Airplane or airport experiences...

Can't say I've had issues with United in the over 100,000 airline miles that I've accumulated in 4 years
 
 
It was not an overbooked situation. There were employees and, or guests that wanted to be on that flight.

Either way, it was poorly handled from start to finish.
 
And airport police shouldn't have been used for customer service muscle.
 
Missed my connection in Philly, stuck here overnight (at least in an hotel).

Really didn't want to arrive back home a day late :(

Edit: we were told yesterday we were on the standby list of the first 2 flights today, we show up this morning, and ask at the gate, nope, not standby on any flights (we did have a confirmed seat on a later flight).

Thanks AA :mad:
 
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Had a jar of pipe sealant in my backpack while going through O'Hare last week. TSA found it. It wasn't removed because it tested positive for bomb juice, rather because the fluid ounce was over the carry on limit. Also found that I probably shouldn't have called it by the trade name "pipe dope." Guy nearly popped his eyes out when I said that. If I didn't travel for my job, I'd probably never get on a plane again.
 
Had a jar of pipe sealant in my backpack while going through O'Hare last week. TSA found it. It wasn't removed because it tested positive for bomb juice, rather because the fluid ounce was over the carry on limit. Also found that I probably shouldn't have called it by the trade name "pipe dope." Guy nearly popped his eyes out when I said that. If I didn't travel for my job, I'd probably never get on a plane again.

:lol: sorry but :lol: :lol: 'pipe dope' to a TSA agent..... :lol:
 
Oh I know. You know those times where you're halfway through what you're saying and you start realizing you should stop but can't?
 
I was at Roma Fiumicino last week, going OSL-FCO-OSL with Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). Went to Toscana and visited Arezzo, Florence and Siena. Very nice places. :)

But, FCO, what a mess! While I traveled with hand luggage only, the people I travelled with had checked in luggage. arriving, it took forever for them to get their bags, and the trains to Roma Termini depart every half hour, it also takes a full 30 minutes to get there (even though there are no stops between FCO and Termini) so we lost the train we planned to take from Termini to Arezzo, which meant we had to take the last train of the day, which arrived very late.

Going home, it was all smooth sailing, until we arrived at FCO. My travel companions were in economy pluss, which means there is a dedicated check-in-counter, which was kind of useless as there was no separate queue for that, so checking in took forever. Going through security the fast track was no faster that the regular queue, as that was really under-staffed. There was no lounge for travelers with other Star Alliance carriers that Lufthansa and Swiss, and they moved me from my pre-booked extra leg room seat for no reason, called it an "upgrade" as my new seat was in pluss (with shitty leg room), but all that gave me was a free meal onboard (Unlike Ann Coulter I didn't make a scene afterwards), but I did make sure to get at least three beers for free, so all was well in the end. During the flight I went back and checked, nobody was sitting in the seat I originally booked. :?
 
I just came back from a vacation in Canada (hence my posting this at half past two in the morning, I'm a bit jetlagged).

Flights were Frankfurt to Vancouver with Lufthansa in a 747 and then back from Calgary to Frankfurt with Air Canada in a 777.

Airports:
  • Frankfurt: Baggage drop-off was at a kind of satellite station not far from the train station, very convenient. :)
    At the gate, however, there was utter chaos. They opened up a pre-check for documents where most people had to go to first, but it was not clear who had to (Canadians too or only ETA holders?). The flight was also overbooked so they offered ?600 to get people to let themselves postponed to a flight the following day. That created a (very small) additional queue. And there were the regular "going through the gate" queues for the different classes. All these queues, of course, were in exactly the same place. I actually felt ashamed for my fellow Germans for this display of inefficiency in front of a bunch of foreign nationals.
  • Vancouver: Very nice-looking airport, lots of (almost exclusively Asian) people to help you get into the correct queues and help you with the immigration procedure. Baggage pick-up took very long, but they made an announcement apologising for that. Getting a taxi was also very organised with people guiding small and large parties to the appropriate taxis (only 2? Get this one. You're 4 people? Here, take the minivan...)
  • Calgary: Baggage drop-off at a machine, but with nice people helping inexperienced passengers with these. Much appreciated. :) Getting through security without a hassle. The international terminal was remarkably empty (only six outgoing flights in half a day), and comfortable with lots of places where you could charge your phone and such. Getting through the gate was slow and a little disorganised, though. Mainly lack of information about classifying the passengers into different boarding groups, so naturally everyone was forming one big queue unnecessarily.
Airlines/flights:
  • Lufthansa: Very nice. Two good meals (lunch and dinner), very friendly cabin crew, lots of drinks (basically a wine flatrate... :D). Seating in economy class was not so bad. My friend had a middle seat and complained a bit about the seats being too narrow. Movie selection great. Would fly again.
  • Air Canada: Bad food (dinner and breakfast), in large parts inedible. Got off the plane very hungry after a nine-hour flight because of that. Cabin crew consisted of people who were indifferent at best. At least the wine wasn't bad. Seating was okay too, about the same as Lufthansa. On-board entertainment good, too, even if the movie selection wasn't as large as on the other flight. I will avoid Air Canada in the future because of the food.
 
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When I had my flight to Munich from Toronto last year, I would agree with you. Even United's aging 777 fleet back home felt better and flight attendants were much better. The food I refuse to eat on planes so I can't give an answer in that.
 
Air Canada managed to rearrange seating in their 777 a few years ago to add 109 seat.

You read that right, same airframe, go from 3xx passengers to 4xx.

Couple that with bad food (chicken or pasta?), and flight attendant who can be totally blas?, and yeah, not my first choice.
 
bad food (chicken or pasta?)
Chicken. the chicken itself was fine, but the sides was something that apparently was supposed to be noodles and the vegetables were cold (!) garden beans and mushrooms. I ate only the chicken.
At least the brownie was good. That saved me.
 
I just came back from a vacation in Canada (hence my posting this at half past two in the morning, I'm a bit jetlagged).

Flights were Frankfurt to Vancouver with Lufthansa in a 747 and then back from Calgary to Frankfurt with Air Canada in a 777.

Airports:
  • Frankfurt: Baggage drop-off was at a kind of satellite station not far from the train station, very convenient. :)
    At the gate, however, there was utter chaos. They opened up a pre-check for documents where most people had to go to first, but it was not clear who had to (Canadians too or only ETA holders?). The flight was also overbooked so they offered ?600 to get people to let themselves postponed to a flight the following day. That created a (very small) additional queue. And there were the regular "going through the gate" queues for the different classes. All these queues, of course, were in exactly the same place. I actually felt ashamed for my fellow Germans for this display of inefficiency in front of a bunch of foreign nationals.
  • Vancouver: Very nice-looking airport, lots of (almost exclusively Asian) people to help you get into the correct queues and help you with the immigration procedure. Baggage pick-up took very long, but they made an announcement apologising for that. Getting a taxi was also very organised with people guiding small and large parties to the appropriate taxis (only 2? Get this one. You're 4 people? Here, take the minivan...)
  • Calgary: Baggage drop-off at a machine, but with nice people helping inexperienced passengers with these. Much appreciated. :) Getting through security without a hassle. The international terminal was remarkably empty (only six outgoing flights in half a day), and comfortable with lots of places where you could charge your phone and such. Getting through the gate was slow and a little disorganised, though. Mainly lack of information about classifying the passengers into different boarding groups, so naturally everyone was forming one big queue unnecessarily.
Airlines/flights:
  • Lufthansa: Very nice. Two good meals (lunch and dinner), very friendly cabin crew, lots of drinks (basically a wine flatrate... :D). Seating in economy class was not so bad. My friend had a middle seat and complained a bit about the seats being too narrow. Movie selection great. Would fly again.
  • Air Canada: Bad food (dinner and breakfast), in large parts inedible. Got off the plane very hungry after a nine-hour flight because of that. Cabin crew consisted of people who were indifferent at best. At least the wine wasn't bad. Seating was okay too, about the same as Lufthansa. On-board entertainment good, too, even if the movie selection wasn't as large as on the other flight. I will avoid Air Canada in the future because of the food.
Yup, that's Air Canada at its finest. More proof that bailouts and monopoly don't a better service make.

Sucks that you had to also experience possibly one of the worst fire seasons in years. I'm currently in Nelson and the smoke is all the way over here, 800 km from my home. Apparently Seattle and Portland are choking on it now too.
 
Recently went to Europe:

On the way there I flew from SJC -> EWR -> MXP all on United.

SJC -> EWR was on a 737-700 which was a decent flight save for the nervous passenger sitting next to myself and my fiancee. Newark airport has changed quite bit since I was last there in 2014, lots of dining where you order from iPads. The decor of all the dining spots was a bit gaudy, but I wasn't too surprised, I was in NJ after all. We had 3.5 hour layover and we spent most of it in the United lounge.

EWR -> MXP was on a 767-400 a staple of Continental's transatlantic fleet. Great plane and great flight. Food wasn't great. Coffee was really good now thanks to United's partnering with illy.

A week later we flew from MXP -> OLB on an easyjet A320. Nothing to memorable about the flight but check-in at MXP was a bit of a chore. We flew a few days before Italy's Ferragosto holiday so the airport was packed with people going on vacation.

On the return we did OLB -> GVA -> IAD -> SFO.

OLB -> GVA was with Swiss Air on a very new Bombardier CS300. Wow what a plane! Very nice on the inside and very quiet. A bit odd that they went with 2 + 3 seating arrangement but I have to say it makes the cabin seem a bit more spacious. The service was excellent but I wasn't expecting anything less from Swiss Air. Only surprise was that our flight was 20 minutes late which was a bit surprising coming from the Swiss. :D Upon arrival in GVA we had a pretty tight connection and had to have our passports checked 4 different times by 4 different individuals at 4 different checkpoints in order to board our flight. Seemed a bit excessive. GVA wasn't a particularly memorable airport, although the landing approach was pretty cool coming from the body of Lake Geneva. It will say that the way they route the gates to the terminal doesn't really make any sense. I don't know if it was the particular gate we were at but we had to walk quite a ways past the baggage claim in order to get back to the terminal, it seemed a bit odd.

GVA -> IAD was on a United 757-200. We were supposed to be on a 767-400 again but for whatever reason, it had a mechanical issue prior to its scheduled departure and had to be swapped with a plane that is frankly a bit long in the tooth and whose particular cabin configuration was ill-suited for transatlantic travel. This particular 757 we flew on had a pretty dated cabin leftover from when United routinely operated 757s within the continental U.S. The flight attendants seemed a bit flustered due to the plane change and thus service wasn't that great. The worst bit was that over half of the screens for the in-flight entertainment were broken. Fortunately United was kind enough to reimburse me 3750 miles for this. I wasn't too bothered since I had a bit of work to do and a book but many families with kids were a bit miffed. There was also a rumor spreading from one of the flight attendants that due to the strong opposing winds we were encountering, the plane was eating into the fuel reserves and there was a bit of a worry about fuel. The captain even at a certain point of the flight left the cockpit to check something in the galley at the rear of the plane, seemed a bit odd since captains rarely come all the way down to the tail end of the plane. In any case, flight was fine. We had a 2 hour layover in Dulles which was spent going through customs and getting a bite to eat.

IAD -> SFO was on a United 777-200. It's been a while since I've been in one with their revamped cabin with the Tablet/Phone holders behind the seat. Flight was a bit long since we had to avoid a number of storms in the midwest, so we took a long detour through the south( https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL340/history/20170822/2115Z/KIAD/KSFO ). It was a treat since the 777 is probably my favorite aircraft even though the United versions are not equipped with the GE90s.
 
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You flew a 757 internationally? Damn, I didn't think they were really suited for that. I've usually only flown in those when I fly ORD-SFO or south to LAX and San Diego. They look like cigarettes with tiny wings.
 
You flew a 757 internationally? Damn, I didn't think they were really suited for that. I've usually only flown in those when I fly ORD-SFO or south to LAX and San Diego. They look like cigarettes with tiny wings.

Yeah, United has 757-200s and 757-300s. I've flown in another -200 from EWR to TXL (Berlin) that was outfitted pretty nicely for transatlantic flights but this recent one was just awful. I looked into a bit more on Flightaware and apparently the plane is regularly used from IAD to Dublin, which I guess would be tolerable since it's a bit closer than continental Europe, but still.
 
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Awesome. I love flying simulators of old analog cockpit.

Roughly a year ago I had to work for a few weeks on a dozen of simulators of small older business jet, and it was so much fun to fly them compared to the latest Boeing A387-CS100 I'm usually working on.
 
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