Below even the low standard set by US airlines these days
Written: Jan 22 '09 (Updated Jan 22 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: water offered multiple times
Cons: candor, slow luggage handling, etc.
The Bottom Line: Sigh!
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| Jiahong's Full Review: Continental Airlines |
My advice for flying within the United States of America is to try to get elite status. I am not satisfied by any US air carrier. If I didn't have elite status on United, I wouldn't have much good to say about it. And it is possible I might have something good to say about American Airlines (AA) if (1) I had elite status, and (2) did not pass through the Miami airport on it.
The only alternative to AA for flying from San Francisco to most Latin American destinations is Continental. With a hub of Houston instead of Miami, staff pilfering of luggage is less of a problem (Homeland Insecurity staff rather than AA staff are the problem in Miami). I thought that the immigration officers were more friendly in Houston than in Miami.
So far, so good, BUT...
Continental has instituted a charge for any checked luggage on domestic flights (not yet on international ones): $15 for the first, $25 for two, and the weight in gold of more than two. To add insult to injury, luggage came out slowly in Morelia, and trickled out in San Francisco, with pauses of two minutes. I waited more than 40 minutes. This is an additional example of the phenomenon which inspired DAnneC to title her review of Continental "Getting less for more" Would it be too much to hope that the money from a luggage fee would go into reasonably efficient luggage service? Apparently the answer is affirmative.
Itineraries: I was even less happy to have a seven-hour layover in George H. W. Bush Intercontinental Airport. Not because of the name. The nightmare that was his son's presidency has made #41 (and, indeed, all 42 of his predecessors) look comparatively good. The display of photos around a larger-than-life bronze statue I found interesting. My unhappiness was with the itinerary, not with what airport it was in —I definitely prefer Houston's to Boston's or Seattle's for food options, and to Miami;s for many reasons! — but either spending seven hours in Houston or spending part of that duration stopping over in LAX and then getting on the same plane from Houston.
(You might think that Morelia is not a major destination, but if so, you don't know that Michoacán, the state of which it is the capital, has historically been a very major source of labor in the US.)
The flight staff seems relatively aged — like that on Northwest, an airline with which Continental is currently affiliated in mileage program. The did not seem as jaded as NW flight attendants, and I was pleased that there were multiple offers of water during the four Continental flights I've taken this month.
Continental also offered some food to coach passengers on both the intranational and (shorter) international flight — not savory food, but at least something! For the early morning Morelia-Houston — that is, international — flight, this was a bag of cinnamon raisin mini-bagel chips (I hadn't know there was such a thing), a Special-K bar (ditto), and a bag of raisins. The "lunch" was a few bits of iceberg lettuce and a mini "cheese pizza" that consisted of a cheese and tomato goo on a sawed-off bagel (a horizontal quarter) that had been microwaved.
One of my recurrent complaints about US air carriers is the lies issued to explain delays. I would think that because announcements are made about when cellphones have to be turned off and when they can be used that airlines (not just Continental!) are aware the cellphones exist. Can they possibly think that — especially when there are delays — that passengers don't make calls to people in the destination city to check on the weather blamed for "weather delays"????? Again, apparently the answer is affirmative.
Astonishingly, on the Houston-SFO flight, scheduled to take four hours, there was no in-flight entertainment: no movie, no music. (Going the other way, there was a movie that I saw months ago on United.)
Pay toilets are probably next step in the devolution of airline service!
Baggage-handling, food, timeliness, honesty are unacceptably bad, but, unfortunately, typical of US air carriers. I know from flying other airlines in other countries that is possible to do better. "Average" in regards to US air carriers is very low. I'm rating Continental below this inept average for the luggage charge and for what I consider a totally bogus "fuel surcharge" ($80). As most everyone in the world knows, the price of crude oil is lower this month that at any other time in the last four years. The rationale offered is that the airline contracted fuel last summer at higher-than-current prices. Well, I also bought my ticked during the autumn, at which time the airline knew what it was going to be paying for fuel in January of 2009 and should have built that into the price. Having already had my money for months, the surcharge strikes me as extortion.
Recommended:
No
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