Tuesday, November 08, 2005
On vacation
I apologize to my few readers for my sporadic posts. The next two weeks will be even more sporadic since I am in Beijing now and will be going to Shanghai and Kyoto as well. Those of you looking for OneNote/Media Center/TabletPC info will just have to chill for a few weeks.
On a side note, I realized yesterday morning why I don't fly United anymore when I recevied a call from my firm's answering service (so they had called my work number at 6AM rather than my home, or cell phone number) telling me my 9AM first leg flight from LGA to ORD was delayed two hours, so I should plan to take the 8AM. (We were connecting a 12PM flight from ORD to PEK (Beijing).) Then when I called United at 6:10AM to figure out what was going on, they told me the only thing I could possibly do was get to Newark for the 8AM flight. My wife got back from getting bagels at 6:20PM and we frantically got ready; fortunately our car service was already there at 6:30AM and agreed to take us to Newark and that we were able to get through check-in and boarding in enough time to make the flight. Imagine if we'd lived in Long Island, or if I'd gone to LGA thinking that I was on the 8AM flight based on their message? We would have lost a day of our vacation. It's like, I know that I got my tickets using reward miles so I'm the lowest person on the totem pole to United. But this just brought all my fears of United to light, which was that they'll just cancel any flight and/or their crews will just show up late to any flight they want since the whole company is in such shitty shape and every employee is so demoralized. I switched to Continental for my St. Louis travel and though I don't love them either, they only cancel flights when extreme weather dictates it and have treated me decently so far. I almost wish I'd spent the extra $1000 or whatever to get these tickets so I could have gotten up to Elite on Continental and rewarded the airline that I'll be traveling with for awhile.
On a side note, I realized yesterday morning why I don't fly United anymore when I recevied a call from my firm's answering service (so they had called my work number at 6AM rather than my home, or cell phone number) telling me my 9AM first leg flight from LGA to ORD was delayed two hours, so I should plan to take the 8AM. (We were connecting a 12PM flight from ORD to PEK (Beijing).) Then when I called United at 6:10AM to figure out what was going on, they told me the only thing I could possibly do was get to Newark for the 8AM flight. My wife got back from getting bagels at 6:20PM and we frantically got ready; fortunately our car service was already there at 6:30AM and agreed to take us to Newark and that we were able to get through check-in and boarding in enough time to make the flight. Imagine if we'd lived in Long Island, or if I'd gone to LGA thinking that I was on the 8AM flight based on their message? We would have lost a day of our vacation. It's like, I know that I got my tickets using reward miles so I'm the lowest person on the totem pole to United. But this just brought all my fears of United to light, which was that they'll just cancel any flight and/or their crews will just show up late to any flight they want since the whole company is in such shitty shape and every employee is so demoralized. I switched to Continental for my St. Louis travel and though I don't love them either, they only cancel flights when extreme weather dictates it and have treated me decently so far. I almost wish I'd spent the extra $1000 or whatever to get these tickets so I could have gotten up to Elite on Continental and rewarded the airline that I'll be traveling with for awhile.
# posted by sbreck : 6:35 PM
