{"id":146,"date":"2007-10-08T23:04:26","date_gmt":"2007-10-08T13:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.travelsignposts.com\/wordpress\/?p=146"},"modified":"2007-10-08T23:04:26","modified_gmt":"2007-10-08T13:04:26","slug":"choosing-an-airline-for-your-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.travelsignposts.com\/wordpress\/travel-tips\/choosing-an-airline-for-your-holidays","title":{"rendered":"Choosing an airline for your holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"float: right\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"pub-1009507070974015\";\r\ngoogle_alternate_ad_url = \"http:\/\/www.travelsignposts.com\/google_adsense_script.html\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 300;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 250;\r\ngoogle_ad_format = \"300x250_as\";\r\ngoogle_ad_type = \"text_image\";\r\n\/\/2007-06-30: TSBlog 300x250\r\ngoogle_ad_channel = \"2928184950\";\r\ngoogle_color_border = \"FFFFFF\";\r\ngoogle_color_bg = \"FFFFFF\";\r\ngoogle_color_link = \"FF6600\";\r\ngoogle_color_text = \"000000\";\r\ngoogle_color_url = \"339933\";\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\n  src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p>Our flight at 1.45 p.m. on UA940 unfortunately confirmed our concern about flying UA.\u00a0 The flight attendants were most unfriendly.\u00a0 The plane was old and there were no monitors at the back of the seat.\u00a0 The plane was like something out of the 70\u2019s.\u00a0 One of the passengers expressed surprise that for a longhaul international flight, that they\u2019d use a plane where passengers didn\u2019t have a choice of entertainment.\u00a0 The flight stewardess said that they \u201cwere still upgrading their\u00a0planes but it\u2019s not happening quickly\u201d.\u00a0 Interesting, since the next generation of passenger planes will be in the air soon.<\/p>\n<p>Tony asked for a cup of coffee, just slightly past breakfast time and the steward said that it would take some time.\u00a0 When asked how long, he said it would take half an hour to brew the coffee, in a tone that was really meant to put you off\u00a0 wanting a cup of coffee.\u00a0 One of the stewardesses was a bit scarey and she even\u00a0asked someone if they were afraid of asking her for a drink.\u00a0 \u00a0I don&#8217;t blame them really as she had a\u00a0permanent smirk on her face.\u00a0 I really thought that the crew that served our side of the plane were aggressively unfriendly.<\/p>\n<p>Our Indian vegetarian meal consisted of mushy rice with potatoes and beans in a lurid yellow sauce.\u00a0 It tasted of nothing and had not a trace of curry flavour.\u00a0 It was the worst Indian vegetarian meal I\u2019ve even encountered and was inedible.\u00a0 Breakfast was just as bad.\u00a0 It was labelled Indian vegetarian but what we had were boiled beans and mushrooms with a packet of Japanese crackers.\u00a0 It beats our imagination how this could possibly pass as an Indian vegetarian meal.\u00a0 It appears that\u00a0the UA kitchen has no idea what Indian cuisine is.<\/p>\n<p>We were really glad to be off that flight.\u00a0 When we were going through Customs, the officer who was trying to get our finger prints and photos was extremely nice and joked with us as he was having difficulty in getting clear prints.\u00a0 This guy had a much tougher job than the flight crew and yet he was ever so friendly.\u00a0 We were relieved that our experience on UA was just an abberation and that Americans are still as polite and friendly as we&#8217;ve known them to be.<\/p>\n<p>To add insult to injury, when we arrived in San Diego, we found that between LA and San Diego, UAL had managed to lose both our bags.\u00a0 We were assured that they&#8217;d be on the next flight at 2:30 pm and would be delivered to where we were staying.\u00a0 We were reassured that when they arrived we would be contacted.\u00a0 We didn&#8217;t receive any contact so over the next few hours Tony was having numerous conversations with their customer service centres in Delhi and then\u00a0Manila.\u00a0\u00a0We were really relieved when our bags finally arrived at 11:30 pm, thanks to a very sympathetic courier who didn&#8217;t want us to go overnight without a change of clothes.<\/p>\n<p>A\u00a0quick search on Google\u00a0showed a raft of\u00a0websites dedicated to complaints from unsatisfied customers.\u00a0 You could say that these customers were very united in their dissatisfaction at UA&#8217;s poor customer service.<\/p>\n<p>Moral of the story is to insist on an airline with\u00a0reputable customer service, especially on a long haul trip so that you&#8217;re not starting your holidays on a negative note.<\/p>\n<p>Helen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our flight at 1.45 p.m. on UA940 unfortunately confirmed our concern about flying UA.\u00a0 The flight attendants were most unfriendly.\u00a0 The plane was old and there were no monitors at the back of the seat.\u00a0 The plane was like something out of the 70\u2019s.\u00a0 One of the passengers expressed surprise that for a longhaul international [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel-tips"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.5 - 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