Seizure Prompts Wonderful Service From United
United couldn't have been more understanding and helpful after reader Chris' wife had a seizure as they flew from Sullivan's Island, SC to Winnipeg. The flight attendants onboard offered to divert the flight to Chicago, but the couple decided instead to power through. United's staff met them at the gate along with paramedics, and offered to rebook them on the flight of their choice. If they wanted to stay the night, United said they'd be happy to pay for a hotel room. Chris' takeaway perfectly captures the spirit behind our Above and Beyond posts: "Even if United is a horrible company," he writes, "there are still nice people there, and sometimes even big companies surprise you." Chris writes:
My wife and I had booked a week long vacation from chilly Winnipeg to Sullivan's Island, South Carolina and as much as I hated flying on United, they were the best option for the times we were traveling. I begrudgingly paid the $15 checked bag fee and the wife and I had a nice vacation in the sun for a while. March 1st comes around, and it's time to leave so we head to the Charleston airport and check in to our flight. We take off towards Chicago, where we'll have an hour long layover till we fly to Winnipeg.
This is where the trip gets stressful. We're about an hour outside of Chicago, when out of the blue, my wife suddenly blacks out and goes in to a minor seizure. As far as either of us know, she's got no history of this. So, I'm panicking, and I flag down a flight attendant (Fatima), who without blinking an eye grabs the first responder flight attendant (Ryan D). My wife comes around, feeling sick and panicky and both the flight attendants were extremely kind and helpful, grabbing ice and water and towels to try to keep my wife cool while Ryan checks her vitals. We're given the option to divert the flight from Chicago (how cool is that?) to a closer airport, but we opt to keep flying since the time won't be that different. We land, and taxi to the gate where there is an ambulance and a firetruck waiting, the paramedics come on board and assist my wife and I in leaving the plane. Now is where United really shines. I'm fully expecting to be screwed here, so when there is a United agent waiting at the gate for us, I'm expecting to sign a waiver of responsibility and told to have a nice day. She pulls me aside and tells me that they are going to rebook our flight, for free, for a later flight, or a flight the next day. And if we stay for the next day, they'll put us up at the airport Hilton for the night, free.
I check with the paramedics, and my wife is doing a fair bit better but we still opt to stay the night and fly out in the morning. They rebook us, give us the hotel confirmation number, and we have a pleasant stay for the night. Even checking in the next morning went smoothly, although the people next to us were getting an earful from an aptly named agent: Mrs. Colon.
I just want to let you guys know, and everybody if you post this, that even if United is a horrible company, there are still nice people there, and sometimes even big companies surprise you.
(Photo: So Cal Metro)
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Comments:
Is it jaded to think that this was an attempt to avoid a lawsuit?
Yeah, I think I've been reading this blog for too long. Chime in with your own success stories, kids! Prove me wrong!
I hear you about chilly Winnipeg. Just yesterday I returned to Winnipeg from Las Vegas to find an inch of snow in my yard. Global warming fail.
If a second bag costs $60 I can only imaging what diverting an entire flight would have cost them.
In clicking this article I assumed that the headline was some kind of dry sarcasm. I am shocked.
@unobservant: I'm the OP, and while the thought had crossed my mind, I doubt they are legally obligated to do anything besides provide first aid care on the flight. The first aid was expected, the free rebooking and free hotel room (at I think $150 a night) were the unexpected part.
Seeing they are from Sullivan's Island, an affluent place, I bet they flew 1st class. I wonder how helpful the Airline would have been if they were from a lower middle-class neighborhood flying in coach.
@savdavid: Actually, we're from Winnipeg, flying to Sullivan's island. And we flew cattle class. We weren't even sitting in an exit row, or the United Plus seats.
@unobservant: From my standpoint, I don't really care why they treat me nicely. And frankly, if they're smart enough to realize that good customer service reduces lawsuits, that's a point for them anyway.
Hope the rest of your vacation was less eventful, Chris, and that you were able to get the relaxation you both needed.
@andrewe: Yes, when I woke up to it SNOWING yesterday, I was -not- pleased. I wrote a sternly written letter to the Mayor, demanding he do something.
The more I think about this, the more this was just an attempt to avoid negative PR. Sure the hotel is a perk, but can you imagine the onslaught of terrible press had they forced them to pay a rebooking fee for a seizure.
The real question here is did they have to pay another $15 for bag fees!
I don't fly as much as I used to... but a few years back, I flew regularly after a couple of horrible experiences on Northwest, I switched to United.
I found many of the United flight attendants and staff I encountered to have been helpful and friendly (and I generally have minimal needs). Unlike Northwest.
I agree that as a corporate entity, United is generally about as bad as the rest of them. But I've also found the individuals working there to be real decent people and that really meant something to me.
@Shockwaver
I am glad that United (or its employees) was sensitive to your wife's needs and yours as well. The most obvious possible trigger aboard an aircraft is the cabin altitude; it's also possible that your wife simply fainted and had some non-convulsive twitching (not unheard of although unusual). You may never know what went wrong (literally, just a very bad day.)
Hopefully this was an isolated incident and your wife will continue to feel better. You should probably follow up with, at the least, your primary care physician when you get home.
My next United flight, I'm committing seppuku. Baby's getting a 1st-Class upgrade!
(cough) Pretty damn awesome of United. Really.
Was this article a joke? United has sucked worse than any other airline I've flown, and several of the others have sucked pretty bad. Wonder if the helpful employees are being retrained now.
I had to re-read a few times to get it right as the Consumerist summary was backwards. They were flying from Charleston SC to Winnipeg Manitoba with a change of planes in Chicago. The plane landed in Chicago and United put them in hotel for the night so they could continue their trip the next day.
It appears they were flying in little Embraer 145 jet (1 seat, an aisle & then 2 seats) or slightly larger Bombardier CRJ-700. The Embraer is horrible little jet with bad pressurization that kicks on/off too fast and always gives me headaches & earaches.
@unobservant: Even if it was, they could have done worse. They could have forced the OP's wife to sign a waiver absolving them of blame, which is what he said his first thought was when he saw an agent waiting at the gate. There are a million ways to avoid a lawsuit, but doing the right thing is not the safest one, and it's also the most rarely chosen. Bravo, United.
Welp, that's United's good deed for the decade. They're good until at least 2019 now.
Sullivans Island is not that exclusive, more residential than anything else.
Isle of Palms is the richer than rich island to the north.
This time of year a beach house for a week only goes for about $2,000 on Sullivans Island, SC. Isle of Palms would cost you about $4K to $5K.
Is your wife ok? Did you get her to the hospital and do a CT of her head? I work in a neuro unit at a hospital and see this stuff all the time (seizure's with no prior history), so you want to make sure to get it checked out!
@Dafrety: Me three. I seriously expected this to be a story about how a passenger had a seizure and was met by the Department of Homeland Security upon landing.
@aishel: She's doing fine now, but we're taking all the necessary steps to get things checked out. Thanks for the concern!
What's the firetruck for?
the airport firefighters prob had nothing else better to do at that one moment maybe? or they're required to respond to any medical calls?
sometimes the paramedics are on the firetrucks and the ambulance drivers are just EMTs.
It sounds like these were actually United Express flights. It matters because these employees work for SkyWest or whatever, not United. The service is always better on these flights, apparently because they never got the memo from regular United. On regular United they have a seizure fee.
@shockwaver: Dear god, I remember yesterday's snow. I was not amused.
I feel sorry for anyone living in this city.
@Hoss:
The consumerist summary has been modified but its still not quite correct. They did stop in Chicago.
"The flight attendants onboard offered to divert the flight to Chicago, but the couple decided instead to power through."
Maybe I'm being nitpicky, but should the article read "from" Chicago rather than "to" as it does now? Or were they offered to divert to a different Chicago airport (if one exists)
Great job United! It goes to show that it's people not a company behind great customer service.
A company can try to fake it, but without truly empathetic employees, it's just a farce.
So don't always go straight to blaming and judging a company when you receive poor service. Sometimes you get a bad apple, and sometimes you get a good one. There's probably a shortage of good, affordable employees for hire so I don't always blame a company when something goes wrong.
The fire dept is often the first on scene of an emergency call that requires medical attention. There is usually one paramedic and one EMT, or whatever the state or county says is needed per call.
The ambulance arrives after fire dept to transport the patient to the hospital. This may also include a paramedic and EMT pairing. If a patient is treated by a paramedic on-scene, said paramedic cannot transfer care to an EMT, a position that is limited in what kind of care can be provided. Transfer of care can only be to a person of equal or higher training.
@shockwaver: the mayor is lie a frontline CSR.
you need to send an email straight to the top.
you need to send an email to...
OPRAH.
*like
i can't type past midnight :/
United is a horrible company. Oh, and thanks for the burns, United.
@shockwaver: The surprise on my face isn't from the fact that it snows in Canada in the middle of May. It's that it stops snowing at all.
@henwy: No, you don't. Welcome to America.
If the OP wanted to be a leech, he and his wife could have easily sued, claiming that something about the flight caused her seizure. And they could have gotten an expert to back them up. And they could have won.
It just goes to show that I've been reading Consumerist for far too long. I interpretted "Seizure Prompts Wonderful Service From United" to be sarcasm, and when I got through the article, I was puzzled to find that the company's employees, in fact, had done good. Guess the OP caught the right plane at the wrong time.
You're lucky they didn't accuse you of having swine flu and try to throw you overboard mid-flight...
@unobservant: It's not jaded, and it didn't apply to other people in similar circumstances.
Depending on the crew, depending on the time of the year, time of the month, time of the day you'll get different service.
I'll think of it as a bell curve. The lady with the seeing eye dog was an outlier on the bad side, this is an outlier on the good side, it all depends on the frequency of each and the mean of service level.
It's going to be hard to judge that based on internet reports because no matter what you're going to have more bad service stories than good because bad stories get reported more often than good and good doesn't get reported unless it's exceptional.
My wife and I flew on United a week and a half ago, and while the flight out wasn't great (plane completely booked, we ended up separated & with 3 groups ahead of us on the list to be reseated together), the flight back was great.
My wife has problems walking long distances & had requested a wheelchair when she made our reservations (turned out to be a close gate so the chair wasn't needed). I assume that the gate agent saw the wheelchair request on the passenger manifest and offered to move us up to the first row without being asked - we were happy enough with the row 20 seats we had.
I doubt that it cost the airline anything - it's possible they would've sold a last-minute upgrade to those "Economy Plus" seats though I doubt it, but it definitely made me more likely to jump on United in the future.
@shockwaver: No snow in Grand Forks to the south...I guess that's why we call North Dakota Baja Canada!
@shockwaver: I've seen those platoons of mosquitos, billowing black clouds of them, attacking caribou. (Shudder)
Canadians are made of sterner stuff that myself. I'd have kidnapped Tony Stark and demanded he make me an Iron Man suit to fend them off, were I Canadian.
Well, kidnap then ask him really nicely.
Open a complain with the BBB. I had a similar issue with T-Moilbile. I got absolutely no where with the CSR. They must all train at the same place because it seems like I got the same run around. It only took them 3 days to issue a credit to my account once I opened the BBB complaint.
Funny, I was on a flight a few years back from Lima to Santiago (not United) and the girl behind me had a seizure. It was the middle of the night, and I was dead asleep, so I didn't quite realize what was happening, other than someone was suddenly kicking the shit out of my seat. Then the poor girl, mid 20's was looming over my seat, totally disoriented. She started roaming the plane. The flight attendants started asking everyone if she was with us. It took about an hour to realize that the girl was actually sick, and no concessions were made. They stuck her back in her seat and put her to bed.
And that was an airline I LIKED! Yikes...
Cool, now we know how to get good service! Just induce a seizure!