CopyDiva

Every now and again, I feel an intense need to rant on the air travel system. As someone who has had jobs off-and-on that require a decent amount of travel, and with the nearest family living close to 4 hours away by air, I’ve had alot of need to travel over the years, both for business and personal reasons.

But let me be specific here. Because I live in proximity to Denver International Airport, I’ve been stuck for years with United Airlines as the main way to travel around. And frankly, even though I’ve been a Premier member, and currently have close to 200K miles racked up in their system, it is generally speaking the airline I prefer to travel on the least. Let’s face it — I, as well as many folks who live in Colorado forced for years to live with the crappy service and attitude that’s pervasive at United. Sure, there are occasional bright spots — a helpful, patient agent here, a nice or funny flight attendant there — but all in all, the worst airline. Crappy, old and dirty airplanes. No leg room, ridiculous rules and charges, and a pricing system which boggles the mind.

Here are a few of my most recent experiences — and when I say recent, I mean just within the last few weeks. In fact, I am writing this on a flight from Newark to Denver on Easter Sunday:

1. The whole family was supposed to fly east for Passover, but do to a snow storm, my teen’s competition was rescheduled for the same weekend as our trip. So, two of us had to stay home. To cancel the tickets? $150 each cancellation fee, because I am not stupid enough to purchase a refundable ticket (which costs almost twice as much as a non-refundable ticket). So, besides the $300+ roundtrip price (each) for the original tickets, I am out another $300, and shit, I better think of another reason for the two of them to fly somewhere else in the next year that costs at least that much. And oh yeah, they’ll have to fly on United.

Oh, and did I mention that on the United Airlines website, where I tried to cancel the flights, it said the tickets were refundable? It just wouldn’t let me complete the transaction because all 3 of our tickets were connected, and I only needed 2 tickets cancelled.

2. On same flight to Newark, everyone’s of course all crammed into the back of the plane because United insists on charging money to sit with a few extra inches of leg room — anywhere from $39 in advance to $65 on the day of your flight. So, someone in the back here asks if they can move to another seat after the flight takes off. Something that on any other airline I think no one would bother asking, they’d just get up and move. However, on United, they will break out their credit card charging machine to charge you IN FLIGHT to move up. Not to first class, to a seat a few rows up in econo-class.

3. The condition of United’s airplanes should be an embarrassment. Tonight, I waited to get on my delayed flight so the “cleaners” could get on the plane and clean up. I get to my seat and there’s popcorn all over it and the cushion in the seat next to me is half pulled out. I can only imagine what the bathrooms look like.

It is experiences like this that make me look into other options when I can. With two trips to San Francisco this month, I have much greater options than United, and I couldn’t be happier. When I can get a refundable fare on Southwest that’s direct and gets me there and back on a timetable that works for schedule, I’m going to choose Southwest.

Both trips are booked on Southwest — one was a comparable price to United, the next was half the price. Yes, that’s right, half. Because on Southwest, any flight on the days I’m traveling is the same price, no matter if I leave at 6am, or have a layover in Phoenix, or leave at 10am and go non-stop. United, on the other hand, charges me more based on, based on I am not sure what — this is what I mean by their bizarre pricing scheme.

Another option would be Frontier, which generally has decent coverage between Denver and SFO and has nice planes with equal legroom no matter where you sit. Their flights are generally cheaper too. And, if I could fly direct to Newark on Southwest from Denver, you can be sure that I would. I could care less about United’s mileage program, because at this point they make it hard to redeem anyway, with less mileage-available flights available on flights. I’d rather get better service, cleaner planes and pricing that was simpler.

I don’t know what the solution is, but I wonder why my experience on United stays approximately the same, and my experiences on smaller airlines is so much better. I will say this for United – they suck, but American Airlines is even worse. I just thank my lucky stars I don’t have to fly American all the time.

Now I have to close my laptop because the woman in front of me just pushed her seat back, and my knees are being crushed and the lid of my laptop is now at about 55 degrees. Did I mention that I have short legs and still have this problem?