I Survived Too: Merger Day at ORD

When I booked this weekend's travel, a few months back, United had announced that it planned to merge all its systems with Continental's at end of business on Saturday, March 3. So I was pretty certain that by flying on Saturday afternoon I'd be in the clear.

Later, they switched up and announced that everything would merge overnight/early Saturday morning. So I prepped for disaster, leaving home on Thursday for ORD, ticket numbers documented offline, mileage balances recorded as proof, and reservations printed in hard copy. Saturday morning I tried to check in online, having totally forgotten to do so the previous night (rookie mistake!).

But online check in via iPhone app was broken. I tried on my laptop using the Continental-fied pss.united.com website. No dice. I'd have to go try a kiosk at the airport.

When I got the ticket lobby, I hit the nearest kiosk. It couldn't find my reservation. Not good. So I found the Premier Access 1K line, which only had about 10 people in it. The Economy & international check in lines were longer, but not horrible. And UA staff were out in force: greeting people, answering questions, and most of all, manning the ticket desks, with supervisors looking over their shoulders. The problems of the non-GUI HP SHARES system are documented elsewhere, but based on what I was seeing today at ORD, it didn't seem like there were major problems they couldn't handle on day 1.

Best of all, though, were the t-shirts UA ticket personnel sported, as seen in my photo above. The front said, "Merger Day One," and the back said: "I Survived."

I chatted with a service rep who said that while the scene wasn't too bad now (mid-day), the morning had apparently been horrendous. Lots of angry pax, confusion and broken systems. She also said that it was just as well that I had forgotten to check in online the previous day: all the people who had done so arrived at the airport to learn that their check ins were not in the system and they had to hit the ticket counters anyway.

One way or the other, when I made it to the counter, the agent found my res, gave me my boarding pass, and sent me on my way. By the time I got online here in the United Club, my current year and lifetime mileage balances had shown up in my MileagePlus account, along with my upgrade balance.

I logged in to the Club wifi network (the "T" in T-Mobile is for "tortoise") using my old MileagePlus number, not my new alphanumeric OnePass-ish number. Not everything has been updated yet, I guess.

Simulate This! Boeing's Customer Experience Center

Did some flying today – just a short one hour hop on a US EMB145 out of LGA. There was a little girl behind me, in 5F, and whenever she started to mess with my seat back or make annoying squealy noises, her dad shushed her as best he could. I appreciated that.

I also appreciated that he wasn't seated in 4D, next to me, because he was obese and barely fit in his own seat. If the person next to him weren't a child, he could not have sat there. At least I didn't have to stand up for a seven hour flight (did you see that story?!). I chatted with a United FA last year who told me about her biggest fear – that she will have a "POS" who causes a safety problem or other "incident" because of his or her size.

"What's a POS?" I asked.

"Person of size..." she said. So now you know the terminology to use when you complain to the airline about the giant in 4D.

But that's not what I wanted to write about. I wanted to talk about the Boeing Customer Experience Center in Renton, Washington. I had a chance to go there recently, and tour mock ups of several aircraft, including the 787 Dreamliner, the 747-8 Intercontinental, and the 737 with Sky Interior.

It was fun; especially the next day, when I flew out on UACO metal to ORD and watched SMI/J smirk his way through the latest pre-flight video – I recognized the interior of the 787 mock up I had been in the day before.

Here are just a couple of pics from the visit. I took many more, but they aren't that interesting. They just look like the inside of a plane, which you've all seen. It's a cool facility though – ordinarily, it is only accessible to buyers who are shopping for aircraft for major airlines. That's not my day job, so I felt privileged to get a little behind the scenes access. But it was too bad they wouldn't fire up the full-scale simulator for me.

Almost as cool as the Dreamliner mockup was this scale model of the Sonic Cruiser concept plane. Unveiled in March, 2001, it was supposed to be developed as a delta-wing passenger aircraft that could jet you at 98% mach, up to 10,000 nautical miles, above 40,000 feet FL. But obviously the timing wasn't great. I guess you could say the whole plan was just a canard.

Get it? Canard?

Anyway...some of the tech that was being developed for this ill-fated project ended up being incorporated into the 787. The most important feature brought over may have been the carbon-fiber reinforced plastic for the fuselage. Why is that so great? Because unlike a metal vessel, a composite cylinder can be humidified to a higher level without corroding from the moisture. That may help keep your skin from getting all dry and flaky when you finally fly long-haul on the latest Boeing aircraft.