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Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

I had a nightmare flight recently - 48 hours to fly 6 hours. Direct flight canceled, overnight in hotel, missed connections, total nightmare. My assistant tried for an entire day to get reimbursed by various airlines for the problems and we got half the money back but somehow United stonewalled us. Don’t even know how to complain.

Bottom line is - not going to travel for at least a year, and told my family to research places we can drive to. Flying is an absolute mess and I’m not going to do it anymore.

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This is hilarious - I flew United recently for the first time in 2-3 years. And good lord, I thought it had been bad before, but somehow the potential was there for it to become worse than I ever could have imagined. Surly crew, comically dreary cabin, unimaginably terrible “food,” and approximately one drink service per three hours of flight. The only saving grace was that recline seemed to be broken on many of the seats, so at least the legroom wasn’t terrible.

I never had a, uh, opportunity to fly Aeroflot, but this is a lot what I imagine it must have been like.

I hate the Southwest cattle call, but it’s a no-BS consistent experience… if they happen to fly where you want to go without having to make two connections and a non-plane-change extra landing. And Delta still somehow seems to be a generally nice experience, though that only really works for me if I’m flying to one of their hubs.

I don’t recall having any bad experiences on Aeroflot.

Be wary of survivorship bias. Many of the people who were on Aeroflot planes flown by drunks or children aren't around to share their experiences.

I imagine the same is true for all airlines though

All airlines have lost planes due to the pilot letting his teenaged son fly the plane? Ah, no, they have not. That one is sui generis.

You’re right I was lucky enough to avoid that one!

Edit: But also I’ve read about that incident and I feel bad joking about it.

I maintain my original statement with regard to flight amenities, and I’ve never felt unsafe flying on a commercial airline, but I’m going to leave it at that.

Southwest Airlines has more flights in a day than Aeroflot but 0 fatalities. I don't think many airlines can compete with Aeroflot when it comes to deaths caused by inebriated pilots

> unimaginably terrible “food,”

Wait American airline operators still serve food?

My second biggest complaint about American airline operations is the lack of food service. Even the cheap domestic flights in China have food service. The closest thing to food I've ever experienced on an domestic American operation is the fancy bag of various things Southwest gives out on flights to Hawaii.

United offered “chicken and quinoa” and “tofu and pasta” on a nine-hour flight. I assume they thought the choices sounded sophisticated or something. The chicken was literally frozen (up to and including the time that it was served to the end user).

The worst part about this type of thing is it's not like there's a particular person you can be mad at. You can only be mad at the entire system while it tells you "your call is very important to us".

I called United recently with a question about a $1200 flight credit that was evidently unusable, seemingly due to an apparent failure in one of their systems. I called the customer service line and guffawed out loud when the automated voice told me the wait time was over two hours.

2 hours and 45 minutes later, I gave up. You win, United. Enjoy the $1200 from my Covid flight cancellation. I guess I figured I’d at least get to use it given that whole $50 billion bailout, but I guess you needed the money more than I did.

For future cases, the best strategy here is to call them the instant their phone lines open up. For a west coast person this can sometimes mean calling at 5am or something.

This is unconventional, but what about writing them a letter? Address it to the CEO and mention that you're also sending a copy to the FTC. I presume someone is going to open that mail, and while this isn't going to resolve anything quickly, the advantage is you don't have to wait on the phone for hours...

Certified mail might get through to someone important. Not super cheap, but potentially worth it.

These are both good suggestions.

I recently flew international for the first time since 2019. Boston to Taipei, which normally takes 25 to 30 hours, door-to-door, and cost between $1200 and $1500 pre-Covid, took 83 hours after multiple delays. This was a $2000 ticket too.

The worst part was rebooking at JFK for an international airline with insufficient local capacity and ground staff. And then getting the runaround on hotel reimbursements.

> told my family to research places we can drive to

If you're on the east coast, consider a train instead. At least between DC and Boston, train schedules are more reliable than plane schedules, and are more comfortable than driving. (And if you're not in the US at all, I probably don't need to remind you that trains exist.)

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