How is United Airlines???/

[Whirlwind]

We are flying from Pittsburgh to Chicago to Alaska, anchorage, how is United, we have never flown United...........on time?????etc., I know it is a long flight to Alaska ......any helpful hints...

[judyfssw]

When are you flying to Anchorage?

[sasset]

United's domestic flights has the least legroom that I have ever experienced.

 

Regards

[cruisead]

Be prepared. A number of their labor unions are having problems, the latest being the pilots. In some of the midwest airports, there have been unannounced job actions---like everyone not showing up for work on a particular day. If that happens in Pittsburgh, you're going to be out of luck.

 

The flight to Anchorage is around 5 hours from ORD. ORD is an insane airport and you're going to need a lot of time between flights. ORD is one of the worst airports for ontime arrival and departures. I thought Dallas was bad until we had to fly through Chicago.

[canderson]

We are flying from Pittsburgh to Chicago to Alaska, anchorage, how is United, we have never flown United...........on time?????etc., I know it is a long flight to Alaska ......any helpful hints...

They're pretty good about being on time these days, but they've done a lot of cost cutting in recent years in the food area as they try to work their way out of bankruptcy.

 

The ORD to ANC leg is a long one (about 5-1/2 hrs), so you'll at least get a meal on that one. It's not like the good old days where you'd get fed if there was time and it was mealtime, regardless of the cabin you were in. I've got over 750K real seat miles with them, and long for the old days, whenever those were. Back then, you were assured Godiva chocolates in Business Class on trans-oceanic flights. Back before bankruptcy was even being discussed, I knew the company was in trouble when those chocolates were discontinued!

 

Short answer -- a decent outfit, but nothing special anymore, and beginning to act like an airline trying with great difficulty to compete with the bargain basement guys.

[canderson]

United's domestic flights has the least legroom that I have ever experienced.

 

Regards

You need to fly more. It gets worse (believe it or not) -- much worse. What flavor of aircraft were you on?

 

For all of you that fly and might have missed it, here is a SUPERB site for determining what seats are best on which aircraft on which airlines... and they provide information about seat pitch and width for those that wonder about such things.

 

www.seatguru.com

[Pincus]

We are flying from Pittsburgh to Chicago to Alaska, anchorage, how is United, we have never flown United...........on time?????etc., I know it is a long flight to Alaska ......any helpful hints...

Perhaps it is because they are in such dire financial straits, but my last flight on United was on one of the dirtiest planes seen! Hope they spend more on aircraft maintenance than they do on aircraft internal cleanliness.

[mikiew]

Totally agree.................flying is not what it used to be........We flew United to Australia a few years again.............never again. This time we are going on Quantas.

[TEXASMUNK]

Has been working through financial difficulties. When a carrier gets into these straits, the FAA keeps an exptrememly close eye on maintainance. They may have pulled the chocolates (as has everyone else) but the one place that has not been cut back is safety.

[hdawson]

Giving credit where credit is due. United raised their overall service rating from seventh to fourth in 2004. The only legacy airline to improve service.

JetBlue, AirTran and Southwest were ranked #1, 2 and 3.