2015: A Year in Photos

I have a “friendly skies” story for you, Johnny. I learned about your blog in today’s Washington Post story about United Airlines’ lawsuit claiming losses when passengers don’t use every ticket they’ve paid for. I’m sure you and virtually any flier don’t need my help to identify how absurd this is. But I can offer one more anecdote to illustrate the extent to which UA has made it company policy to bully its customers.

I live in northern VA and about ten years ago bought tickets to fly from BWI to Denver. The flight included a hop to Dulles that we had no intention of using since it’s an hour closer to our home. I called UA and told them they could sell that flight since we would not be using it. They did not thank us for the extra seat. We were told we would not be allowed to board at Dulles. So we drove to BWI. United cancelled the flight and ferried the passengers by taxi to Dulles. We did not have time to take the shuttle out to parking and then shuttle into the terminal at Dulles, so we left our car at BWI and had to make the hop on the return trip. I called UA corporate to complain about what I thought would be an embarrassing episode and the representative I spoke with accused me of fraud.

Consolidation of the industry has made it difficult to avoid doing business with UA but it is impossible to forget an experience like this.