United Airlines: Tokyo to US -- A Lot of Money for Such Crummy Service

As usual, I will cut-to the chase: I might not be traveling with United Airlines again. For the money I spent on a ticket I expected a heck of a lot more than I got. I will get to the whys of it all in a bit. Allow me to give some background first. I traveled from my home in Tokyo to America for a visit. It's a trip I've made several times over; however, this outing was by far the least pleasant. The service was surly, the plane was old and it also happened that it was a complete mess. Now, I've complained about airlines before. I admit in the past perhaps I've complained rather hastily. However, this time around I was determined to complain as rationally as possible. So, I put some distance between when I took my trip to America and when I wrote this review. I went with this approach to determine if my complaints about the airline/trip continued to annoy me or if I'd even remember them a month after the fact. After a month I'm still annoyed so, here is my review of United Airlines.

To begin, when I got to the United Airlines' ticket counter area (inside Narita airport) the show was being run at a horribly insufficient level already. People and bags were everywhere. Japanese UA employees were directing customers to incorrect lines and those lines were almost completely stagnant: I'm talking a few feet of forward progress every ten minutes. Anyone reading this who knows anything about the Japanese work ethic should find this surprising. The Japanese are incredibly efficient and pride themselves on this fact. Now, I'm willing to admit that perhaps I caught UA on an "off day" or something but things were so inefficient I couldn't help but wonder if they operate that way all the time.

I arrived for my flight about three and a half hours early and thank God I did. Even with all that extra time I nearly missed my flight. At the ticket counter area there were so many people they were spilling over into the common areas. I was herded into the nearest, later discovered to be incorrect, line and the waiting began. About an hour later (literally) I'd made it to the first bend in the line; the line had about three lengths and bends before arrival at the counter was possible. At the second bend and another forty-five minutes later a UA employee asked me where I was going. I told her. She pulled me and a Canadian behind me out of line and told us to "wait", and then she left. No explanation. Nothing. Gone. The Canadian was as confused as I was so we talked a bit. Twenty minutes later we were still waiting with zero instruction given to us.

Finally, I asked another employee what was happening. I told her we were pulled out of line because we were going to the US and were left unattended. This new woman replied, "Please wait for the next available attendant". Great, that helps a lot. So, eventually the woman who pulled us out of line shows up again but when I asked her where I and my new Canadian friend were supposed to be she looked at me as if I was nuts and had never seen me. Odd. Thankfully the woman asked someone else and we were then told we were supposed to be at the other end of the ticket counters, number twenty-four or something and we were at counter number one. Fine, at least we had direction. After maneuvering through the sea of people my new friend and I arrived at counter twenty-damn-something where we were told to wait in line behind at least twenty other people.

A defeated sigh escaped our lungs and at that point I grew truly nervous: my flight was set to leave about another hour later and I had security to get through still. I waited in line about ten minutes more when yet another Japanese UA employee asked where I was going. I told her. She pulled me out of line. Again. Fortunately that time around, she pulled me up to the counter and didn't keep me waiting. So, I checked my bag, bid farewell to my line buddy and off I went toward security.

I won't bore anyone with the security details because they're irrelevant to my review of United Airlines. However, I'll say that mostly because of my time standing in line, being moved, standing around, being ushered elsewhere and told incorrect information by UA I nearly missed my flight. It's worth mentioning, though, that customs was a problem and a hold up but again, that has nothing to do with UA. Had UA been quicker from the get-go, I'd still have been held up at customs behind a million people but at least I'd have had more time to wait. Anyway, I barely, and I mean barely made my flight. I got on the plane and the doors closed about minute later.

For those readers who have never traveled internationally, generally there are enough flight attendants who speak enough different languages to get everyone taken care of on the plane. There is a point to bringing this up: I found the entire flight attendant staff to be quite rude. I'm a fairly easy going guy and don't let a lot get to me but there was something about this flight, the whole experience really, that just rubbed me the wrong way. Speaking both English and Japanese I can say I wasn't pleased with either the English staff or the Japanese staff. I was shocked by how unprofessional the Japanese staff was because professionalism is also something the Japanese pride themselves on; I've never felt more welcome than when I walk into a Japanese establishment. That didn't happen here.

First, I got on the plane and a flight attendant who was actually Chinese directed me to my seat. Funny thing is, she told me incorrectly. She directed me to the wrong side of the plane. I went as she directed but the pilot who happened to be hanging out overheard the mistake and corrected it. Now this is fine; up to this point the problem is completely minor if even a problem at all. I bring this up because the Chinese attendant looked at me as though the mistake was my fault and get this: she actually said, "I told you it was this side. You went to the wrong side". I know what this woman told me. The phrases "this side" and "on the other side" sound nothing alike. For her to place the blame on me instead of just apologizing was ridiculous in my opinion. Admitting her English isn't tops would have been fine and certainly understandable. Now, this per se didn't bother me. This alone would have been just a wacky language barrier mishap which happens all the time. It wasn't until all the other stuff piled up that this incident made my list of complaints.

Alright, earlier I mentioned the plane was a wreck. It was. This plane looked as though it hadn't been serviced or even cleaned since the 1970s. It was in generally bad condition: old and crummy, dirty floors, dirty seats (in fact, mine was missing half of the aisle-side arm rest). The only thing somewhat new about this plane was the in-seat TV set. Though as new as that feature is, somehow even those looked as though they'd been mistreated and kept in almost deliberate disrepair. Certainly, an airline attendant can't stop a customer from abusing a TV set if said attendant isn't present to witness said abuse but I like to think general maintenance: cleaning the TV screen of dirt and grim perhaps, is a common practice so that each customer is afforded the best experience possible. My TV screen in particular had a huge car key slash in it. Again, can a flight attendant do anything about this if they don't see the vandalism happening? Of course not but my goodness if the choice was mine I'd try to get the darn thing fixed.

Oh, before I get too lost in my thoughts here, I have another maintenance complaint. Does anyone reading this remember the post-flight phrase, "Be careful when opening overhead bins as items may have shifted during flight or landing"? Anyone? Well, I bring this up because the overhead bins on this plane opened during flight without any help from anyone or turbulence. Surely this a safety hazard, no? On two occasions I witnessed overhead bins just, simply, pop open. Overstuffed perhaps? I thought that wasn't allowed precisely because it's a safety issue.

It just so happens when I saw these bin open a male flight attendant was near me and didn't see the bin fall open. As people do in such a situation I alerted him to the issue. Being a product of good manners, I said verbatim, "Excuse me, sir". This was greeted not with a, "Yes, sir" or "Yes" or "How may I help you" but an irritated, "What"? To this I replied, "The overhead bin over there came open". The flight attendant didn't even thank me. The only response I got to what I thought was helpful information was an aggravated and loud sigh.

Instead of moving a bag from the overstuffed bin to, perhaps, a less crowded bin the attendant pushed and jammed the bag further inside the bin and forced the bin closed. That didn't really solve the problem because the bin fell open a second time a minute later. I alerted the same attendant and he looked at me as though I was causing this bin to open. Last I checked the fasten seat belt sign was activated so I didn't open it by hand (for spatial reference the bin was on the other side of the aircraft and a good twenty feet from me) and my telekinesis powers have not actually worked yet so I know I didn't open it with my mind. Anyway, I was fairly upset with this flight attendant's attitude.

When meal time came around I was served by one of the Japanese attendants. This is when things got even weirder because, as I said earlier, Japanese pride themselves on professionalism and courtesy. It's probably worth mentioning this Japanese attendant didn't speak English (at least not very well). Fine, I didn't expect her to be able. In fact, that's why there are English speaking attendants. It just so happens I speak Japanese. Lucky for both of us. The meal options were chicken or beef. In her limited ability to speak English, she asked me, "Chicken, Beef"? To make it easier on both of us I replied in Japanese. She looked at me like I had spiders crawling on my face.

I've been in plenty of situations where a Japanese person is surprised by a foreigner speaking Japanese and will stare in shock. But the idea that a fifty-some year old international flight attendant never once heard a white person speak in Japanese is utterly absurd. For her to be so taken aback and just stare at me until I had to repeat myself is ridiculous. She took the beef meal out of her cart and dropped, literally dropped, it on my tray table. She couldn't hand it to me? She was still too surprised? What gives? At another point in the flight I stopped this same woman to ask her for water. She replied with the same tone the male flight attendant did when I told him the overhead bin was open. Though she replied in Japanese this time, it didn't make her any less rude.

The only other thing I can think to mention about this less than stellar voyage is when the lady in the seat in front of me was falling in-and-out of sleep she pressed the flight attendant button (which in this case was located on the arm rest) accidentally. This happened more than once and finally when the male flight attendant (the one from the overhead bin scandal) felt he had responded one too many times he scolded the poor woman for something she'd done in her sleep. I can't make this stuff up, folks. It must have been a bad day for the whole crew on board.

Sure, while none of this adds up to the trip being a nightmare it shouldn't have happened. In my book this kind of behavior doesn't get a pass especially when customers are paying around or well over one thousand dollars to fly. If I wanted to be treated as an annoyance rather than a customer I wouldn't have paid nine hundred dollars in order to achieve that.