United: Not The Friendly Skies

I’m going to give you fair warning: If you like United Airlines, you’re not going to want to read this blog. They’re terrible, and they did a number on me this weekend. I’m stuck with who I travel with, so I can’t say I won’t fly them again, but I will never fly them again unless I absolutely have to.

Let me start with a quick preface. I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 6 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic and to try to make a difference in his honor, I’m trying to run 60 full marathons this year to raise money and awareness for a great charity called Train 4 Autism. So far, everything is going fairly well.

On Sunday, I ran my 25th marathon of 2010 in Cleveland (you can read my recap here — it was a GREAT day!). Through all those races, I’ve flown a lot. I’ve flown nine times on Delta, seven on Southwest, four on Continental, four on United, three on US Airways, three on American, one on Frontier and one on Jet Blue. I’ve experienced a lot since January 1 and I know the differences between the airlines.

If you don’t fly a lot nowadays, it’s really become a pain with all the airlines charging for checked luggage. Everybody tries to carry on as much as possible and the overheads get full. There’s borderline pushing and shoving at boarding time. I carry on because I need to keep my running gear in my possession. I can’t run the risk of losing my gear. I made that mistake when I flew out to the Kansas City Marathon in 2008. If you’re ever traveling to a race, don’t check your running gear if you’re flying the day before a race.

Anyways, I absolutely dread flying United. They really, really did me wrong this time. I’m going to explain in just a minute, but first, I want to give you some background. They have a terrible rule with their carry-ons. They board by zone, and if you’re in boarding zone 4 and the flight is anywhere near full, they won’t let you carry on a rolling suitcase. A lot of duffel bags are actually bigger, but it’s those little wheels that must make all the difference. They’re afraid that the overheads will fill. Well, they need to take a lesson from Delta. On Delta, they don’t force anybody to check a bag until the overheads are actually full. What a concept!

My first two times flying United, they took my bag as part of their zone 4 policy. Both times, there was plenty of room in the overheads when the plane was closed. The first time, they lost my bag and I had to be the guy to figure out how to track it down. They were also late on their flight and I missed my connecting flight, so the agent re-routed me from Philadelphia to Dulles through Chicago instead of straight to Norfolk. Yeah, that makes sense.

The second time, they did the zone 4 thing and took my bag. I asked the woman who forced me to check it if I could be the very last person on the plane and stick it in the overhead if there was space. She told me no and put a tag on it. I brought it down and waited to be the last person on the plane anyways. Sure enough, there was plenty of space, and the flight attendants said I could bring it on. But the guy who sent my bag down the stairs wouldn’t walk down and get it for me. So they checked it, and I got to wait at the baggage claim for my mistreated bag (it’s a little torn up now) instead of going straight home to see my family.

I book as close to the back of the plane as possible on United so I don’t get stuck in zone 4. My third trip, home from Grand Junction last weekend, was uneventful. But this weekend took the cake.

I was in zone 2 on Friday night. I flew Continental, but in one of those co-op deals they do, my first flight, to San Francisco, was on United. My carry-on bag is built to the specifications that the airlines or the FAA has set. It fits perfectly inside those little cages. It doesn’t pass the eyeball test about 1/3 of the time, but I drop it in the cage without worry every time. Once, on Frontier, it didn’t fit, but the cage was bent, so that wasn’t really the bag’s fault.

Anyways, the woman taking my ticket on Friday told me my bag was too big and needed to be checked. I told her I get that every time, but it fits in the overheads and fits in the cage and I wanted to show her that. United doesn’t actually have a cage — they just have a plastic board with a template defining the allowable space. It was two feet from her, but she wouldn’t let me show her. We went back-and-forth a couple of times, but she refused to even consider it. I was pretty angry as she checked my bag to Cleveland.

When I got down to the plane, I asked the flight attendants if they could watch me put my bag in the overhead. It fits. Just like I know my name is Sam, I know my bag fits. But they said no, that once the decision is made at the gate, there’s nothing they can do about it. That’s funny — the crew when I was coming back from Dallas was going to let me bring it on. This time, the rules were different. The woman who was going to take the luggage down to get loaded on the plane said that once it’s tagged in the system, they can’t do anything about it because it affects the weights and measures of the plane.

OK, this is where I call B.S. I asked her if she was kidding. Seriously, a 25-pound bag? What if I still weighed 261 pounds instead of 200? What if it was a duffel bag and they had no record of me carrying it on? They had no clue what that bag weighed and if that bag affected the measures of the plane, I’m not sure I’m comfortable flying.

We got to San Francisco and had a three-hour layover. Yes, three hours. And when I got to Cleveland, sure enough, my bag wasn’t there. I wasn’t happy, to say the least. But now, it was a Continental problem, because that flight was on Continental.

Continental couldn’t track the bag in the database. They had no clue if it was in Orange County, San Francisco or Cleveland. But they told me that if they didn’t deliver it within 24 hours, I’d be eligible for an allowance for replacement clothing. The problem, of course, is that my race was in 23 hours. I’m on a pretty tight budget with five mouths to feed from one income in California. I didn’t really want to go on a shopping spree.

About an hour later, I called back and asked for status. They still didn’t know where the bag was. I explained to them my situation. I’m trying to raise $100,000 for charity this year under the pretense of running at least one marathon every weekend. I was wearing sandals, layup pants and a tech shirt. Not exactly marathon wear. I didn’t have 24 hours and I needed them to track my bag. I said that if they were going to stick to their 24-hour rule, I wanted somebody who understood that it wasn’t my swimsuit I was waiting for to confirm that decision.

The man from Continental (and they did a very good job with handling United’s mess for me) told me that if they didn’t have a solid indicator of when I’d get the bag by 3 p.m. Saturday, I’d have a green-light to shop. In hindsight, I probably should have just bought stuff anyways. But I was a zombie after taking a red-eye and I didn’t. At 3 p.m., they told me they absolutely had the bag in San Francisco and that it was going to be on a flight getting into Cleveland at 9:15. They knew the urgency of the situation and they were going to deliver the bag to my hotel.

So I took a nap, woke up and got some dinner. I was jogging on the sidewalk in my sandals, imagining running a marathon in them. I was thinking about running barefoot if that’s what it came down to, but I figured that would probably break bones in my feet, because I’m not trained for that. My backup plan became finding a 24-hour Wal-Mart, getting whatever shoes and clothing I could find and running the race in that.

I was super tired, so I talked to my wife and gave her the information and asked her to stay on top of it with Continental to make sure the bag made its way to my hotel. I saw on the computer that it was in Cleveland at 9:52, so I hopped into bed, set my alarm for 2:30 a.m. just in case I didn’t have my bag by then, and trusting my wife would get it squared away.

At 10:12, she called me and told me she had good news and bad news. They definitely had my bag in Cleveland. But I had to go to the airport to pick it up. They couldn’t guarantee it would be there by 8 a.m., which wasn’t good considering the race was at 7. So I ran to the subway (nothing quite like riding the subway in Cleveland on a Saturday night) and went to the airport. I ran through the terminal to get my bag and I was thrilled to have it in my possession!

I took the subway back and 40 minutes after I left my hotel, I was back. I was too wired to fall asleep, so sometime after 11:45, I finally fell asleep (I woke up for the race at 4:30 a.m.).

All of this could have been avoided if the woman would have let me measure my bag. But for whatever reason, she got a kick out of telling me no. I’ve never had her job, but if I was in her position and somebody told me their bag really did fit and they were adamant about it, I’m sure I’d let the person measure it right in front of my eyes to end it and move on to the next person. Maybe she’s the type who can’t let go of an argument and admit she’s wrong?

Whatever the case, she really did a number wrecking my trip. And of all the problems I’ve had traveling this year, United is the common denominator. Three times now.

But I’m not done. I’m going to do everything I can to make this right. The airlines, in general, don’t do a whole lot when it comes to service. You have no options and they know it and they treat you accordingly. But I’m still going to push. They need to do something to make this right. I really feel like they owe me for what they did.

What I really want to know more than anything is what happened to my bag. One of two things happened. Either it never made it on my plane or something happened and they couldn’t get it to the right spot (even with three hours) in San Francisco. That’s possible, since it had to go from United to Continental. If that’s the case, I want to know what I can do to help the situation in the future — who I can call when I’m switching planes or whatever. I’m not going to have this happen again.

But if didn’t make it on the plane out of Orange County? Then I’ll know the woman who took my bag on the jetway sabotaged me. There’s no other possible explanation for that one.

So, I’ll wait and see. You can be absolutely certain that I won’t fly United unless I absolutely have to. You can do what you want, but don’t say you weren’t warned.