My flight from Los Cabos to Denver was delayed and the United staff went way out of their way to try to get me home. Kudos to them for their care and kindness.
United Airlines Has Superb Staff In Los Cabos
When I checked in at the counter, the United agent seemed puzzled that I was traveling to Los Angeles…via Denver…instead of direct. She immediately offered me a first class seat on the nonstop flight departing around the same time. I politely declined, explaining that I needed two segments to qualify for 1K status and that this was my last trip of the year.
She laughed. She understood.
But she also was worried that the mechanical problem had not been pinpointed and predicted a rolling delay, which could hinder my ability to make my connection in Denver. I told her I’d stick with my existing itinerary, but sincerely thanked her for being so proactive.
My next stop was the lounge. While there, I received an incoming call from a local Baja California number. I did not answer it…but I left the lounge, thinking my flight delay may have been shortened and they were looking for me to board.
Outside the lounge, I found another United staff member approaching me, holding a boarding pass.
“Are you Mr. Klint?,” she asked.
I nodded.
“I protected you on the Los Angeles flight. Your Denver flight is delayed further. Are you sure you don’t want to take it? I tried calling you.”
What great service. I was so pleased. And the thought of flying nonstop and being home for dinner was quite appealing, though I did not want to risk fighting for “ORC” (original routing credit) and then having to take another flight. So once again, I said that I would stick with Denver.
The delay was lengthened and ultimately, we departed over an hour late. But I made it to Denver (and had one heck of a flight) and also made my connection to LA (with time to stop in the Club Fly Lounge).
These were all United agents by the way, not contract staff. They all had United uniforms, name tags, and ID badges on. That makes a huge difference! And that makes me loyal. That kind of service may be a bit much to expect in major United hubs, but what a great group of people who went out of their way to ensure the crazy guy who flew from Cabo to LA via Denver got home on-time.
While the UA Oaxaca, Mexico station isn’t busy (one UA flight a day to IAH), the personnel are truly terrific; English is spoken fluently, check in is smooth and boarding is efficient. Now Houston is a totally different animal… but then again, IAH is akin to traveling through a zoo. 🙂
@Matthew … Thank you for writing a story praising excellent service . Buenos Dias for you .
The torture that Mileage Plus makes us go after.
This is why some people in Communist countries don’t want to defect even if it is beneficial for them
Covey no longer working on MileagePlus…now on IRROPS and premium services / clubs
Check his Linkedin feed
We pride ourselves at SJD with amazing Customer Service. Shout out to our Amazing team. Appreciate the great article. Real Customer service does still exist.
Thank you Jessica!
Great stuff, I am frankly rather surprised that they have their own staff at an outstation like that. Airline ground staff have pretty much disappeared from non-hub airports in Europe, and I am not even convinced that it’s an economically sound decision as opposed to a self-serving initiative by managers who just can’t be bothered with the attendant complexity.
For example, the LH group operates a huge amount of flights from BCN every day but outsources everything to Swissport, whose agent was adamant that *G members weren’t entitled to lounge access or priority security when flying SN in Y, a view which was promptly confirmed by her supervisor. When my boarding pass scanned through the fast-track barrier I didn’t know whether to be pleased that I avoided the queue or angry about having had to go through a completely pointless argument. I then got into the lounge fine too.
Yes. Contractors can be bad and clueless…I wish BCN was the exception rather than the norm.
At my home airport of BUR, United uses SkyWest contractors and some of them are just nasty. I had one look me up and threaten me because of an incident I wrote about in the gate area.
I’m prepared to cut the airline some slack if they only have a handful of weekly flights from an outstation, I can understand that both they and their contractors might have higher priorities. When, however, they clearly have an enormous amount of traffic to go through, they need to ensure they have training and systems in place to deal with passenger queries and IROPS [well, at least outside of major catastrophic events that paralyse the entire network]. And the buck always stops with the airline, it’s not like pax can start emailing complaints to random people within the handling company.
Yep. Agreed.
In the case of Burbank, there is one flight to/from Denver (on mainline) and 3-5 flights (on SkyWest dba United Express) to/from San Francisco each day.
That’s a lot, do these regional airlines have their own ground staff at the larger airports, or are they all handled by UA?
Depends on the station. All UA mainline at LAX, but DEN separates them, IRRC.
Mexicanos, are very friendly in Cabo, no doubt. But SJD needs to put some water fountains in the airport, Filtered water is probably the problem,
All gate personnel at DEN are UA, not Express.
Would have been much better to just claim ORC.
For the record, over the years, have never had issues getting UA to give me ORC without hassle or questions (though true, it does take a phone call).
Even the once I thought I might get an argument went perfectallt smooth. BLR-TPE via BKK on TG, booked as a cash ticket with Thai directly, and had it credited to UA. Our TG flight was 3 hours late into Bangkok, and missed our connection – they had proactively rebooked us BKK-TPE on China Airlines so we didn’t have to wait until the evening for the next TG flight (China Airlines being about the worst flight experience I’ve had is for another time). When we got home, I called MileagePlus, who asked me to send both old and new tickets/BPs by email, and to give it 6 weeks. I was skeptical it would ever get credited but it did with zero additional follow up – and it only took 3 weeks.
I always will take a more convenient re-route and just claim ORC. UA is most certainly not great at everything, but they are on ORC.