Somewhat to my surprise, I got email today from United asking me to check in for my flight back to the UK. I checked with my account and they clearly have me flying back in March and have credited me with the mileage. It seemed obvious to me that there’s a problem with their computer system, and that they still have me listed on today’s flight. Given that this will cause confusion at the gate, and that fact that I’m still booked on the flight might mean that a desperately needed seat to the UK can’t be used, I figured I’d better phone them and let them know.
To my astonishment, the United agent I spoke to was unable to understand why I was calling. No, I was not asking for a refund. No, I did not want to re-book the flight. I just wanted to let them know that they might have an expected passenger not turning up, and a seat they could sell. I was trying to be helpful. This, apparently, was much too complicated an idea for the agent to cope with.
I you are in need of a seat from SFO to London, I’m sorry, I tried.
That makes no good sense. I would have asked a supervisor and see what could have been done.
It won’t make much difference. Once they’ve passed the final boarding time, they’ll see how many people boarded and call people off the standby list. They will not let the flight go off with empty seats if people are waiting (and given the problems, there will be people waiting.) They have to do this anyway to deal with the case where people actually checked in but missed a connection.
There are already reports of transatlantic flights with empty seats in the business section, even with all the backlog.
As usual, the airlines make about as much sense as deep sea diving suits on alpine goats
*Sigh* United Airlines. When I flew to Denver for Denvention III, I was scheduled to fly Oakland to Denver on August 6 and Denver to Oakland on August 16. Somehow, the first digit of the second date got dropped and I was scheduled to fly both ways on the same day. Clearly, this wouldn’t work unless I was only expecting to be in Denver for a 1/2 hour or so, and clearly it was a mistake. The agent on the phone said that it could only be fixed by requesting a change in itinerary and charging me an exorbitant fee to do so. I finally drove to the Oakland airport where I could talk directly to an agent behind the counter. Simply changing the date on the ticket turned out to be an amazingly complicated process. I hate to say it, but it helped that one of the counter agents on duty that day was someone I knew personally. What would other customers do who a) couldn’t get to the airport ticket counter; and b) didn’t know the person behind the computer?
Yes, yes, but surely Nick Clegg is ultimately responsible somehow? 🙂
(For those not inexplicably mesmerized by the UK election, an explanatory link.)
Eurostars were leaving with empty seats too. Pulling out of Brussels was like a quiet chug through Hampshire on a Sunday (all right, one of the few Sundays when they haven’t shut down the whole line for engineering work)…
All the flights from USA to Finland by Finnair have been half empty. Something is really wrong with their logistics…