What are United Airlines playing at?

published: Tue, 16-Dec-2003   |   updated: Thu, 27-Oct-2005

My wife runs the Walt Disney World marathon every year, which takes place in January. The race is kind of fun: the runners get to run around four or five of the Worlds, and also all the bits in between of course. So, we pack up the bags and go spend a long weekend in the Disney resort.

Today I finally got round to buying the plane tickets to Orlando (yes, yes, almost the last minute, but I've had things on my mind). I had a free travel certificate for a companion from United Airlines, but I had to use their travel desk to redeem it. First, though, I visited the United website to search for the flight details, so that I could ask for exactly the right flights. The cost was showing $251.50 per person for the flights we wanted.

(Note: in all my travelling over the last two years, I've pretty much flown United everywhere. I was Premier Executive 1K this year — you have to fly 100,000 miles or take 100 segments the previous year — and I will be next year as well. Being a Premier 1K is good: you get free tickets, free upgrades, and the like.)

I phoned up the Premier Executive 1K travel number. I got a nice Hispanic lady. I told her that I wanted to book two return tickets from Denver to Orlando and that I had a free travel certificate for a companion. She asked me to read off the numbers on the certificate, so that she could enter it in and see the offer details. I then told her where we're flying from and to, and reeled off the flight numbers that I wanted.

"That'll be $571.00 for the first ticket, and then you'd have to pay the taxes on the free companion ticket."

Huh? After some discussion back and forth, it turns out that the freebie is only valid on certain classes of ticket, the cheapest of which is the V class, which is what she quoted. The web was showing the prices for T class. So, in fact it turns out that the free companion ticket is worthless, or rather, worse, that it costs money to use. Since the taxes would be about $50, it would cost an extra $118. All for exactly the same coach seats.

So, what's the point of a freebie that you'd have to pay to use? Apart from its marketing value: "When you're a Premier Executive 1K you'll get a free companion ticket every so many miles that you fly with us."

I told her thanks but no thanks, and booked the tickets on the web.

I just don't understand what United are trying to do. I am a customer who's flown over 200,000 miles with them in the past two years. For all they know (or I know), next year I'm up for another 100,000 miles with them. Why this rather silly requirement that restricts the freebie to a certain ticket class?

Lately, because of Microsoft's travel policy, I've been flying Alaska Airlines between Denver and Seattle. Let's compare them on this one particular route. Alaska doesn't have crush-'em-in seats at the back of the plane, whereas United does (being put in Economy Plus is one big reason to become at least Premier level on United). In other words, Alaska's seats are all Economy Plus in United terms. Alaska fly when I want to travel: early on Monday morning to Seattle, and early evening on Fridays to Denver; United pulled their comparable flights a while back. Alaska serve a snack (OK, it ain't Cordon Bleu and I sometimes forego the breakfast one), but United only serve a small packet of pretzels (in First they serve a deli sandwich or a chef's salad). Alaska fly the same type of plane all the time: I know that my small roller suitcase will fit perpendicularly in the overheads; with United it's a crap shoot and on the smaller 737 my suitcase has to be parallel to the fuselage. Looking on the other side of the coin, United provide video entertainment and audio (including the cool listen-to-the-pilots channel), whereas on Alaska you're left to stare at your fellow passengers if you didn't bring a book on board. With United, being at the passenger level I've reached, I can fairly easily get an exit row seat; with Alaska, I'm just put in the back of the plane.

And, most importantly when I'm buying, Alaska always seem to be cheaper. Take this weekend, for instance, a rather awful weekend to be thinking of travelling, to be sure, but suppose I had to do a return trip between Seattle and Denver. Alaska's web price is half that of United's.

So, as I say, I don't understand United.