Every day for a week I checked the United Airlines website to find any reward seats available around Christmas, and every day I found dozens of results. Every flight I tried to book, however, produced only an error message: “this flight is no longer available.”
Some would call this “false advertising.” I just call it “mean spirited.” I naturally called United’s customer service number, very politely reporting the error and soliciting help. I got only a brick wall. One agent did offer to check for tickets available through other airports for me, which yielded this gem (keeping in mind that my destination is Denver):
Okay, I have a flight on the 16th into Colorado Springs. It connects through Denver.
Resigning myself to buying a ticket with a $400 holiday markup, I ran a Kayak search. Enter JetBlue! They sold me regularly priced seats on non-stop flights in the middle of the day on the exact days I selected — and without any need to call customer service.
My opinion of JetBlue goes up every time I encounter them. They only started offering non-stop daytime service to Denver fairly recently, so I haven’t flown with them much before this year. Now I’m not sure why I’d choose any other airline.
At a time when American Airlines fires employees for communicating with the public and punishes its skycaps for collecting tips, and when United Airlines is now misleading its frequent flyers through a faulty website (thereby potentially ruining holiday travel plans), why would anybody want to fly on a “legacy carrier” when the likes of JetBlue are around to take their place?
