A Single Flight Conundrum

Between January and March of this year I flew United quite a bit. When Covid travel restrictions hit in mid-March the airlines started changing their requirements to qualify for their statuses for 2021. In most cases the airlines actually extended a frequent flyer’s status into 2021 carte blanche but with some caveats. In United’s case, to earn their upgrade certificates a flyer still needs to spend a certain amount and fly a specific number of flights in 2020. Due to all of my work travel I had no issues meeting the spend amount (Premier Qualifying Points) but I am one flight short of the needed number to earn the upgrade certificates.

With Covid still ravaging the United States I reached out to United Airlines’ frequent flyer support team to inquire about whether there would be exceptions made for people like myself who came very close but didn’t cross the line for next year’s upgrades. The quick response verbatim was:

You must meet the published criteria for awarding of the PlusPoints.

Besides it being a rather terse, somewhat unfriendly e-mail, United is saying all flights must be flown and no exceptions will be made. For me, this means I need to fly that one flight to earn the upgrade certificates for 2021. But is flying that one flight worth it from a safety perspective?

We’ve been pretty good about social distancing and isolation during Covid so it seems irrational to go fly just to earn the upgrades but at the same time, it’s like throwing the upgrades away. The way I would do this would likely be to fly United to San Francisco or Los Angeles (Los Angeles would require a connection) mid-week as the flights are super cheap and then I’d take Alaska Airlines back home since they are still blocking middle seats when possible. I’d wear an N95 mask the entire time and wouldn’t plan on eating or drinking on the flights.

Now I just have to decide if this is too much of a risk or if I am being paranoid. What would you do?

United may need a dictionary

You may remember that I posted about United’s refusal to refund tickets for cancelled flights, instead offering passengers ETCs (electronic travel certificates) for future bookings. During the crazy times we are living, United is trying to preserve as much cash as possible. Their recent earnings call statedearnings call stated a first quarter net loss of $639 million or $7.1 million/day. But, United is still partaking in rather peculiar and misleading behavior. Recently, the airline has skirted Department of Transportation rules for refunds by claiming only cancellations where the customer could not be re-accommodated on another flight within 6 hours of the original were due a refund. The DOT website states the following:

In the following situations, passengers are entitled to a refund of the ticket price and/or associated fees.

Cancelled Flight – A passenger is entitled to a refund if the airline cancelled a flight, regardless of the reason, and the passenger chooses not to travel.

Schedule Change/Significant Delay – A passenger is entitled to a refund if the airline made a significant schedule change and/or significantly delays a flight and the passenger chooses not to travel.

That seems pretty straightforward. If your flight gets cancelled, you get a refund. Full stop. Back to my recent experience, United refused to give a refund for multiple flight cancellations on the same itinerary and the only alternative was to spend the night at O’Hare on my way to Montreal. As a result, I filed a DOT complaint, explaining the situation and giving screenshots of the flight cancellations. A few days later I received a reply from a United representative that my complaint was received and that a refund was being processed. Fast forward 17 business days which is the average refund time with United lately and I received the following in my inbox:

Did you catch that? Here it is as plain text (emphasis mine)

Sometimes forces beyond our control make it hard for us to give you the best experience, and your travel doesn’t go to plan. To thank you for your patience, we’ve gone ahead and refunded your ticket.

The Electronic Travel Certificate may be used for future travel on United – and United Express®-operated flights, and it must be redeemed by the expiration date using the PIN number provided.

I’ve always thought of a refund as a return of my payment back to me. If I pay with cash, the vendor gives me cash back (or a debit card that I can use anywhere). If I pay with a credit card the vendor returns the payment back to the credit card. Apparently, United thinks “refund” means “Electronic Travel Certificate”. Again, they are likely trying to preserve cash but this is not just disingenuous, it’s lying. This is not a refund, it is a credit that you have to use with United. You can’t use that money for something else, like food. All I can think of is a family planning on a taking a vacation when all of the Covid-19 shutdowns begin. Their flights cancel and they call United and are told that they’ll get a refund, then they receive an e-mail like what I got and now they believe they’re out that cash. It is not right that United is playing with words to try and keep as much cash as they can as the airline industry suffers.

All I can think of is Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride. United keeps using “refund” in their language but I do not think it means what they think it means.

My advice to you, the traveler, is to be persistent. I followed up with United after receiving this email and after a lengthy back and forth, I clearly explained that I did not cancel the flights voluntarily and that the offered alternative flights were not acceptable. I have since been told that I will receive a refund to my original form of payment in 21 business days… It seems United has a single intern processing all refunds.

United Really Doesn’t Want to Give Refunds

I had a flight scheduled for work travel, heading to Montreal on March 16 and back to Portland on March 19. Due to Covid-19 restrictions I moved that flight to March 30 with a return on April 2. After rebooking, United made a number of route network changes, including get rid of Washington-Dulles to Portland, which made up part of my return from Montreal. I was rebooked via Chicago and thought that was the end of it. I would have a five hour connection and it would be fine.

Yesterday United announced they would stop all flying to Canada on April 1. A few hours later I received another schedule change e-mail from the carrier saying I would now leave Montreal on April 1 at 9:30am and arrive in Portland at 10pm on April 2. This involved a 32 hour connection in Chicago.

To me this type of connection seems unreasonable, so I called United to ask for a refund. I know that their policies have seen a number of changes, including one that said only schedule changes with a 24-hour impact can be refunded. Their latest policy is even more harsh than that.

United International Refunds Policy

So, any flight that is impacted more than six hours can be cancelled but can’t be refunded until after a year has passed. Seems crazy right? I’ve given United money for a flight that no longer flies. So I called United. I was told that there were no options for me to receive a refund. I asked who was going to pay for the hotel bill at O’Hare, or did they expect me to sleep on the floor? This agent was just doing her job and did call a supervisor who also denied my request for a refund.

There is no reason that my money should not be returned to me. Sure, the world is in crisis but if you the airline can’t actually deliver a customer from point A to point B, then it is unreasonable to hold onto their cash until the customer decides to go somewhere else. There is no guarantee that United will be around in a year. What happens to my cash then?

My plan is to dispute the transaction with my credit card provider, file a DOT complaint, and write a note to my Senator. The note will be a summary of the situation and that my belief is that the US government shouldn’t hand out any bailout money to the airlines until this type of stuff is stopped.

If you are facing a similar situation, I’d love for you to comment. Or better yet, write your Senator.

United’s new elite program

United started 2020 by implementing a “new” measure for elite qualification. They call them “Premier Qualifying Points” (PQPs) and “Premier Qualifying Flights” (PQFs). United’s claim is that this new system will make determining your qualification numbers easier to track.

We also wanted to get rid of factors like fare class multipliers, which made it harder to track your qualifying activity.

After about a month of flying with this new system implemented, I wanted to share my thoughts, likes, and dislikes of the new program.

Snowy morning at Newark.
I’ll be fairly blunt in my feelings, I think the move to PQPs by United has little to do with how hard it is to track your elite progress and more to do with how much money you spend on them. The old method was not difficult to track, in fact, it was quite simple. There were tables with how much you would earn and United would even show you how much a set of flights would earn during the booking process (they do this for PQPs as well). No, United is looking to thin the ranks of their 1K flyers and the easiest way to do that is to up the amount required to qualify. Distance flown during the year no longer matters, simply the dollars you spend on the airline.

The new way of tracking your progress is not easier, especially if you fly on United’s partners like Lufthansa or Air Canada. You have to figure out how many award miles those partner flights would earn, which is a task in and of itself, see this table a kind FlyerTalk member put together. It is slightly deceptive for United to tout the simplicity of the new program when it really isn’t all that simple.

The other part of United’s new system that I find disingenuous is the fact that for 1K status they require 54 flights or 6,000 more PQPs than the base requirement. 54 flights is a lot of flights and flyers get no bonus or multiplier for flights in a premium cabin. Meaning you could get 18,000 PQPs flying first class across the country every few weeks but not hit 54 flights. My guess is that this is intentional to force those types of flyers to spend more time flying United and their partners.

The good news is that just about every dollar (excluding taxes) spent on United and partners is eligible to earn PQPs. This includes award co-pays, paid upgrades, preferred seat purchases, and economy plus seating subscriptions. So at least you as a customer are being rewarded for the extra cash you spend on United. I don’t know that I would go out of my way to give United that extra cash, but if you are already flying Star Alliance and United then it is a small perk.

Overall, it’s easy to tell how I feel about United’s 2020 changes. I think the airline is focused solely on how much their customers spend and I question how sustainable that is if and when the economy takes a hit. How quickly can the airline turn around and revise the frequent flyer program to accommodate a fluctuating economy? United has had issues rolling out some of the perks of the program, namely the ability to use an increased number of PlusPoints to immediately upgrade an itinerary. It’s a feature that allows you, the traveler, to bypass others on the upgrade list by using more PlusPoints. United is waiting until February to roll this feature out and it’s unclear why. The airline could be having technical issues or, they could be trying to avoid having a rush of PlusPoints used as their validity of January 31, 2020 comes up. My gut says it’s the latter.

I am interested to see how United tweaks the program, if at all. Airlines seem to be chasing the bottom line and with their latest program changes, United seems to be at the front of the chase. People will continue to fly United because they need to get from point A to point B but I don’t know that loyalty beyond that will exist, especially as people realize they won’t requalify. I’d love to hear what you think about United’s program changes, feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.

Something doesn’t add up with this unaccompanied minor story

United at Newark
There is a story coming out today on a number of different news sites stating that United put a 14-year-old passenger on the wrong connecting flight. He was set to go to Stockholm on SAS but ended up on a Eurowings flight to Düsseldorf. Those two flights board next to each other and the gate agents are the same contract staff for both airlines

However, when I read through them, something does not add up.

From the Yahoo News! story:

A parent is blaming “the idiots” at United Airlines for putting his 14-year-old son on the wrong international flight, which would have taken him to Germany, instead of his intended destination, Sweden.

The young boy, Anton Berg, flew as an “unaccompanied minor” on June 30 with United Airlines from Raleigh, Durham, N.C. to Newark, N.J. From there, his connecting flight was supposed to take him directly to his destination, Stockholm, with Scandinavian Airlines, but he got on a flight to Dusseldorf, operated by Eurowings, instead.

So a 14-year-old traveling alone as an unaccompanied minor was put on the wrong connecting flight. Per the same article, United has apologized:

United Airlines has since refunded the $150 fee charged for directing the unaccompanied minor. In a statement provided to Yahoo Lifestyle, a representative said that the airline has “been in frequent contact with the young man’s family to confirm his safety and to apologize for this issue.”

What doesn’t add up is that the story and United’s unaccompanied minor policy don’t match. Add on top of that, the child was connecting onto a partner flight that was being serviced by a contract set of agents and things really get complicated.

From United’s website:

Our unaccompanied minor service is for children who are 5-14 years old and traveling without a parent, legal guardian or someone who is at least 18 years old. These young travelers also need to follow certain requirements for their safety:

  • Unaccompanied minors can only travel on nonstop United or United Express® flights. They can’t use our unaccompanied minor service on codeshare flights and other flights operated by our partner airlines.
  • United does not offer unaccompanied minor service connecting to or from other airlines’ flights.
  • Children younger than 5 can’t travel as unaccompanied minors, even if they’re flying with an older unaccompanied child.
  • Unaccompanied minor service is not available for children older than 14. Young adults ages 15 to 17 can travel alone on any United- or United Express®-operated flight.
  • It costs $150 each way for every two children traveling using the unaccompanied minor service.

The unaccompanied minor “service” is really a fee to make sure that your child makes it from your care to the care of whoever is picking them up from their destination. It is not an escort/babysitting service making sure your kid gets on the correct flight. In this particular case, it sounds like the parents skirted the rules of the program to try and get United to connect their son onto an SAS flight, which is not permitted for an unaccompanied minor (it says so directly in the policy). In fact, part of the reason the airlines don’t offer connections anymore is exactly this scenario, a potentially lost child somewhere in the process.

Once the minor was in the care of the contract agents for SAS and Eurowings, there was another breakdown where it was not understood what flight the child should be on. He was inadvertently directed to the Eurowings flight by their staff, not United’s.

The whole story comes down to the parents trying to be slick and skirt the unaccompanied minor rules and having it backfire. Rather than just roll with the punches they blame the airlines (and really focus on the wrong one in my opinion). The contract staff for the two European carriers screwed up and they need to fix whatever flaw they have that let them issue a boarding pass for the wrong flight.

Paint Me Unimpressed

Images of United’s new livery hit the internet last night before the official “reveal” today in Chicago. The new paint scheme drops the gold elements from the look and replaces them with different blues.


For all the hype that United was trying to generate around the new livery, overall it appears like a very minor change done poorly. Here are some quick thoughts:

  1. The “logo” is still the globe, just simplified. United and their partners in this branding had a chance to re-imagine the globe and give us something new, but for whatever reason, they doubled down on it.
  2. The blue looks “cheap”. The particular blue that United chose for their name and around the engines has a tone to it that looks odd. Maybe it is the light in the hanger, but the color seems like something I’d see on a bad ad for hair care products.
  3. There is a ton of white. The look is minimalist but it seems overly so.
  4. There is nothing that stands out. I think this is the thing that bothers me the most. There was a real opportunity to do something interesting and new but United went the opposite direction, playing it as safe as they could while getting a “new” look.

There was a large release by United a while back on new uniforms, onboard amenities, etc. that incorporated plum and other hues of purple and it is disappointing that with the new livery they steered clear of including those colors. At the end of the day though, it is just paint. I fly inside of the plane. What I would really like to see is United focus on their soft product and customer service. Start delivering on those things and I think people will forget what colors are painted on the plane and just remember it by the name and the service they receive.

What do you think?

What United Should Prioritize Over Free DirecTV

United announced today that they will be offering free DirecTV service on all 211 Boeing 737s that have the television service.

Just in time for the Big Game, United Airlines today announced that effective immediately more than 100 channels of live television will now be free on 211 Boeing 737 United aircraft equipped with seat back TV, making viewing easy gate-to-gate. In addition to offering free live DIRECTV at more than 30,000 seats, United customers also have access to hundreds of movies and TV shows available on personal devices through the airline’s collection on the United app – offering customers thousands of hours of programming in total.

While it’s a great news release (American Airlines is doing something similar for the “big game”) it glosses over the fact that United is actively removing the DirecTV equipment from the 737s that are going in for new seats or heavy maintenance. I have not heard details but I do believe the plan is to go to an all personal device streaming setup eventually. This is really an interim step on the way to that goal.


What United really should be focused on is getting Wi-Fi working consistently on their domestic fleet. I have been on a number of flights the last few months where the Wi-Fi has either not worked or been so slow that it was not worth using. I rarely watch any of the live television programming while flying, opting instead to turn it to the inflight map channel. I use my time on planes to read or catch up on work and for the latter, I need working internet. The internet service domestically on United has been abysmal. The international planes, in my experience, have fewer Wi-Fi problems, though I have had a few long flights where the internet was not working from the beginning.

It is one reason I have steered clear of United’s year long Wi-Fi subscription. I am not going to invest cash in something that does not reliably work and that cannot be easily refunded on a per flight basis. A subscription service is great in theory for people who are frequent travelers and United’s pricing for it isn’t awful. But my guess is that the people who have purchased it have not been happy. While Delta and Alaska Wi-Fi on GoGo may not be the fastest, for the most part it works all of the time. That’s the reliability I and others want with United’s inflight internet.

United needs to focus their attention on some of the basic things that makes their product worth flying rather than trying to match Delta in hopes to lure a few more customers with shiny things. I want on-time performance, good schedules, working Wi-Fi, and friendly customer service. Everything else is icing on the cake.

When a trip goes sideways

A couple of weeks ago I was on my way to Taipei and Hangzhou with Fozz. The goal was to fly United’s last flight between Hangzhou and San Francisco. To do that, we planned to spend a day in Taipei first then head to Hangzhou, where we could transit without visa for another full day before flying back to the US.


On Friday the 13th (very appropriate) I woke up at 7am to catch my Portland-San Francisco flight and saw we were delayed by 55 minutes. No big deal, I had almost two hours to connect. The Santa Rosa wildfires had caused issues the day before as I returned from Las Vegas via San Francisco as well and I figured everything would be delayed. When I got to the airport the delay was 1.5 hours and I decided to talk to one of the gate agents about my options. She stated that there was an EVA flight to Taipei that left at 5:50pm that I would still have plenty of time for so she “protected” me on it, leaving my original United flight in the record should I get to San Francisco in time to make that flight.

By the time I boarded the plane in Portland, our flight was 2.5 hours delayed and I knew there was no way I would make my original connection but I was confident in making the EVA flight and stayed on the plane. Landing in San Francisco was uneventful and as I chatted with Fozz on the phone, the plane to Taipei was still at the gate with the door open. I might just make it! But it wasn’t to be. I arrived at the gate only to be sternly told that they were not taking anymore passengers. As I was told this, another person who was connecting was allowed to board. The only thing I can figure is that they had spoken to her previously or she was a standby passenger.

I still was not stressed, as I had an EVA flight confirmed, so I went to look for an EVA agent who could get me a boarding pass. Unfortunately, the EVA gate did not yet have an agent present and there was no one at the transfer desk. I also learned that both EVA’s and Singapore’s lounges at SFO had recently closed to make room for United’s new Polaris lounge. This left me in a position where my only option was to exit security and go to EVA’s ticket counter.

The agents at the EVA counter were very friendly and politely told me that they had no ticket for me and that I would need to talk to United to have them send the ticket over again. 45 minutes later and I was speaking with a United ticket agent who told me that the Portland agent should not have reissued the ticket the way she did and that it had been rejected by EVA. Due to the fires everything was full the next day but during this time Fozz had texted me to say that his plane was returning to the gate. The thought popped into my head that I might just be able to get back on that flight…

An aside, I still do not know why the United ticket agent at SFO did not offer to reissue a coach ticket on EVA. The original ticket was coach that was upgraded via a GPU, so my expectation was that she would at least offer coach on EVA. Maybe EVA was sold out in the back cabin due to the fires and misconnects?

Anyway, I went back through security using my original SFO-Taipei boarding pass and met Fozz at the gate. We asked an agent to relist me for the flight and she told us she could only do it after they had boarded, so we waited.

To make a long story short, the offer was to put me in coach in a middle seat (rather than downgrade the passenger they had upgraded into my seat) or to perform a carry over/carry back, essentially a trip-in-vain. At this point I was super tired and decided to just head back to Portland. Fozz was in agreement and decided to trip-in-vain as well.


I eventually made it back to Portland at midnight after dealing with multiple agents to get the tickets properly notated and reissued. It was a mess getting home, but in my mind, was the right decision. The Taipei flight landed nearly six hours late and would have completely burned our time in the city as we would have spent most of that getting to the hotel and back to the airport. I was bummed to miss the last Hangzhou-San Francisco flight, but at least I got an interesting blog post out of it.

If you’d like to hear more, Fozz and I recorded a Dots, Lines and Destinations episode about it.

Couple Removed from United Flight (or a non-story)

From KHOU (autoplaying video):

Michael Hohl, the groom, said he and his fiancé, Amber Maxwell, were the last to board the plane.

According to Hohl, they noticed a man was spread across their row napping when they approached their seats, 24 B and C.

Not wanting to wake the man, Hohl said they decided to sit a three rows up in seats 21 B and C. He said they didn’t think it would matter because the flight was half full with multiple empty rows.

21 B and C are exit row seats on United planes and considered Economy Plus because of the extra legroom.

After sitting, Hohl said a flight attendant approached and asked if they were in their ticketed seats. The couple explained they weren’t and asked if they could get an upgrade, but instead they were told they needed to return to their assigned seats.

So then they tried to finagle their way into the seats by asking for the upgrade.

“I think customer service and the airlines has gone real downhill,” said Hohl. “The way United Airlines handled this was really absurd.”

So the couple could have simply asked the flight attendants to ask the man in their row to sit up (which he would have been required to do for takeoff anyway), but they opted to seat themselves in a better seat.

To sum it all up, this is a non-story.

The United Debacle

I am sure you have seen the videos of the United passenger being forcibly removed from a flight by police after refusing to be “bumped” (called an IDB) to a flight the next day. The video and the situation in general, is disturbing and frustrating. First off, United has handled the entire situation poorly. United told everyone the situation and then after this particular passenger refused to leave the plane, police were called to remove him. He was yanked out of his seat dragged down the aisle, bloodied. As Seth points out, United had more options available to them to deescalate the situation from the beginning.

Even at $800 in comp (plus presumably the overnight hotel, meals, etc.) United failed to find the four it needed. The first two IDB candidates left quietly enough. The doctor did not and authorities were called. The resulting removal was not pretty, to say the least. Could United have gone higher in compensation offer? Absolutely? If it has strict policies that prevent such then those should be revisited. Especially when it is a case of must-ride employees and not a more common oversell tied to maximizing yields.

The passenger also has some culpability in the matter. The contract of carriage you “sign” by buying a ticket states that you can be involuntarily bumped from a flight if needed. Compensation must be provided, accommodations are to be arranged, and a new flight is to be booked. The problem is, most people do not read the contracts of carriage. Just about every airline has one and though it is a dense document, a lot of crucial information about your rights as a passenger are contained within. This article by Julia Horowitz and Jon Ostrower puts the state of the contract of carriage in perspective.

Airlines set their own policies when it comes to the order in which passengers are bumped. The terms are sketched out in “contracts of carriage” that passengers agree to when they buy their tickets.

On United flights, people with disabilities and unaccompanied minors should be the last to be kicked off, according to the company’s carriage contract.

American Airlines says it denies boarding based on order of check-in, but will also consider “severe hardships,” ticket cost and status within the carrier’s loyalty program.

Delta Air Lines also takes check-in order and loyalty status into account, as well as which cabin a passenger is slated to sit in. The carrier also says it makes exceptions for people with disabilities, unaccompanied minors and members of the military.

The lack of knowledge about the contract of carriage is no excuse for United’s actions though. And there were still other options they could have exhausted in addition to cash. Why not offer the passenger a rental car for a one-way drive to Louisville? Or what about guaranteeing a seat on the next flight (there was another flight leaving later that night)? Instead the cops were called. This seems to be the common way to handle issues onboard planes still at the gate these days. The gate agents and flight attendants are not referees and their typical operating method is to explain once, maybe twice, and then involve an authority figure.

Lastly are the police officers. Their handling of the situation was downright uncalled for. And deflecting the cause of the man’s injuries as “tripping” just makes me even more upset.

All of this to say, I still don’t think we have all of the facts yet. We know the handling of the entire thing by United was crappy but the three unanswered questions that are important are:

  1. What prompted the calling of police? Was it just the man’s refusal to leave the plane? If so, there needs to be some serious work done on policies for involving authorities.
  2. How did the man get back on the plane? It seems crazy to me that he was dragged off the plane by police and then somehow made his way back on. What transpired during all of this?
  3. Why did United agents not try harder to entice passengers to voluntarily leave? And on top of that, why exactly did they need a crew of four in Louisville so last minute? It seems like a crew scheduling issue really was the root cause of this entire thing. Maybe their regional carrier has a little explaining to do on why the scheduling was so messed up.

I actually tried to avoid writing about this topic but the general noise on social media and around the web just really made me question our intentions. It seems like we’re all itching for a modern day crucifixion of anyone that seems to have done any kind of wrong and social media gives us an outlet to express that. But without all of the facts are we really doing the most good? Or are we fueling a fire that perpetuates bad behavior in the long run? If we don’t want air travel to be like a bus in the sky then we need to treat it better than a bus and expect more of it.

Seeing tweets about banning the overbooking of flights or that having a ticket gives you “rights” is frustrating to me in a way that is hard to explain. I am sure there are good intentions behind most of it but without all of the facts the tweets seem like noise for the sake of noise. And it just seems to pile up.

As a frequent United flier I am disappointed in their handling of the situation and how they have responded to it so far. I will my voice my displeasure with them directly. I am also frustrated that law enforcement handled a non-violent situation with violence and in their write-up of the events placed the blame for the passenger’s injuries on the passenger.

Let’s hope that this serves as an example of how not to handle these situations in the future for everyone involved. If you are looking for more reading on the subject, I think Seth’s take is one of the more levelheaded and thought provoking write-ups out there. Phil Derner Jr’s piece on NYCAviation is also great.