United killed my vacation!!

[orfreediver]

So my first "real" freediving vacation was a bust and it was just to Michigan. I did research on flying with longblade fins and thought I could pull off carry-on and purchased an H. Dessault Essential bag. Well the wonderful folks at United thought differently and I had to check it. Well lets just say that they added insult to injury. They charged me $25 (another $25 return trip) to check it and then lost it for THREE days and destroyed the bag. The customer service this company provided was some of the worst I have ever experienced, via India and in the US. I think that beside the obvious problems the thing that killed me was that while at DIA I counted 4 guitars that were allowed as carry-ons, WHAT?
For your future travel plans I do not recommed United Airlines and I would find a better way to bring your fins. I guess this is what corporations are bringing to the party, yeah. As for flying with fins, I saw a guy over on another forum using a hard side golf bag to check his stuff. I still think the guitar thing is BS but the squeeky wheel thing does work, break enough "famous" guitars and things change.

Good luck on your travels,
D

[natew]

I have probably over 300k miles on United. Very few problems, and have never had damaged luggage. I have had misplaced, misdirected, and lost luggage at times but as long as you are nice to their customer service agents and not a ranting and raving lunatic they are usually very helpful and will arrange to have your missing bag delivered to wherever you are staying. They once drove over 100 miles, one way, to deliver my lost bag.

As for the Fin thing, that kind of sucks. Did you have them out seperately or in a bag before you checked them? Did a gate agent tell you it had to be checked? Or was it security? Or was it the ticketing/bag agent?

If it was the ticketing or bag agent, next time just tell them you will take your chances with it at the gate. These people really don't know what they are talking about half the time and have little knowledge of the actual onboard aircraft protocols. Their only mantra is if it is bigger than the red box on the sign by the baggage check then it HAS to be checked.

If it was TSA, tell them to go screw themselves because they know even less of the airline restrictions than the baggage agents.

And finally, if it was the gate agent, well then you're kind of stuck. But I doubt it was, because more often than not they won't charge you the $25 when they force you to gate check something like that. And if they were just open and not in another bag you could probably have negotiated with them and showed them how you can cram a fin on top of, or behind, or around just about any ordinay bag. Unless, of course, these longblade fins are like six feet long.

[DennisS]

You need to come up with a song about fins, United is pretty twitchy about guitars, thanks to this song that went viral. They offered to pay him to remove it

YouTube - United Breaks Guitars

[Hank49]

I've had American bash a guitar case but not damage the guitar. What kind of moron would slam it hard enough to rip and gash a Fender hard case.....also a Gibson?
I'm taking my longblades to Hawaii in 3 weeks. Continental, Hawaiian. We'll see....

[ianr33]

I've had American bash a guitar case but not damage the guitar. What kind of moron would slam it hard enough to rip and gash a Fender hard case.....also a Gibson?
I'm taking my longblades to Hawaii in 3 weeks. Continental, Hawaiian. We'll see....

The signs at baggage claim always amuse me:
"Luggage is designed to protect its contents.In normal use it will get marks or scuffs.We can not be responsible for this" (Or something similar)

Fair enough,until you look out the window of your plane and see your bag being tossed 10 feet onto concrete. Is that "normal use" ?

[SolarStorm]

Flew for years with no issues, EVER. Then 2 years ago we did 5 trips. 5 times in a row, our luggage either did not make it there or back home. All but one showed eventually.

My choice of airlines is now Westjet. Delta, United, and Air Canada, all proceded to make us feel like it was our fault the bags didnt show up. Westjet actually informed us as we were getting off the plane that our bags didnt make the flight, told us to run out and buy replacement hockey equipment, and send them the bill, even though our stuff was supposed to arrive the next day (we did tell them that my daughter had a team canada tryout skate before the bags arrived).

Had zero issues with westjet claims. The other airlines? Well after 6 months of letter writing Delta finally gave me and my wife a $50 certificate as compensation. We finally gave up. United and Air Canada eventually found our luggage, but like I said, it must have been our fault that it got lost.

Stuff happens, it all depends on how a corporation handles the "stuff". Thankfully last years 3 trips found all of luggage safe and sound.

[cerich]

I travel with dive gear way too often, now with all the BS I just send UPS/FEDEX to were I am going and back. The airport is more expensive and MUCH more likely to lose the gear.

[orfreediver]

Hey Nate,
It was a ticketing agent and she made it seem like there was no other option "So how would you like to pay for that" and all. As for the bag I found out that they are not going to replace it. They say that handles are not covered, then why are they allowed to use them? And if it was a seam split of any kind, to bad! The bag was brand new and cost $70, oh well I guess. I also did an on-line complaint and I got a message back saying that basically they are so busy that they will get back to me someday. I am not surprised by this because I asked for a supervisor to clairify something at one point and they were all busy and couldn't get one. At the airport in Traverse City I was joined by three other people in the same situation who had given up and came down to wait like I did.
What really stinks is that I had sent a bunch of my old gear for others to use via USPS and had zero problems with that. So Cerich is on to something there but I think I will have to get an extra set of gear to cover the shipping time. I am still thinking about the hard side golf bag but they could lose that as well.
My question is that I thought someone was coming up with a "bill of rights" for flying, what happened to that? Anyway I am so broke due to being laid off that I won't be to worried about traveling for quite a while now. Michigan was as close to a dive vacation as I'm going see for a long time.

Thanks for the input all,
D

[natew]

Ah yeah. Just gotta be quicker on your feet, you can always check it later. Shoulda said something like "oh, i'm just holding on to these for my friend who is in the bathroom, I think he's going to stick them in his suitcase when he checks in". Then you'll get through security no prob, TSA is just looking for bombs and crap. Then you just walk up to the gate agent and ask him/her if this will be ok to take on, if they ask something like why you didn't check it at the ticket counter just tell them the ticket agent said it should be ok and you just wanted to make sure. Or you could say nothing and just get on the plane with it, i'd give it about a 50/50 chance that anyone would actually stop you before you got on the plane. Especially on United, lol they can be so freaking disorganized the ol' but mom said it was ok trick usually works.

[vladimir]

I travel with dive gear way too often, now with all the BS I just send UPS/FEDEX to were I am going and back. The airport is more expensive and MUCH more likely to lose the gear.

I love this idea; traveling unencumbered by dive gear is a pretty appealing option to me. If it gets there more cheaply and reliably it's a no-brainer. In the past I have looked into it and found it to be more than a little expensive. NYC to Belize was $750 via Fedex, if I recall correctly (quite a while ago). NYC to HK was also more than Cathay Pacific charged for overweight luggage (1.5% of full coach fare per kilo). Are you flying domestically only? Or perhaps it's just gotten cheaper since I last checked. The other problem is the return trip--it's pretty easy to get your stuff to UPS or Fedex in NYC; it might be an adventure in Port Moresby.