Oh, United Airlines, what shall we do with you?
United has had some major problems recently:
- There was the story of passengers stranded in China for 3 days!!!
- Then there was a glitch that let people buy very cheap tickets, but United wanted people to give them up!
- And of course, you must have been sleeping under a rock if you haven’t heard of their latest flub- losing a ten year old girl!
But that’s not what this post is about. This is about how families are treated rudely on United Airlines. The airline decided to get rid of pre-boarding “privileges” for families. I’m not sure what manager, sitting under fluorescent lights in his air conditioned office decided that pre-boarding is a privilege, and I’m not sure what the train of thought was when he decided to just get rid of it. It is a mystery. And a very inconvenient mystery at that.
Everyone that has flown with a child knows that it is not an easy feat. Parents come prepared with every last thing to make sure that the flight goes as smoothly as possible for everyone. No parent wants to deal with an unhappy child, nor with unhappy fellow passengers making snide comments. Therefore we pack A LOT OF STUFF. We bring toys and snacks and ipads and every last thing we can think of to make our child happy and the journey painless. We have our own carry-ons and personal items, plus the diaper bag and a stroller that we need to gate-check (and some have a car seat too)! This is a lot of stuff that needs to get accommodated under our feet and in the overhead bins, not to mention accommodating the kids!
After flying several flights with this company over the summer, I can say from personal experience that we were not treated like customers that had paid thousands of dollars for their flights. We were denied a bassinet because bulkhead seats cost extra now and nobody made any effort to accommodate us. We were bullied into changing our seats (aisle + window) to get two seats together (luckily we held our guns and stayed with our original seats). We were rudely informed of above mentioned new policy (not that it mattered because we were in boarding group 1 anyway, and the flight attendant that had just chastised us was pretty livid to see our faces within 5 minutes). The cherry on top was that they managed to bang up our stroller even though it was in a bag! There were also several non-child related issues that we had, but all in all it was a less than pleasant experience.
I’m not sure how to answer my own question, but it makes me frustrated that we are in a situation where we are stuck flying this airline because of limited service and that we have to support a company which doesn’t treat us well.
/End Rant
