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Irate first class passenger pulls emergency slide, leaves plane {Gadling}
Jul 7th 2008 3:32PM aeons ago when i was flying the now defunct Eastern Airlines, one of the caterers accidentally pulled one of the emergency slides. i remember hearing the pilot go "i've never seen THAT before"...
they didn't have a slide in stock at DC's National Airport, so they had to fly one in from Miami. Needless to say our 5 pm flight didn't get airborn until almost midnight.
United Airlines' 1994 misstep multiplied {Gadling}
Jun 12th 2008 2:12PM its funny but reading about your experiences reminded me about why my husband and i never fly united. our two bad experiences happened around the same time as yours. something unhappy was happening with their corporate culture.
i tend to be very pro flight attendant. my mom flew for Delta and i know that they work very hard. but the flight attendants on United were a different matter...
instance one was when i was going thru chemo. i was flying with my fiance to be in a friend's wedding. the hustle and bustle of travelling combined with my ongoing treatment had made me a little queasy. i was also pretty weak at the time and bald as a bowling ball. (i.e. the lack of hair on my head, the missing eyebrows and missing eyelashes should have given away that this was a somewhat legitimate request.) i had asked if it was possible to get a glass of ginger ale to settle my stomach while the plane was boarding. i could see that first class passengers were being served drinks. if the flight attendant had said 'no, it's policy, i'll get in trouble', i would have been ok. But i was just told 'no' abruptly and when we asked if i could get a ginger ale at the beginning of
drink service we were rudely told that we'd have to wait our turn. Again, i understand that they couldn't cater to every whim, but getting a glass of ginger ale to a bald woman who was on the verge of vomiting didn't seem like too outrageous a request.
the second time came when we were flying from denver to dc. We were on the runway and a little old lady HAD to get to the bathroom. It was clearly a 'get to the bathroom, or soil the seat' moment. However we couldn't go airborne with someone in the toilet, so we were paused. At that moment, one of the flight attendants got on the PA and sneeringly announced that we WOULD have taken off, except that someone was in the bathroom and holding us up. That flight attendant saw the same hurried trip made by that old lady. i can't believe that the flight attendant would humiliate a passenger like that, especially b/c the alternative would have been a three hour flight smelling human excrement in the cabin.
after that, adios United. we'll pay substantially more to avoid united altogether.
