I basically haven't flown United in years just because their coach experience sucks so hard so they're never even going to get me long enough for me to see their good side.
I hear you. I tend to think of my frequent flyer miles in terms of alliances: my United/Continental miles are Star Alliance, my American are oneworld, my Delta miles are SkyTeam, etc. As a result I end up flying on other carriers--using United miles on Lufthansa doesn't suck, for example--as well as accruing miles by flying on other carriers. Delta has been the least good for this for me as I've lost a few thousand miles, most recently on China Southern (HAN-CAN-PEK) and before that on KLM (AMS-OTP and return). Avoiding US carriers tends to improve the flying experience.
I still want to do the JFK-YVR run on Cathay Pacific again. It's kind of an afterthought to them, but it is one of the nicer ways to get to the Pacific Northwest, particularly as it appears to be the only nonstop.
Certainly the positive experiences I glow about now are actually pretty close to what was just the standard offering a few years ago.
Sad but true.
The former is actually better for price-no-object business travelers, though at the expense of people like me who are much more price-sensitive.
Yeah. My somewhat idiosyncratic experience of being one of those business travelers is that some price sensitivity is still there, but weirdly twisted. We were small enough that we got to do our own travel bookings, and the bean counter was always happy to have me save money with a Saturday-night stay when we had an event we could plan ahead for. I for my part was always happy to have my weekend be somewhere I didn't normally live. On the other hand, there were the occasional "go to J. Random city for 36 hours and give a presentation to a potential client on 72 hours notice"; those the company paid big bucks for what were essentially walk-on fares.
It's all somewhat odd to look at from the outside, but it was at least internally consistent.
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Date: 2012-02-02 08:12 pm (UTC)I hear you. I tend to think of my frequent flyer miles in terms of alliances: my United/Continental miles are Star Alliance, my American are oneworld, my Delta miles are SkyTeam, etc. As a result I end up flying on other carriers--using United miles on Lufthansa doesn't suck, for example--as well as accruing miles by flying on other carriers. Delta has been the least good for this for me as I've lost a few thousand miles, most recently on China Southern (HAN-CAN-PEK) and before that on KLM (AMS-OTP and return). Avoiding US carriers tends to improve the flying experience.
I still want to do the JFK-YVR run on Cathay Pacific again. It's kind of an afterthought to them, but it is one of the nicer ways to get to the Pacific Northwest, particularly as it appears to be the only nonstop.
Certainly the positive experiences I glow about now are actually pretty close to what was just the standard offering a few years ago.
Sad but true.
The former is actually better for price-no-object business travelers, though at the expense of people like me who are much more price-sensitive.
Yeah. My somewhat idiosyncratic experience of being one of those business travelers is that some price sensitivity is still there, but weirdly twisted. We were small enough that we got to do our own travel bookings, and the bean counter was always happy to have me save money with a Saturday-night stay when we had an event we could plan ahead for. I for my part was always happy to have my weekend be somewhere I didn't normally live. On the other hand, there were the occasional "go to J. Random city for 36 hours and give a presentation to a potential client on 72 hours notice"; those the company paid big bucks for what were essentially walk-on fares.
It's all somewhat odd to look at from the outside, but it was at least internally consistent.