Seats on a United Airlines flight come loose, roll and injure a passenger

by Jeffrey White on

You don’t hear about this everyday: A United Airlines flight taking off from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and bound for San Francisco this past Sunday had to turn back suddenly after a row of seats became loose, slid backwards and slammed into a full row of passengers.

Maintenance workers confirmed that there was a loose bolt on three occupied seats in the third row of that flight. At takeoff, the seats simply came undone.

One woman sitting in the fourth row suffered a knee injury and was transported to the hospital after the pilot made an emergency landing.

Maintenance workers fixed the problem (though the flight was delayed more than three hours).

United says it will compensate passengers for that delay.

The injured woman flew to San Francisco this morning on a free first class ticket.

Statistics for pets lost, injured or dead while in an airline’s care

by Jamie Rhein on

I’ve never put an animal in an airline’s care before, but I have friends who have. Friends of ours shipped their dogs to and from Singapore. One person took a parrot and another shipped two cats. All went well in these instances.

The situation where the dog was lost by United Airlines this past week is not common, I would guess, otherwise it wouldn’t have made it to the national news. Grant gave a Gadling heads up, and this article on ABCNews this past Monday outlines more specifics about the unfortunate situation when Jeddah, the beloved dog of John and Ronia Weisner went missing at Dulles International Airport after only an hour in the airline’s care.

If you are wondering what the statistics are for problems when shipping pets, and the airlines involved with the mishaps, check out this PDF file to Air Travel and Consumer Report published by the Office of Aviation Enforcement and Proceedings: Aviation Consumer Protection Division.

May 2008 was just posted this month. On page 38, you’ll find the recent stats for pet troubles. Here’s the summary:

No animals were lost in May.

Two were injured. (Alaska-1; Skywest-1)

Four died. (Continnental- 3; United-1)

The chart doesn’t list the specifics of the incidents, but you can click on the airline name in the chart in order to get the report summaries.

In the Weisner’s case, I can’t imagine what it must be like to have such a significant change already in ones life such as a move to Saudi Arabia for a year only to have it start out with a missing dog.

The hunt for the missing dog in Dulles continues

by Grant Martin on

For those of you following the story of the the solider’s dog that was lost by United Airlines earlier this week, you can now get updates on the unfolding events on the website helpfindjeddah.com or via a Twitter feed that they set up.

Apparently, enough people had caught wind of the story via the web such that there’s a serious movement towards finding the animal — well over five hundred people are now following the feed, garnering enough attention to get the Washington Post to run an article this morning.

In it, we learn some new facts about the debacle, including the interesting note that the owners only fed the dog people food and are concerned about her ability to fend for her self on her own.

Judging from some of the intense comments we got on our earlier story, there seem to be two schools of thought on the attention and resources that this search is getting: either you think we should shut down DC tomorrow and form a human chain across the the metropolitan area or you think we should sack up and let things sort themselves out — haven’t you ever seen that movie Homeward Bound?

I personally am a bit divided. I do hope that we find the dog quickly and think that all of the effort that people have put into finding her is quite touching. At some point, however, we’ll probably need to stop consuming resources and leave the rest up to fate.

United Airlines: Ticks on a plane!

by Jeffrey White on

Here’s a plane delay story that I am not sure is covered under any contract of carriage.

The Denver Post is reporting that a United Airlines flight yesterday from Denver International to Des Moines was delayed more than five hours after three ticks were found in the cabin.

Let me repeat that: Three ticks. Or rather, three ticks.

Apparently passengers found the little buggers and brought them to the attention of flight crew members, who promptly evacuated the plane, had the cabin cleaned and replaced all the seat cushions on board. The airline even decided to load the passengers onto another plane for the trip to Des Moines.

That’s when another delay took place…this time due to weather. Passengers were supposed to be on their way around 12:20 p.m., pre tick discovery; they did get airborne until a little before 6 p.m.

No word yet whether the movie version of this little debacle will star Samuel L. Jackson.

Continental Airlines to join Star Alliance

by Grant Martin on

Continental just issued a press release saying that they’re entering a cooperative agreement with United Airlines, saying the two airlines will “cooperate extensively, linking their networks and services worldwide to the benefit of customers, and creating revenue opportunities and cost savings and other efficiencies.” This means that Continental will also join United in the Star Alliance.

For those of you who follow airline alliances, this means that CO will be dropping Skyteam, whose partners include Delta, KLM and Northwest, and picking up partners such as Lufthansa and US Airways.

Basically, Continental Onepass members won’t be able to accrue or spend miles on Skyteam anymore (similarly, partner airlines can’t spend miles on CO), but they can on Star.

It does not, however, mean that the airlines are merging — only that they’ll be collaborating on many routes, codeshares and other logistics.

In the current airline industry, this change was almost inevitable. Carriers are looking at ways to collaborate on operations and cut costs, just like Northwest and Delta announced earlier this year. With the two airlines’ combined routes and networks, a stronger entity will now exist that can better compete with the soon to be uber Delta Airlines.

No word yet on when exactly the alliance changes will take place and a schedule for the official divorce from Skyteam airlines. But if you were thinking about booking a ticket with your Skyteam miles on CO, now might be a good time to do it.