I haven't flown United since the David Dao incident. Anecdotally, most international airlines are orders of magnitude better in terms of quality of service, cleanliness, flight crew friendliness, and so on. As a person of color, the latter attributes are quite important for me, since I'd rather not get singled out for wilful mistreatment on a transatlantic flight.<p>Delta has been good to me so far over the years.
"We are providing compensation as a goodwill gesture."<p>As a "goodwill" gesture?? This makes it sound like she is lucky they might be providing any sort of compensation at all to her. Seems to me that she is due a full refund, since her son was not able to use the seat that she paid for. I don't think the article reveals the age of the child, as I think that would provide some bearing as to the airline's responsibility to provide full refund or not? Once again, airlines (or is it just United) making boneheaded decisions.
On a side note...<p>> The FAA recommends havinga child strapped into a seat for the duration of a flight.<p>...have the people who wrote that _ever_ flown with a toddler? I mean, yeah, I agree, but good luck with that!
Back in 2009:
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars</a><p>"Rob Bradford, United's managing director of customer solutions, telephoned Carroll to apologize for the incident and to ask for permission to use the video for internal training. United claimed that it "hoped" to learn from the incident, and to change its customer service policy accordingly"<p>Didn't help apparently
In the last 30 days, I've flown international on 4 airlines... United, Alaska, China Eastern, and Korean Air.<p>United was easily the worst, Korean was easily the best.<p>China Eastern wasn't great either - yet it still had better customer service, amenities, and a more comfortable seat and landing.