• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

United Leaves Customers Cold: Too Few Workers Among Reasons Cited for Saturday's Waits

Posted on: Tuesday, 20 December 2005, 12:00 CST

By Mark Skertic, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune

Dec. 20--There is no single reason United Airlines had a service meltdown at O'Hare International Airport Saturday morning, resulting in lines that stretched outside in freezing temperatures and waits of four hours or more.

Instead, the airline blamed a myriad of problems, including inadequate staffing, that coalesced into a situation that frustrated and angered thousands of travelers.

The airline "disappointed our customers by not being prepared, as we should have been, for the extraordinary volume of passengers," Chief Executive Glenn Tilton told employees in his weekly message Monday. "We will identify and we will resolve the cause of that problem, as we will with all other issues that impact our performance and our consistency in execution."

Lines began to form before 8 a.m. Saturday, according to several travelers who contacted the Tribune to describe the situation. Eventually, the lines stretched outside on a day when the temperature never climbed above 21 degrees. The city sent four buses to provide shelter to people waiting in the cold.

"If there are people waiting outside either for skycaps or because Terminal 1 was so crowded the line extended out the door, we felt like we needed to do whatever we could to accommodate those passengers," said Wendy Abrams, spokeswoman for the city's Department of Aviation.

"It was cold outside on Saturday," Abrams said. "There were a lot of people traveling with their families, with their children."

While many insisted on keeping their place in line, they were able to send young people or the elderly onto the buses to keep warm, she said.

The travel problems came on the first busy weekend of the holiday season. It is a time when airports fill with less-experienced travelers, many of whom were said to be surprised by restrictions on the weight and number of bags. Efforts by some travelers to reallocate items from their bags to meet weight limits reportedly caused some of the slowdown Saturday.

Tilton's comments came in a message that generally lauded workers for their efforts in helping the airline move toward exiting bankruptcy.

"Certainly, we all know that we have much more to do, particularly in delivering the consistently positive experience our customers want, and they deserve, every time they choose to fly United," Tilton said.

Problems Saturday included travelers showing up early for new flights, the need to find flights for several hundred customers whose flights to the East had been canceled the day before, and the presence of thousands waiting to go through the check-in line with baggage, said spokesman Jeff Green.

Green emphasized that the airline was not trying to make excuses, and that more workers should have been scheduled Saturday morning.

"The wait times were unacceptable," he said, adding efforts were made to accommodate customers.

"We were immediately waiving fees," Green said. "No. 1, we just wanted to get folks on flights. We held some flights to process people through check-in and get them on board.

"We put them on later flights, we routed them through other cities. When the only choice was to put them on another airline, we did that."

The problems prompted some customers to vow never to fly United again.

Among them are Lisa Reisman and her husband, Jason Busch, who both own consulting firms. After arriving at 6:45 a.m. Saturday with their 2-year-old son for a vacation flight, it took them more than 90 minutes to check in, she said.

They made their plane only because the airline briefly delayed its departure, she said.

Reisman said she was frustrated because a single United employee was on hand to check in families.

"We had about 50 people in front of us, a lot of families, but we figured we'd get through in a half hour," she said. "One agent for the entire premier line."

The airline has lost her family's business along with any travel for the firms the couple owns, she said.

"We are finished," Reisman said. "Absolutely."

Many of those who were in lines stretching into the frigid cold outside the terminal likely made similar pledges. Most won't keep them, predicted Terry Trippler, analyst with airline travel site Cheapseats.com.

"They quit traveling on an airline--right until the next sale," Trippler said. "If you have an option, sometimes people will switch over. But if these people are members of Mileage Plus, if they're trying to accumulate [frequent-flier] miles, they're hooked."

-----

Copyright (c) 2005, Chicago Tribune

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

NASDAQ-OTCBB:UALAQ,

Source: Chicago Tribune

More News in this Category