United's Most Recent Dishonor

One expert ranks it the worst of the worst

"Worst. Airline. Ever." read the online headline of an article in the Washington Post travel section. Could it be some Congolese airline? The Democratic Republic of Congo has reportedly been the site of more than half of the air accidents in Africa, according to the African Airlines Association -- eight last year alone, according to Reuters. The most recent was the crash of a domestic Congolese airliner on April 15, in which 70 people were killed.

Or perhaps Air Sudan is the worst. On June 10, an Airbus 320 veered off the runway and burst into flames, killing about half of the 214 people on board, according to a CNN report, adding, "Sudan has a poor aviation safety record. In May, a plane crash in a remote area of southern Sudan killed 24 people, including key members of the southern Sudanese government. In July 2003, a Sudan Airways Boeing 737 en route from Port Sudan to Khartoum crashed soon after takeoff, killing all 115 people on board."

No, not those. I clicked on the "Worst" link and landed on a feature by portfolio.com's Joe Brancatelli. He wasn't taking disaster-prone African carriers into account, but he fingered United as "the worst of the worst on the slag heap of the nation's big network carriers."

He listed the reasons behind his selection: 4 percent decline in passenger traffic in May; it plan ground 100 aircraft and reduce capacity by 10 percent; lay off thousands of more workers; rejection by potential merger partners; stock that traded a 52-week high of more than $50 plummeted into the single digits; deteriorating inflight services; permanent grounding of its no-frills Ted brand is being closed, the airline's second expensive failure in the low-cost arena this decade; overall on-time performance at a dismal 72.7 percent in April; crushing debt, and a screwy fleet flying all sorts of airplanes -- "26 separate in-flight seat configurations. It dabbled in everything from the upmarket P.S. to the downmarket Ted. It had five types of narrow-body jets, four types of wide-body aircraft and eight flavors of regional jets. Travelers were confronted with flights outfitted with an ever-shifting mix of one, two, three, or even four classes."

I really take no joy in United's miseries. I have nearly 200,000 miles on United's MileagePlus frequent-flyer program which keep building up because they are so difficult to use. I've given my son a couple of hundred thousand miles over the years, but I've never managed to redeem them for a transatlantic flight in any class of service, even changing planes several times, any time my husband and I wanted to travel. I'd better try again -- before United goes under.