IAD Express Operations

[phlus2]

I had the unfortunate pleasure of travelling through IAD on Express yesterday. What a disaster those operations are - so much so that I would seriously avoid doing it again in the future. No offence, but there wasn't a single employee who spoke english as a first language or who made announcements that you could understand, including the flight attendant.

There are so few employees in terminal A now that there just isn't any way that flights can be boarded and passengers handled without utter confusion. The flight that was boarded before mine was weight restricted, which the agent didn't announce until the boarding process had already started, and then wanted volunteers! Seems a bit late once you start boarding to ask for volunteers.

Because of the chaos with the prior flight, my flight boarding was delayed to the point that the pilot came in to the gate agent and said that if he didn't board the flight now the crew would go illegal. Go figure, an illegal flight crew because the gate agent couldn't get the flight boarded.

The whole set up of boarding multiple flights from a singe door with no agents to deal with passenger questions and problems is simply stupid and causes so much confusion as everyone congregates around the door it is ridiculous.

Just wanted to get this out there and off my chest!

 

[767jetz]

I had the unfortunate pleasure of travelling through IAD on Express yesterday. What a disaster those operations are - so much so that I would seriously avoid doing it again in the future. No offence, but there wasn't a single employee who spoke english as a first language or who made announcements that you could understand, including the flight attendant.

You are not alone. As a United employee I am embarrassed by the express operation in IAD. Every time I deadhead through there I just shake my head in disbelief. I have no idea how United can allow that operation to exists in it's current form. It is a true disservice to the customers.

There should be some simple requirements of any contract carrier United employs. English should be spoken clearly and understandably, and training should be given on how to make an announcement. I find that the few times when I can actually understand the language the CS agent is speaking, the announcements are confusing, rushed, and hard to follow. They stutter their way through as if they have no idea what to say. It's quite simple... If you can not learn to make an announcement in a clear and concise and standardized manner, you can not work as a CS agent.

Every time I go through that place I feel like I'm traveling in a third world country.

 

[JungleClone]

All your points are valid. However, good luck changing anything. You're going to have the language barrier in many large, diverse cities, simply because of the low starting wages that UA/UAX offers. You just can't attract too many high calibre employees at that wage. So you end up getting less than ideal employees, whether they speak english clearly or not. You have the same problem at ORD. I'd imagine it's also the same in LAX and SFO, as well. Just a fact of life. One of the truest axioms ever written is, "you get what you pay for."

 

[rvolkcpa]

I had the unfortunate pleasure of travelling through IAD on Express yesterday. What a disaster those operations are - so much so that I would seriously avoid doing it again in the future. No offence, but there wasn't a single employee who spoke english as a first language or who made announcements that you could understand, including the flight attendant.

There are so few employees in terminal A now that there just isn't any way that flights can be boarded and passengers handled without utter confusion. The flight that was boarded before mine was weight restricted, which the agent didn't announce until the boarding process had already started, and then wanted volunteers! Seems a bit late once you start boarding to ask for volunteers.

Because of the chaos with the prior flight, my flight boarding was delayed to the point that the pilot came in to the gate agent and said that if he didn't board the flight now the crew would go illegal. Go figure, an illegal flight crew because the gate agent couldn't get the flight boarded.

The whole set up of boarding multiple flights from a singe door with no agents to deal with passenger questions and problems is simply stupid and causes so much confusion as everyone congregates around the door it is ridiculous.

Just wanted to get this out there and off my chest!

We had a bad experience in November on Colgan flights from ABE - IAD and vice versa. The same SAAB aircraft was used on our departing flight (Monday) and return flight (Friday). It had a broken seat that was taped to prevent usage on the departing flight. On the return flight, after the plane had been boarded, they decided to repair it because it had to be fixed by midnight per FAA rules. All passengers were sent back into the terminal so the repair could be made.

The worst part of the trip was that the departing flight was late arriving in ABE from IAD and was about 90 minutes behind schedule when we finally departed because they were having trouble accounting for all passengers. As we arrived at IAD, the flight attendant was calling out the connecting gates for flights that had already departed. We were delayed at IAD for 5 hours and United wouldn't even give us meal vouchers.