and will likely leave by 3 p.m. at the latest. Since I had already checked out of my hotel and paid $65 for the cab ride to the airport, I decided to stay at Dulles and pass the time completing some work on my laptop (I actually wasn’t surprised; I expected this sort of incompetence from your airline). After going through security, the departure time was changed to 3:30 p.m. but the gate agent on duty at the time informed us that the 3:30 p.m. departure time was a worst-case scenario. He seemed optimistic that we would actually leave earlier than that. He was so confident in this scenario that he encouraged us to not steer too far away from the gate because we might leave “at any minute.” The cause of the delay was “mechanical failure.” The departure time has just changed to 4:12 p.m. and I would be very surprised if we actually do leave then.

I’m a fairly patient person and can understand that things happen that are out of your control – weather, equipment failure (but perhaps your equipment wouldn’t fail if you actually had a fleet of planes that were serviced frequently), your flight attendant fails to show up to work on time (no, I’m not kidding – this reason was cited for another delayed United flight in the A terminal at Dulles), etc. However, there are things that your airline can do to lessen the blow of these delays.

There are a million things I could have done with an extra four hours in D.C. – sitting at gate A5 listening to your incompetent gate agents make promises that your company cannot keep is not one of them. It is my fault for not checking online to see if the flight was delayed. However, your airline should have enough integrity to tell passengers that the flight is going to be several hours delayed and that they should come back later in the afternoon.

Had any other airline did this sort of thing, I would have been a bit more forgiving and perhaps asked for some frequent flyer miles to make up for the experience. However, there is nothing that your airline can do to make me fly United ever again. On my flight from DTW to Dulles, your flight was delayed for over two hours (again, there are a million things I could have done with those two hours). This past April, your airline managed to lose my luggage (and that of two of my colleagues . . . and yes, there were delays then, too). When you did return our luggage (several days late), it was soaking wet. I learned to not check my luggage with your airline. After this trip, I’ve learned to NEVER fly United.

I am confident that if I were to actually email you this letter, you would lose it or send me an unapologetic auto-response (actually, I doubt your company is even capable of doing that). Instead, your repeated incompetence will forever be archived on my blog.
United, you suck.

Sincerely,
Noor

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It is now 7:09 p.m. and we finally took off about twenty minutes ago. We boarded around 5:30 p.m. in a bit of chaos – so much chaos that several people got on the plane and they weren’t even on this flight (imagine having twenty people then having to back up out of the plane so that those two could leave). Our first flight attendant seemed extremely inexperienced and appeared to be frightened of the passengers. The airplane was boiling hot and the air conditioning was not even on (according to the pilot, he couldn’t turn on the a/c until we got going and he turned on the engines). After a bit of a delay, we finally started taxiing but then we went back to the gate and the exit lights came on. I think this entire experience was the scariest thing that has ever happened to me on a plane. The pilot actually came out and said that he couldn’t get clearance to leave Dulles due to traffic (actually I think he said something about sectors being full, which I didn’t understand so I just assumed that it was something about air traffic) so he decided to pull back to the gate because it would be a little bit cooler there (it wasn’t). In the middle of this ordeal, the extremely inexperienced and frightened flight attendant announced that his shift was over (or something like that) and that he was being replaced by another flight attendant. No, I’m not kidding. He actually took his stuff and left and another flight attendant came on board. We then waited at the gate a bit more but then finally took off. I’m guessing I should be in Detroit by 8:30, which means that the flight was over 6.5 hours delayed. I could have driven back and got there faster. Throughout this whole ordeal, the flight attendant (versions 1 and 2) and the pilot were extremely rude and unapologetic. Ironically, I’m reading the Inmates are Running the Asylum right now. The inmates are indeed running this plane.

I used to think that when United lost our luggage in Montreal that that was the worst they could do. But being delayed (for a short 90 minute flight) over six hours is really really bad. United, you suck even worse.

United Express sucks. United Express sucks. United sucks.