David J.
Danto
Business travel
thoughts in my own, personal opinion
eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org 
Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD
The Sacrificial Lamb
of Southwest – January 2023
Despite the title, this blog is not about
Southwest Airlines. Yes, Southwest had a meltdown of historic proportions during the
very busy holiday season. I don’t even
need to give you a reference link for that, if you read this blog you likely
already know about Southwest’s problems.
What you don’t know is the cheering that is going on in the executive
offices of the other US airlines as a result.
You see, there is an old saying in business that says if the pope dies
you should hurry up and release any bad news you have because no one will pay
any attention to it. And that is what
happened with Southwest. Their crisis
provided excellent cover for all of the rest of the failures of the US airline
industry as a whole. And things are not
getting any better anytime soon.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, I had intended to report on my
experiences at the CES conference that just concluded in Las Vegas, but my
family’s flying experiences on United have been so horrific lately that it’s
more pressing to give that the attention that it has not received under
Southwest’s meltdown cover.
I drove my family to LAS airport on January 2nd
to fly home after celebrating NYE there, while I stayed behind to cover the
conference. Their flight (UA2001) was
scheduled to depart at 12:26 pm and arrive at EWR at
8:19 pm. They ultimately had a five hour
delay, as they boarded, then de-boarded the first plane as it came from Newark
with a mechanical that they were ultimately not able to repair quickly. United reassigned a different plane that came
out of SFO to their route, but they had to de-board
that one too as it also had a mechanical issue that needed repairing. They landed close to 1am, and of course, at
Newark, retrieving checked bags took at least another hour, so they were not
home till around 2:30 am the next day.
(One quick
sidebar here before I continue: the United baggage
carousels at EWR have signs that show you how long it
will take for your bags to come out.
They count down (15 minutes…10…5…4…3…2…1……..) but then they post
“expected soon” for as long as they freaking want to – sometimes hours, making
any sane person wonder what the point of the original fake countdown is. OK, back to the original point. )
Did my family just experience a one-off bad
flight? No, as was proven when I had to
fly home the following Saturday.
Boarding for my flight (UA 1386) was nearly complete when the captain
came over the PA system and said that there was “some sort of problem” with one
of the engines and it was only “vaguely reported by the prior crew” who made a
beeline for their hotels and were “unreachable.” So all they could do was run a
full engine test, which they’re not allowed to do with passengers on the
plane. We had to de-board so they again
could address the mechanical. Even the
captain was upset that this was not checked prior to boarding. It certainly makes one wonder what the
quality of maintenance being done at EWR is. I also got home a few hours late once the “expected soon” bags finally trickled
out of carousel 2.
OK, that’s two for two. Still not convinced. I’m typing this blog from Houston where I’ll
be in business meetings all week. I had
purchased this itinerary months ago, and selected flights with available aisle
seats so I’d be comfortable (as I’m still just a little bit past my surgery.) Everything was going fine till I get a
message at 3am last night that my EWR-IAH flight had
an equipment change and I had a new seat – in the middle of a row of 4. I used the United
app to message an agent and explain I had to be in an aisle seat, and she
couldn’t get one on that flight as there were none left. As I was explaining to her that I can’t
tolerate anything else right now I began looking for any flight I could take
today that had an aisle seat. I found
one that got in after midnight and I was about to make the very undesirable
change when I got a notice that the flight I had been on was now completely
cancelled. United canceled a nearly full
777 from EWR to IAH for
some reason at 3:30 am. Now I was really trying to grab that available
aisle seat ASAP when the agent texted me and said “how about the noon flight?
There are lots of seats on that.”
I explained that the noon flight from EWR to IAH was just cancelled, and she explained “no, not that one
[UA 1973] the new one [UA 3025.]” Forty
years of flying and nearly two million miles logged and I’ve never seen that
before. I can’t envision why any airline
would want to pull shenanigans like that – create a brand new flight number
that didn’t exist before for a next day flight.
By then it was about 4:30 am and I needed to get at
least a little sleep, so I was thankful the agent got me the seat and went back
to bed. When I woke-up, surprise, I even
had an upgrade – now in a Polaris configured seat 4D.
When I got to the airport the next day (after two
gate-changes) the inbound flight arrived, but apparently the catering truck was
nowhere to be found. Its MIA status resulted
in a delay in boarding, and then, the understandable yet galling move to board
the back of the plane while we were waiting for someone to find the catering
truck somewhere in Newark and send it to the airport so the forward areas could
board. It was yet another one hour
delay. When we finally were allowed to
board I dumped my things into my seat and ran for the forward lavatory – only
to find out, as the FA said, “it came in broken and no one bothered to call to have it
fixed.” We’re all standing around
waiting an hour for a lost catering truck and no one thinks to have the 1st
class lav fixed?
What in hell is going on with United
maintenance?
When I mentioned all of this to Joe Brancatelli he had no idea why the original flight would be
cancelled and replaced, but he did address the Southwest situation. His quote:
“Southwest’s total meltdown totally obscured the
problems at the other airlines. No one
has he bandwidth – readers or journalists – to absorb it all…”
After all, the airline industry stopped trying to be
excellent many years ago. All they do
now is ensure they suck as much as the other guys. If they ever suck more they get dragged (like
Southwest) by the same reporters that seem to give them a pass all the other
times.
Also, p
If you do want to read about my very
general impressions from CES 2023, read here
and here. But more than that, cross your fingers that I
can make it home without incident at the end of this week. I trust United about as far as I can throw a
plane.
This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal
opinions.
All image and links provided above as reference under
prevailing fair use statutes.
Copyright 2023 David Danto
++++++++
As always, feel free to write and comment, question or
disagree. Hearing from the traveling
community is always a highlight for me.
Thanks!