Mr. Glenn F. Tilton
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of United Airlines
Mr. Tyler Ross
Filmmaker and airline customer
Dear Glenn,
I have never written to the head of a company before, but my frustration and disappointment with flying on your airline compels me to do so. I am angered and appalled at my experience with United. Yesterday I flew from LaGuardia Airport to Los Angeles Airport by way of Charlotte Airport. This was a flight that United code-shared with U.S. Airways, but since you sold me the ticket and had U.S. Airways do the flying I feel I must take you to task. Everything seemed fine when I bought the ticket online. Everything quickly went downhill when I arrived at the airport.
I stopped at curbside check-in and when the porter handed me my boarding pass I noticed that the flight numbers for both of my flights were now different. It wasn’t until I arrived at the gate that I looked closely at the boarding passes and noticed that my seats had changed as well. I had booked two aisle seats and now the first seat was on the aisle – purely by chance – and the second was next to a window. Do you have any idea how obnoxious it is to sell someone one seat and then switch it to another one? Imagine that you bought a ticket to a concert and you knew you would be sitting in the fourth row from the stage. You arrive at the concert hall and the usher tells you that that you’ve been re-seated in the balcony. Would you feel happy about this change? The fact that you haven’t instructed U.S. Airways not to change people’s seats demonstrates your utter apathy towards your customers. I asked the ticket agent if there were any seats available on the aisle and she told me that there weren’t. It would be unfair of me to ask her to switch my seat with someone else’s so I let it be. I didn’t want to inconvenience a fellow air traveler the way your airline had inconvenienced me. Moreover, because you allowed U.S. Airways to throw out the United flight numbers and use their own, my friend had difficulty locating my flight at the LAX baggage claim when he came to pick me up.
When I arrived in Charlotte things only got worse. My flight was overbooked and took off late as the ticket agents engaged in the absurd auction of bribery required to free up seats. Do you see the lack of logic in over-filling a plane to maximize profits only to lose profit by giving away free tickets? I know you code-share with U.S. Airways so you would probably like to pass the buck here and say it is their fault for overbooking the flight, but they are providing a service that you have sold. Therefore, you must set the standard for customer service and they must live up to that standard. Otherwise, you are essentially saying “Oh, I don’t care about those customers, they’re U.S. Airways’ problem now.”
So, my flight took off late and I shifted from being annoyed at your company to being infuriated. First you throw out the seats that I specifically reserved, then you have the audacity to allow your code-sharing partner to overbook its flight and delay its passengers. Apparently, in your mind the satisfaction of the people that patronize your service doesn’t actually matter, only the fact that they paid to fly on your airline. You expect their loyalty and continued business, yet you continue to fail to meet even the simplest of their expectations. And you wonder why your operating margin is so low.
On the Charlotte flight I learned that food is no longer included in the price of the ticket and I had to pay yet more money to buy my dinner. Five dollars would have bought me a hamburger, french fries and a drink at the McDonald’s in the airport, but on the plane it bought me a paltry excuse for a turkey sandwich. So, now you have thrown out my seat reservations, changed my flight numbers, delayed my second flight and you want me to hand you more money for food? Here’s a little suggestion: Stop providing food on your planes. Or, if you feel you must provide food simply build it into the price of the ticket like you did in the old days. But don’t ask a passenger that you’ve already alienated to hand you more money for bad food.
In addition to the bad food I was also “treated” to a movie with no sound. Is it asking too much to want to watch Spiderman 3 with the sound turned on? I understand that sometimes there are technical difficulties with audiovisual equipment but what really bothered me was that none of the flight attendants seemed to care or make an effort to get it working. I know that the cost of that movie was included in the price of my ticket and that if I had gone to see it at a theater and there was a technical problem I would have been given a refund. I’m not asking you or your company for a refund. I’m simply going to say goodbye to United Airlines.
If you have seen fit to treat your customers in an alienating and downright obnoxious manner then I have no choice but to take my business elsewhere. Perhaps someday you will realize that air travelers are simply asking to be treated with respect and are only seeking to have basic expectations met. The correlate here is that if you treat customers with respect and meet their expectations they continue to fly on your airline and your operating margin increases. Apparently, this elementary precept of business escapes your understanding.
Your Former Patron,
Tyler Ross
