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Friendly skies have taken a turn for the worse

My last experience flying United in April 2012 ended up being a disaster.

After booking our flights online, getting confirmed seats from Maui to Las Vegas and back, my traveling companion and I got our window and aisle seats taken away from us by some guy from Seattle who paid $50 more to put his lady companion in our two confirmed seats.

After getting our tickets out of the machine at the Las Vegas airport for our return flight home, we were shocked to see that we were to be seated in two different sections of the aircraft. We were told to check on it when we got upstairs.

Well, it seems five agents were in a break room and not one cared enough to help us. One said, “We’ll be out there in a about half an hour.” Wow. We’d be in the air to San Francisco by then.

Finally, after one gate completed its boarding of passengers, we got reassigned two seats in the middle directly across the aisle from the two seats that were taken from us. The explanation we got was that they no longer guarantee your seats even if they’re confirmed.

It seems the almighty dollar is more important than customer care. I worked for United for seven years (L.A., Honolulu and Maui). It used to be “The Friendly Skies of United.” They’ve certainly lost that.

David Ventura Jr.

Kahului

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