Home
Or, to quote Sheryl Crow, "Home."
I'm back from Portland, about which I have a number of things to say.
First, United Airlines is the reason people hate flying.
The United experience begins at a check-in counter devoid of human beings. It is, literally, a counter with a row of computer terminals. In La Guardia, the only person helping customers was a man directing passengers to different terminals. When I asked him where the human beings were, he muttered something about them changing shifts—and here I thought that when employees change shifts, that meant that actual new ones start to work—and then reminded me that he'd been at the airport since four in the morning and couldn't wait to leave.
Eventually I made it through check-in and boarded the plane. Two rows in front of me sat a young man, his wife, and their
four young children, with another on the way. I know, I know—in our family-centric society, we are supposed to coo over the children and think how hard it is for the parents to travel with them. My suggestion: This is why they make mini-vans.
United's planes were cramped and dirty, its seats old and well-worn. Despite the
trend toward non-stop flights, United insists that we change planes as often as possible. They serve no food. On my flight from LaGuardia to Denver, they actually sold something called a "Fun Pack"—a granola bar, basically, and they probably spell it "FunPak!"— for five dollars. Rather than Jet Blue's per-seat video screen system, United still uses antiquated drop-down video screens. When I actually tried to watch the movie, I discovered that the headset socket did not match the jack of the headset I was given.
I'm tall enough so that economy class poses issues, and arrived in Portland feeling like a bent coathanger. So on my way back, I found an actual United employee at the airport and asked if I could get an emergency row seat. She smiled vacantly and suggested that I use the computer to see if I could get an "upgrade."
"You sell the emergency row seats?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," she replied. "That's a product!"
I asked how much it was. She answered that she didn't know, it depended on the computer.
Here is my general rule of thumb for any company: When its employees start speaking like automatons, it's in serious trouble.
Now, to be fair to United, it did several things correctly. It sold me an inexpensive ticket; there is something remarkable about crossing the country for $125 each way. Its flights were on time and did not crash. And they didn't lose my bag.
Nonetheless, the experience was grim. In a few weeks, Jet Blue starts service—non-stop service—to from New York to Portland. United is going to get crushed, and it should.
