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Showing posts with label united. Show all posts
Showing posts with label united. Show all posts
Thursday, August 30, 2012
United and Special
I felt some regret at what I'd written yesterday about United; was I jsut over-entitled? After all, the plane still had seats, and flew, and so on. But given the rudeness of the cabin crew, I started to feel less forgiving for United again. It's not that they were universally rude - we kept heard them having cheery conversations with the people in the rows directly in front or behind us. But every time they reached us, they became sullen and grumpy. Perhaps they hated vegetarians. Perhaps they were annoyed that I discovered when you request apple juice, they have to give you an entire can of the stuff rather than a slosh of juice from an already open carton. Or perhaps they didn't like my beard, or the haircut of the affable Marine who sat next to us. Whatever. At least if they'd been rude and grumpy with everyone, it would have been easy to accept. You don't always want to be made to feel special.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Stuck in transit
We drank high-class booze and ate truffle-infused deep fried balls of macaroni and cheese until 1 in the morning, then went back to the flat, picked up our luggage and headed to the airport.
Our flight didn't depart until 7, so arriving at the airport at 3 seemed a bit premature. Changi is a strange, almost unearthly place that early in the morning; you can look up to the enormous ceiling of the check-in hall, and see birds flitting between the rafters.
Or you can look at the check in desks, where a huddle of coral-jacketed airport staff had a last minute pep talk.
They kept going into these huddles, and then not doing much. United's reservation systems were completely borked for about three hours this morning; you couldn't be checked in, the website was utterly down, and it looked like somebody was going to start writing out boarding tickets by hand. We were told that if we'd checked in online already, they could issue us tickets. Well, perhaps they could have done, if my online check-in yesterday hadn't resulted in that self-contradicting THIS IS NOT A BOARDING PASS boarding pass.
Our flight didn't depart until 7, so arriving at the airport at 3 seemed a bit premature. Changi is a strange, almost unearthly place that early in the morning; you can look up to the enormous ceiling of the check-in hall, and see birds flitting between the rafters.
Or you can look at the check in desks, where a huddle of coral-jacketed airport staff had a last minute pep talk.
They kept going into these huddles, and then not doing much. United's reservation systems were completely borked for about three hours this morning; you couldn't be checked in, the website was utterly down, and it looked like somebody was going to start writing out boarding tickets by hand. We were told that if we'd checked in online already, they could issue us tickets. Well, perhaps they could have done, if my online check-in yesterday hadn't resulted in that self-contradicting THIS IS NOT A BOARDING PASS boarding pass.
