002 – United experience on October 7th

I fly quite a bit for a living, so I’ve had my fair share of bad experiences.  I’ve also had several good experiences, so I try to weigh the good with the bad, and keep the good experiences in mind when I do have a bad experience.  A few weeks ago, my flight was delayed by 1 ½ hours, which caused me to get to my destination around midnight.  The next day, I was able to go on standby and got home 3 hours early.  In my opinion, this was a good experience; even though there was a problem on my outbound flight, United was able to get me home 3 hours early on the return flight, which was great for a Friday.

The following week however was a different story.  I arrived at the airport about an hour before my flight.  Shortly thereafter, I learned that my 6:50am flight would take off at about 7:45am.  I had a very tight connection, and was worried that I would miss my connecting flight.  I then overheard that the problem was due to the fact that the flight crew would not be arriving until 7:05am.  What?  Arriving at 7:05am?  Did they just want to sleep in?  I wish I could have done that, but I had to be at the airport at 6am.  What was going on?

The flight crew arrived, we all boarded, we landed, I ran off the plane and saw my connecting flight pulling away when I arrived at the gate.  I now had a 2 hour layover until the next flight to my destination, and would miss my lunch meeting.  I was not very happy with United.

Let’s look at this from three perspectives; the employees, the companies, and me, the traveler.

The flight crew was late, but the reason I heard is that they were late getting in the night before.  I’m not sure what regulations are, but it could have been that they couldn’t fly until 7:45am, because of the time that they landed the night before.  I’m not sure, but it certainly is a possibility.  I’d like to put the blame on the crew, but there may have been reasons why they were not there on time.

This brings us to the company, United.  They could have moved flight crews around.  I’m not sure why they didn’t do this as there are many flights between the two airports that were involved.  They also could have contacted me ahead of time.  I would have gladly rescheduled something if I had known earlier.  United did credit my account with a free upgrade, so they did take some responsibility for the problem I had, but I feel there is more they could have done to ensure that the flight departed on time.

Which brings us to me, the traveler.  I missed a meeting because of this problem.  Was this United’s fault?  No.  If this had been an important meeting, I would have flown in the day or night before, to make sure that I was there ahead of time.  As it was, this was a last minute request from a client, and they understood when I had missed my connection.  I rescheduled the lunch for a later date, and all is well.

So looking back, everyone could have acted differently to make this experience better.  If this had been an important meeting, my flight would not have been scheduled for that morning.  I’m responsible enough to know that there are many problems that can happen and that an airline may not get you to your destination on time.  United did take some responsibility.  I don’t know about the flight crew, and probably never will.

001 – Why am I doing this?

For a long time, I’ve wanted to start a blog.  I enjoy writing, but couldn’t think of  a topic that I could find enough ideas to continue a blog long enough.  I wanted to be able to get plenty of ideas to keep the blog going for some time.

So, I finally realized that I could write about what I feel is one of the major problems with this country: Personal responsibility.  Too many people do not take responsibility for their own actions.  This is true in many walks of life, and I will attempt to show both good and bad examples of personal responsibility.

My definition of personal responsibility is taking ownership for the actions that you take, and dealing with the consequences of those actions.  Too many people in this country want to blame someone else for the problems that they have.  Frivolous lawsuits are probably one of the major examples of a failure of taking responsibility for one’s own actions.  There are many times that if they would have acted differently, that they wouldn’t have those problems.

This has the problem of potentially being a problem in my own life.  I am a terrible procrastinator, which has caused problems from time to time in my personal and professional life.  If I’m really going to write this blog, I’m going to need to be painfully honest about my own actions and the consequences that arise from them.  If I were to try and shirk one of my own actions or cover up for something that I should take responsibility, it would be hypocritical and ruin the entire point of the blog.

My goal is to post 2 stories a week on current events or other items of interest to me.  I welcome you to sign up and post comments if you think I am off base, or if you agree with me.  Some of my posts may be controversial, but I want to keep this blog clean.  If you would like to post comments, you may, but the conversation needs to be kept clean as well.  Well formed arguments are welcome, as are suggestions for future posts.  Name calling, or ‘That’s stupid’ comments are not and will get you banned.  If you disagree with a post, be it my post or another members, explain why and back up your argument.  Saying ‘Your wrong.’ is not an argument.

I hope that if you read this blog that you begin to notice people around you that are not taking responsibility for their own actions.  But most of all, I would hope that you look at your own life and make sure that you are taking responsibility for your own actions, and learning to be a better person because of it.