There is currently a tiny little discussion going on over at the FlyerTalk United Mileage Plus forum about the United Airlines 1K Desk in Japan.

In my experience since having moved to Tokyo, I will say this: United Airlines Japan has the best customer service in the entire United Airlines system (with the exception of Global Services which I haven’t personally experienced but have heard good things about).

United Japan brings a Japanese dedication to work (derived from the Confucian work ethic) that is unmatched anywhere else in the world. Not only is the customer always right, but the employees will go out of their way with a task to make things right.

Case in point: as a proud cardholder of a Mileage Plus JCB card (hmm, I wonder how many non-Japanese can say they have a Mileage Plus JCB card!), a unique set of circumstances led to me being temporarily double-billed on airlines purchases made from their Japanese website, and then that double-billing getting lifted many days later. This ended up being a problem as I had to purchase many transpac flights a month and ended up eating up the whole credit line twice as fast (an aside on that: as there is no “credit rating system” in Japan, anyone under 30 who does get a credit card, even those with great jobs, is HOSED on what they get in terms of a credit amount, as in something that can cover only a handful of trips at a time!). So when I explained this to United Japan, instead of just getting a canned response, I received a personal call from an actual technical person at United Japan! They followed-up, addressed the technical problem, and made things right. This is not the kind of service I’ve ever seen anywhere else in the business.

So back to the discussion on FlyerTalk. While I won’t dignify the trolls with a comment, I will constructively say that if a United Japan 1K desk person basically called the customer a “pain in the ass” on the phone, that is a problem. Unless I hear more, I will chalk this up to an isolated incident that United Japan will need to deal with internally (and with an apology to the customer who made the post), but not declare this some systemic failure.

Nobody is perfect, and as far as I am concerned, 99.999% rounds up to 100%.

Time and time again, PAX (passengers) keep getting stranded in Bangkok at Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK).

With the airline business still reeling, the general theme is “reduced capacity,” meaning carriers, especially United, will oversell constantly. So when United had to cancel an inbound flight from Tokyo (NRT) to Bangkok (BKK), it created a horrible chain reaction.

Here are some excerpts from across the web:

A Zoo at UA Check-in Area in BKK-NRT UA 882 on 2/22 [FlyerTalk]

Help! Stranded by United in Bangkok for days! [Fodor's]

In both sites, we see passengers getting bumped and bumped and rescheduled and stringed around…even high status passengers! We even have cases of passengers with confirmed seat assignments for successive days getting bumped due to the poor management at BKK — absolutely horrible.

So how does this not happen again?

1. United needs to add emergency, non-contract staff to the airport in chain reaction events like this
2. United must honor confirmed seat assignments for the days successive to an initial cancellation
3. United needs to rebook passengers on other airlines, including non-partners, even in business class if the passengers are high status United passengers
4. United needs to offer a “train plus airfare” option for dire situations like this
5. United needs to inform its call center staff (even ICC for non-status passengers) of how to properly handle the situation immediately

The overselling of each flight problem will not end for the foreseeable future. Mechanical problems do happen, so that is a bit unpredictable and out of United’s control. But it’s how United handles these situations that affect passenger loyalty and even their bottom line (since the problem in BKK originated from a mechanical problem and then they began to chain reaction bump people excessively, countless passengers are entitled to compensation).

Will these affect how United enthusiasts (like myself) fly United? Probably not. But will it change the average Joe’s travel patterns who experienced this or heard about it? Probably yes. Let’s just hope that United is more prepared for situations like this at their outlying international airports in the future.