Stranded in LAX, Thanks United.
On Sunday, October 16th, United contributed to my worst flight experience ever. I was in Las Vegas for the weekend with my friends and had to fly to DC for an important work meeting on Monday. Since I’d had this trip planned for a while, my best bet to make it to DC in time was to take a red eye from Vegas to DC. My flight was supposed to leave at 7:06 pm but was delayed until 7:36 prior to boarding. I was concerned that I would miss my connecting flight in LAX when they announced the delay so I went to the counter with two other women with the same concern to make sure we could make our flight. The attendant assured us that we would make our flight as there were many others in the same situation. Once we had boarded the plane, the pilot informed us that we had been delayed another 30 minutes due to congestion at the airport. When we arrived at LAX, the pilot informed us that we didn’t have a terminal assigned to us yet and when we finally received our terminal information, we had to wait again because it was in use by another aircraft. We waited on the tarmac for another 45 minutes. At this point, I realized I was absolutely not going to make my 9:39 flight to DC as it was 9:53 (we were supposed to arrive at 8:25) by the time we landed and I regained service. While we were waiting on the tarmac, I called the United helpline to see about getting on the waitlist for the 11:20 flight to DC, the last flight that would get me to my meeting in time. The woman informed me that I could only be put on the waitlist in person at the airport and could not do it over the phone. The pilot told us a United representative would greet us at the gate to assist us in arranging connecting flights. The flight attendants didn’t say a word to us as we finally deboarded the plane. When we got off the plane, the attendant told us to go to the customer service desk to lodge complaints and that he couldn’t be of assistance. When I finally made it to the customer service desk for United, it was approximately 10:30. When I (and about 50 other people from my flight) got in line, there was only one person at the help desk but she quickly saw the need to call in reinforcements. I was about 5th in line, so I was helped after about 15 minutes of standing in line. The customer service agent that I spoke with hardly looked me in the eye and spoke very softly, which made it difficult for me to hear because I had a cold and my ears were quite stopped up from the flight. She was unable to find any flights that would get me to DC in time and the earliest she could get me back to Seattle would be leaving LAX at 3:15 on Monday. While this was happening, the woman that had sat next to me on the plane was working with another customer service representative and was told the gate number of the 11:20 flight to DC in order to try to make the flight. About 5 minutes later she came back saying she’d missed the flight because the representative gave her the incorrect gate number. At this point, I was upset that I was going to miss my meeting, felt like my head was going to explode, and absolutely exhausted. I asked the representative if they would be able to pay for a hotel since I was now stranded in LAX and she said they could give me a voucher for a discounted hotel with 24 hour shuttle service. She said they could not pay for my flight home seeing as it was an air traffic control delay and not the fault of the airline. I asked if she could give me a voucher for the LAX-DC portion of my flight and she said that because they sell the flight as a non-stop with the same flight number, even though it absolutely stops in LAX and you have to switch planes, they are unable to separate the tickets and that I would have to file a complaint via United’s website and I may receive reimbursement but she had no idea how much it would be. So, I asked if there was any possible way that she could send me home and she finally said that there was no way she could help me and I would have to buy a ticket in order to leave the airport. So, as there was apparently nothing she could do to help me, I left. I sat on the floor of the airport sobbing at 11:30pm. And then, I booked a room at the Best Western, took a shuttle to my $85 hotel, bought my $200 ticket home, and went to sleep. Never in my life have I felt so trapped and helpless. I realize there’s not a lot an airline can do when delayed by air traffic control, but this incident showed some institutional problems that are absolutely the fault of United. The ticket should not be sold in a way that can be so easily taken advantage of and their customer service was severely lacking. United lost at least 50 customers that night, and I’m sure they’ll lose many more.
