UA Getting Worse: UA to Require Minimum Stays from October Onward

[HUGE AL]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20...rMCeZrXyoE1vAI

United Airlines said Friday it will start requiring minimum stays for nearly all domestic flights beginning in October. It is also raising its cheapest fares by as much as $90 one-way.

[taipeiflyer]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20...rMCeZrXyoE1vAI

SHOCKING!!! nothing else you can say.

[inix]

How long passengers have to stay under United's new minimum-stay policy will depend on the destinations involved, the price of the ticket and the length of the flight.

If this is correct, then I don't think it sounded that bad. It possibly seems that only discounted tickets will be affected and not the standard Y Class? Business travelers wouldn't probably be hurt at all as we're probably used to paying full fare tickets for flexibility. At least thats how I perceived it.

[Kiwi]

Not necessarily. A lot of business travellers have to do best fare of day policy. Thus if UA requires high booking class they'll automatically lose in a comparison with other airlines which don't have minimum stay requirements (and still have availability in the cheaper booking classes).

[HUGE AL]

...I don't think it sounded that bad. It possibly seems that only discounted tickets will be affected and not the standard Y Class? Business travelers wouldn't probably be hurt at all as we're probably used to paying full fare tickets for flexibility. At least thats how I perceived it.

Nothing personal, but I fail to understand when people rush to defend the airlines when they keep taking away benefits one by one. This and a couple other pet peeves is the reason I rarely post on TOF anymore. :shark:

[inix]

Nothing personal, but I fail to understand when people rush to defend the airlines when they keep taking away benefits one by one. This and a couple other pet peeves is the reason I rarely post on TOF anymore. :shark:

No issue on that. If you're talking about me, I wasn't really defending the airline, but I just felt that this is after all a free market, and all of us have choices, so I don't really care about whats happening.

Like Tiger Airways. Their tax + fuel surcharge are so expensive, so my way of punishing them is not to fly them.

[ParadiseLost]

UA is getting worse. Yesterday my wife was stuck in Portland trying get back to Westchester. The 757 went down with a fuel pump problem. Being the savvy traveller rather than running for the desk she called the 800 number. There a helpful lady in the Indian call centre and found a Delta flight for her.

Wife goes off to Delta, they have the details, her name in the system, but they need a voucher from United. Seat is there, just come back. No problem as she has three hours to get her bag from United and get the voucher.

Gets the bag and something has been taken from it. She decides to skip this and go and get the voucher.

My wife spent two hours in line at United. All sorts of issues. No staff wanted to work overtime, they kept leaving to take breaks so it took a long time to get to the top of the queue.

Finally, having got the voucher she runs off to Delta. The flights closed and they've released the seat to a standby passenger. They wondered where she had been.

Wife goes back to United, asks for a Supervisor. Supervisors reaction is that it was a call center problem in the first place and that they 'weren't authorised to have made that booking'. Goes on a rant about 'this is an issue we all have with these low paid workers in India who don't know what they're doing'. No sympathy for my wife, and the best that she can offer is a flight the following afternoon (36 hours after the original flight was scheduled). My wife then asked her to check if there was any availability on that night's red-eye.

There was, so she made the booking. The Supervisor had 'missed' that option. Maybe there's a problem with the staff in the US as well!

Tells my wife that 'we all have issues these days, you just need to suck it up'

The stories of staff rudeness on UA are pretty rife these days. Quite why airline staff believe that making the likelyhood of surviving the economic storm any easier by bullying their passengers I don't know.

My wife will follow up, but these signs of UA staff at odds with the company, and their team mates, whether offshore or onshore is all a bit worrying.

[kapitan]

shucks...I am about to book some UA flights..... what other choices do I have.???

[inix]

That's pretty bad... Whats with American airlines these days...

[jjpb3]

That's pretty bad... Whats with American Airlines these days...

The topic is UA, not AA.

(I think you neglected to use lower-case letters with 'Airlines'. )

[sqforever]

I think I posted this before but I still cannot forget this terrible UA incident. Some years ago I was flying together with my family and my brother and I were man handled by a stewardess who exclaimed "let this business man move ahead of you young man! dont you dare be so rude to walk ahead of him!" I can't remember the exact words but that was pretty close.

The business man was my father and we were moving ahead after standing by our mother who was behind us. And the FA seemed to be shocked that he was our dad, a 50 year old caucasian 1K member with these young Asian-looking children in tow (I'm sure its not that uncommon )

And like the time when my mother who was sick at the time asked for help to push her bag into the compartment.

"Sorry, the unions say we cant."

[inix]

The topic is UA, not AA.

(I think you neglected to use lower-case letters with 'Airlines'. )

Amended.. hahaha