Fly United Airlines - You don't die!

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14th day - Friday
Day of Departure Plan:
The plane departs at 11:15AM. This is late enough in the day so we don’t have to be at the airport too early and yet early enough that we should arrive in Boise, Idaho at a reasonable hour in the evening. I calculate that given the low season we can arrive 2 hours early to make it through the check-in and security and still have time to have a leisurely breakfast and hit the loo before boarding the plane.
What unfolds is a classic clustercazzo . Yes, I have coined this new term and yes you have my permission to use it. However if I have to ‘splain it to you then you have no business using it. So there!
Ok…so we barely make the available Express to the Fiumicino; this sets the tone for the remainder of our airport adventure. The shuttle is on the last or second to last binario (platform), there are 25 of them. We are coming from the direction of…yes, the first platform. We thank heaven for our backpacks. We are able to walk rapidly and work our way through the morning crowd.
We arrive at the airport and follow the signs that point to our airline. We walk up to the front of the terminal and walk into the terminal and head to the display board that has the airline check-in desks numbers. We see that US airways flight to Philly is #511 and then walk in the direction of the ascending numbers. We get to the end of the building and the numbers end at 480 something. We look around and I finally ask a person at a check-in desk where the 500 numbered desks are located. In terminal 5 is the response and we will have to walk out the building to get to it.
We head out and take a look around. In front of the door is a tall, vertical flat pillar that has a list of airlines, ours included, and at the top it says TERMINAL 5. At the bottom in small red letters it says 800 meters. Our terminal is nearly a kilometer away? Bear in mind that there are no other instructions or signs visible.
After a few minutes a shuttle pulls up and we see people getting on board. Someone asks if this goes to terminal 5 and gets an affirmative answer so we pile on board as well. The shuttle drives around the main terminal and toward the tarmac. In fact at one point we stop and a plane taxis by on its way to the runway. Unbelievable!
The shuttle then stops in front of a building and we all pile out. We head in and instead of check-in desks there are US Airways passport control check points. We go present our passports and they check their computers to see if we are bonafide passengers. Yep, we finish that and still no sign of the direction to the check-in desks, we surmise that a passageway at the end of the hall must lead somewhere and sure enough there are the check-in desks.
We check-in and then look for signs to the concourse or gates. There are no signs much less info on where to proceed next. We spot another passageway, follow that and…no…no gates just another shuttle point. Unbelievably we are ferried across the same tarmac and back to the main terminal!!!
We get to the main terminal and now have to go through security. Fortunately we are there at a point where there are very few people coming through. We finally get to our gate with just a little time left to spare. Had we not made the Express, we might not have made the plane. It was that close!
Our day however, was not finished. We made it to Philly and then to Chicago. We were slightly behind schedule and kudos to US Airways. The pilots of both flights acknowledged that we were behind schedule and said that they would work to make up the time…they did, WooHoo!
Our last leg to Boise was a different story. This tale involves United, surely one of the worst airlines in business.
It is a 2 hour layover and presently the flight schedule board changes from “on time” to “departs at 10:35PM” instead of the scheduled 9:15PM. Presently the desk crew announces that there is a delay because of problems with the flight crew. What???
We settle in for a long wait and after a period of time I go re-check the board. Beth asks what I’m doing and I respond, “Hoping for a miracle.” I go to the board and see that it has changed to the 9:15 departure time but in a different concourse. There has been no announcement by the way. A buzz goes through the waiting crowd and we all take off for the gate. We arrive and within minutes the boarding begins. Unbelievable!
We are almost fully loaded when the pilot announces that we are waiting for meals for the flight crew. They are hungry and haven’t had a chance to eat. Do I care? Hell no! They can eat the swill that the passengers eat as far as I’m concerned.
We finally depart and when we arrive in Boise one of the attendants comes on the speaker and says that “Yes, we are a little late but we did get you here safely.” I kid you not. Sam turns to me and says “Fly United, you don’t die.”
Obviously United has the wrong person in charge of public relations…hire that attendant! Unbelievable.

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