(Read parts I - III here)  Passengers on a UAL flight ahead of mine, scheduled for a 9:10 AM departure here in Albany, NY are getting the very bad news that they are going nowhere.  Their 737 made it as far as the end of the runway, now some are being crammed into our CRJ,  and even those who make it to Chicago are being told that they will probably not get to where they are going until Monday.  The airline is doing exactly what it did last week and funneling everybody into ORD with no provision to deal with the crush.  UAL Customer Abuse Agents are informing their victims that attempts will be made to rebook their connections after they are in the air.

I had a nice chat with a pilot.  I was here early enough to catch the 9:10 flight and was trying to decide if it would be worth the trouble of dealing with UAL Customer Abuse to make the switch… a nearly identical weather system from last week is moving across the country.  He assured me that all his data was telling him that ORD would not be hit by the weather until most likely late this evening, perhaps later.   So I thankfully opted to hang around the laid-back little airport here, it really is quite pleasant, especially compared to ORD.   So once again, this is apparently just another example of United being United.

My CRJ just pulled up to gate A-6,  we’ll see what kinds of fun that United Scarelines has in store for me this week! 

Stay tuned.

UPDATE:  7:30 PM PST… I’m home.  Uneventful.  Passengers through Denver took the brunt of UAL management incompetence as best as I could determine from listening to ATC stack the planes headed there.  That left the people who know how to fly - the Captains, First Officers and cabin crews - in charge of the airline… ran like a clock.  Everybody in good humor.  That’s the key…. fire everybody at UAL who wears a suit and let the uniforms run the place and we’d have an airline

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 8:24 am and is filed under MarkTalk.com News & Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.