I Fly United So You Don't Have To. . .

Even if I continue to fly the not-so-friendly skies, I figure I can report on it here so at least someone can get some good schadenfreude out of it.

As you may recall, whence we last left our story, United had managed to lose my luggage even though they never managed to fly me anywhere from Dulles because they didn't have a crew to fly the plane.

It took United only two days to find luggage for a flight that never left and return it to me. In this process, I did get the opportunity to have many conversations with completely inflexible and unhelpful people in various parts of India. And I suppose I should be grateful that my luggage got to visit Austin even if I never left D.C.

I'm still waiting for the United vouchers that I've been given in "compensation" to arrive. Of course, they can only be used under certain cirucumstances for reasons one suspects have to do with being sure that as few of these coupons are used as possible.

More recently, I tried to use my three-jillion United miles to upgrade a flight on Lufthansa--United's main partner in the Star Alliance. The flight was a United codeshare (i.e. the seat had been sold as a United flight but the flight will be operated by Lufthansa). Apparently, it is not even possible to try for an upgrade. While they can request upgrades using United miles on Lufthansa, it is not possible to do for seats on the same flight sold as United seats. As usual with the airlines, it is not best to think to much about why.

The airlines have added new fun baggage restrictions. Ordinary mortals (i.e. non-elite passaengers) are limited to one checked bag of 50 pounds or less. Fees are now imposed for a second bag ($25 on United) which probably means that more people will try to carry on a bag which means an even fiercer scrum for the space in the overhead compartment. It is being done to decrease fuel consumption, according to the airlines.