Yesterday I had a 1:45 flight from Greensboro to Washington-Dulles on United.  The plane took off on time, but halfway to DC we were turned around and did an emergency landing back at Greensboro due to a faulty sensor in the cabin door. Bummer.

Back on the ground we were told to de-plane and then wait for word about the flight.  Eventually it was cancelled (about 5:00) and in the interim United’s computers went down worldwide.  That meant that no one could tell us if we’d be able to get on the next flight because they couldn’t pull up the reservation system and they couldn’t tell if the flight was full (it was).  And they couldn’t tell me if I’d have a seat this morning if I came back to the airport so I ended up renting a car and driving up.  My little one hour flight turned into a 12 hour ordeal.

Most bothersome to me was:

• They only had one person working two gates and handling all the flights.  This poor woman (her name was Alicia) did yeoman work and never lost her cool, and she was lucky that there weren’t any really nasty passengers to deal with. Why did they leave her stranded there like that for over five or six hours?  Where was her backup, especially when she had two or three flights at a time to deal with?
• Communication from United was terrible and almost non-existent.  The woman at the gate was using her personal cell phone to call other agents at other airports she had worked with on previous assignments to try and find out what was going on.  She might as well have been stranded on an island with the amount of communication she received from the company, and consequently we were on the same island with her.
• How can United not have some kind of backup system for this contingency?
• No love from United.  Last year when I had a flight out of Dulles that was delayed several hours on the soon-to-be defunct Independence Airline they brought in extra staff to deal with the passengers and they provided us with complimentary sodas and chips.  Yesterday, despite being there for over six hours no one from United even offered a drink or food voucher. Heck, no manager even came down to the gate to check things out.

I want to emphasize that the employees at United that I dealt with were all polite and as helpful as they could be. Their management hung them out to dry, and if anyone from United is reading this I can tell you that your folks were great and they never once pointed the finger at you even though they should have.

Friendly skies my butt.