Continental Airlines

I certainly hope that the comment on this website about Continental being one of the best in customer service is not true. I have had nothing but poor experiences with them and they will NO longer be my airline of choice.

I have flown on Continental for years (including Continental Air Micronesia) both domestically and internationally. Compared to American and Delta they are head and shoulders above the crowd in terms of service and attitude. The flight attendants are 99% friendly and helpful and truly seem to like their jobs and flying. They are cutting back just a little bit on amenities on international flights (e.g. they term Lima-Houston a “domestic flight” which the crews don’t like but it doesn’t seem to affect their attitude) but overall they are great. I wouldn’t say they quite reach Singapore Airlines standard, but then, who does?

Wow. I was just reading the comments about Continental. I am Platinum level with that airline; and although I occasionally have a complaint, they are always eager to make things right. If someone is unhappy with Continental, try Northworst! Continental still serves food and snacks, flight attendants are generally very friendly and helpful, and their on-time record is one of the best in the market. I have been using Continental as my primary carrier for over twenty years.
Don Gill

The “Contract of Carriage” link above is not currently working. Please try the below instead:

continental.com/web/en-US/content/contract.aspx?SID=9862C7B67CC544B9A6500C07ED52B19D

They also have done us the courtesy of linking to their Contract of Carriage in the footer of their pages–hooray for clear disclosure!

I am flying more these days and Continental is my preferred airline. I act like a VIP and treat the airline employees like VIPs with smiles all around and get treated fairly. When there is a problem (mine, theirs or FAA) I always get a fair resolution. Always state what you expect the solution to be, be reasonable and it will turn out ok. Do the same for the hotels and you will get your refund from the hotel, not the airline – no matter who is at fault.

I flew 1st class newark to Honolulu in feb of 07. Overall it was a pleasent flight. We dont fly often, but when we do we fly continental as newark is a hub and they fly to almost everywhere from there.
I dont have a gripe really but a weird story. So they have 4 flight attendants for the 20 1st class seats. We aree served a wonderful aray of food and ice cream and alcohol. Its very nice. But they offer us all peanuts and I am allergic to peanuts. Not seriouslyt allergic, just mildly allergic. I politely decline and ask if they may have some pretzels available. The flight attendant says they will see what they can do? See what they can do? I knew they were giving pretzels out in coach like candy!!! After 5 minutes no response at all. So I ask another attendant who was walking by if they had some, and she says sure, she can get some from coach. I was like hm, wow thanks. So what was the deal with the first flight attendant. I will never know. I didnt feel like pressing the issue about her blowing me off like that. My request was niether unreasonable, due to the allergy I have and the fact they had probably 5,000 bags of pretzels in coach. And it was made both quietly and politely.
I have really never had an issue with continental before. And I hope I never do. If any of you do have problems, I suggest looking for the Continental agents who walk around with red coats, There only job is to address customer needs. Help with baggage, finding gates, questions and complaints.
Just stay away from USAIR and Northwest. I never hear anything good from them.

They are one of the most USELESS airlines to grace the skies. Seriously, who finds a good price for a flight on Continental? They are not competitive, they are the typical “Fly to our hub, then go” type airline. Take it from the ones that are competitive and actually KNOW where people want to fly to! Whats the point of 20 flights a day to Newark or Houston!

good flight food bad crew good will be flighing with you againe next month i will not order lasagnge

It happened to me last week at ORD on American. The plane changed gates 3 times inside an hour, in fact it changed TERMINALS, twice! Did I complain? No. Wouldn’t do any good anyway. I just paid attention to the FIDS and schlepped my ass around the airport durning my connection, lamenting on how much better travel was before we put a complete MORON (Bush) in the White House.

Don Keedic, is that your idea of a joke? It’s Bush’s fault? For Pete’s sake, this has been going on for many more years than he’s been in office. Might as sensibly say it’s Clinton’s fault! Idiot.

Below is a letter I sent to Larry Kellner back in 12/07. No one from Continental had the courtesy to respond. The letter speaks for itself.

Mr. Larry Kellner 12/18/07
Continental Airlines
1600 Smith Street
Dept HQSEO
Houston, Tx. 77002

Dear Larry,
As an Elite Club member for over 14 years and a President’s Club member for over 20 years I felt compelled to write you this letter concerning my recent experience on a Continental flight from West Palm Beach to Newark N.J. I would never write a letter of complaint on a weather issue but this was not weather related.

On Tuesday 12/11/07 I was booked on a flight from West Palm Beach to Newark. The flight was # 1596 with a scheduled departure of 1:35 PM and an arrival of 4:44 PM. The flight was delayed by 1 ½ hours due to air control in the metropolitan NJ/NY area so we took off at 3:10. The flight was uneventful except for the rudeness of the head stewardess.
1) When we were boarding the plane she continued to tell people to step into their rows and store their bags in the overhead. Some people do this ….some people don’t. At one point she got on the mic and said “ if you people don’t start moving we are going to be here for another 2 hours. If that is want you want just keep fooling around with stowing your bags”
2) While in flight, the video didn’t work. It didn’t work on the way down from Newark either. She came on the mic and said “sorry were are having problems with the video………..deal with it “
20 minutes outside of Newark the pilot advised us that air traffic control had put us in a holding pattern. He also advised us that he only had enough fuel to be in the holding pattern for 10 minutes or we would have to go to a nearby airport to refuel. 10 minutes later he announced we were going back to Richmond to refuel. Richmond was 45 minutes south of where we were. Not Philly, not Washington, Richmond. Why wasn’t the plane properly fueled in West Palm? In the past, I have been in a holding pattern over Newark for 2 hours with a problem but not on this trip.

We landed in Richmond around 6PM. We were told we would refuel and take right back off for Newark. The refuel time, according to the pilot was 45 minutes. We pushed back and taxied to the runway at 7. At 7:30 the pilot came back on and said “ladies and gentlemen I have some bad news. I have been flying since 3AM this morning and I have “timed out” my hours. I can not fly this plane to Newark and we are returning to the Richmond terminal. “ I have been a pilot for Continental for 25 years and this is the first time this has ever happened”. Didn’t this pilot know he was time out when we were refueling?

We arrived back at the gate to mass chaos. Everyone deplaned except first class. They were allowed to stay on the plane and drink and eat snacks. No one from Continental was there to help or give us any info on what was going to happen with this flight. Eventually someone from another airline advised us that a new pilot was being flown from Newark with a new flight crew to fly the plane to Newark. He was supposed to be there at 10;30 and we would be in Newark at 11:30. There were many children and elderly people on the flight to make matters more stressful. The airport in Richmond was closed, and we were not allowed to enter the Applebees on the other side of security to get food or beverage.

The pilot arrived at 11:30. We loaded the plane and then sat at the gate for another hour. We taxied to the runway and sat there for another hour. All during this time no announcements we made as to the status of the flight. We took off at 1:30 and arrived in Newark at 2:30.

To add insult to injury it took 50 minutes for the bags to reach the carousel and the Priority Elite bags came out last.

I have been a Continental customer for years. I was severely inconvienced on this trip and had to cancel all my meetings. I also will have to pay for my pick up service for the 3 times they came to pick me up.

I believe, because of the incompetence of Continental personal I am entitled to a several hundred dollar travel voucher for 12 hours of travel from West Palm to Newark on
12/11.

Best Regards,

Roy Hunt

I got back from one of my international trips with Continental last week and they broke my suitcase in Houston International. This was the second time that happen the same within a year. The first time they only gave me 3000 miles. I couldnt do much. This time I sent an email to everyone in Continental. For my surprise, I got a phone call for the person in charge of the Baggage Office Service for Continental Airline Nation System. He got a message from the CEO asking about my email. He offered me to replace my suitcase or $250 travel certificate. This is the first time that Continental does something like that so fast. I like flying with Continental. I know it has a lot of problems, but the service and perks are much betters than other big airlines. If something like that happen with AA it will take around 2 months to solve it. AA lost my two suitcases on 2003 and they only paid me $1500, but they took two months to do it. It is the customer service culture that mkaes continental a good airline, but there is going to be a problem in somewhere.

Thanks,
Daniel

Urgh! I am so unimpressed with any flight in and out of Newark; JFK or Laguardia and am always always delayed several hours. Customer service is terrible, people are miserable and it doesnt seem to be getting better. Just had to vent. I am quite tired of these delays though; at least tell me that it will be 9 hours from now when I finally get my plane so I could use another form of transportations idiots. Maintenance my ars, sounds to me like you do not have enough passengers for this connection so you will wait another 3 flights to fill it up. I am on to yoU!

Worst customer service in the industry. I would never recommend flying this airline. I travel 3 days a week+, and never have a good experience with Continental if I need to make changes to my reservation. They are just difficult to deal with. Must be a corporate culture to be difficult.

I just emailed everyone on this list and zeo.higgins@coair.com bounced back, FYI. With the snow we had this weekend in NY, I had two flights canceled. Both times I called customer service were handled professionally. I do think it helps to be polite: having worked in customer service in the past and despising almost everyone I helped, the few genuinely nice people really make things better. Hopefully they’ll be able to get me on a plane BEFORE Christmas, rather than after.

I was scheduled to fly from YUL-HKG on the 10th of February 2010. I checked my email and received notification that my flight was canceled, yet again (however, I never received a phone call). WHen I called customer service, I was told that the next available flight for me to take would be on Monday the 15th of Feb. I asked the agent if it was possible to be booked on a star alliance partner flight instead (because I needed to get to HK by friday morning since I have another flight booked from HKG to BKK on friday morning). The agent was very unprofessional towards me and basically told me that I could not be transferred onto Air Canada or any other airline because Continental did not want to pay the transfer fee. I explained that I am an elite member and have been flying with Continental as my primary carrier for many years. The agent told me there was nothing she could do and that I would have to change all my flights to Monday the 15th. I asked to speak to a supervisor and was transferred.

I explained the situation to the supervisor, who told me that I was stuck and could only get on the MOnday flight. I informed him that I was starting work in Bangkok on Monday and therefore was BEGGING to be transferred to an outbound flight flight with a partner airline (there was an available flight with Air Canada, going from YUL to Toronto to Vancouver to Hong Kong). The supervisor told me there was nothing that could be done; that the best thing for me to do was to cancel my flight with Continental and book with another airline. I asked him again to reconsider, stating that he would be losing a value customer. Unfortunately, nothing could be done for me and I Had to cancel my flight.

Due to the horrific customer service I received with Continental, I was obliged to book a flight to Bangkok with Finnair. I also had to incur cancellation fees with Air Asia (for my scheduled flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok on the 12th of Feb). The total cost of all these amounts to a little under 2000$ CDN of expenses.

on mar 22 i boarded continental express in charleston-delayed due to mechanical problems-to newark airport-(flight CO 2074Y) there are two items missing in my carry on which was not really carry on because of the size of the plane. my change purse with $300 and a small jewelry box with costume jewelery
maybe worth about $100. my suitcase was the last to be brought onto the plane-i thought that was strange that it was the only one that took so long- i was traveling with my daugther, her suitcase came right up onto the plane. thank you for any attention you may give this matter.

Oh my, after my last experience with Continental, I’ll never give them my service again.

In late Feb, my grandfather died, and, of course, this was right in the middle of a Northeastern Blizzard.

We managed to find an inexpensive flight to Newark from RDU. We booked the flight, seats and all, and the price was good for booking only a couple of days in advance of traveling. It was NOT a beareavement rate.

I try to check in online, and get nowhere, they say I have no seats. Call customer service, and I swear she was laughing at me when she told me she couldn’t help me, that I’d have to go to the airport to get this straightened out. Needless to say I wasn’t happy. Later that evening, I checked again, and see that they had us booked on a flight that Sunday (our original flight was Saturday at 6am), but no cancellation of the original flight. I reluctantly call Continental again, and am told “this is in case the flight is cancelled.” I ask if it was cancelled, they say no, and, since I had been keeping track of the weather, which had finally moved away from the Northeast, I was certain I’d get on the flight.

Boy was I wrong.

I get to RDU at 4am. It’s a mob scene at the Continental terminal. Keep in mind that there had been no flights into EWR for a couple of days. It takes an hour to work the line, and I get to the check in desk. She looks and checks us, and our bags in, then says “You’ll get your seat at the gate.”

Swell.

Get to the gate and its mobbed. I’m about 6th in line. All this time I hear a Continental pilot say to the desk agent “You have to bump someone, we have to get to Newark.” The gate agent says to him “You tell them. We’re all ready 30 seats short.”

What???

I get to the front of the line. I ask the agent the likelyhood of getting on the flight. He laughs. I then ask if he can get my checked bag off the flight. If I can’t get on this flight, then I have to drive. (Keep in mind, the first flight available now was Sunday EVENING, not convenient for a funeral). He was quite helpful…..

Then the supervisor gets there. He gets on the PA and explains that they need volunteers because Continental, for whatever reason, decided that they should change plane types for the first flight back to Newark to a plane smaller than was originally scheduled. What kind of sense does THIS make??

So the Super gets to the desk, because someone in first class is having problems. The desk agent says that it should be 10 minutes before my bags are available to me. The super says to him “Nothing comes off that plane, it has to leave on time.” I looked at the super and pretty much exploded. Whose bright idea was this? You WILL get my bags off that flight. All the while pretty much ignoring my questions, fired one after the other. After I said that I wanted my bags, 8 others said the same thing, which made me feel good.

Finally the gate agent (the orignal one) says to me “Your bags will be at Carousel 2 in about 2 minutes.” I thank him, as he’s been quite helpful, and look at the supervisor and tell him that he hasn’t heard the last of this.

I e-mailed Continental customer service to ask the names and e-mail addresses of pretty much any senior manager for the region, and got told I had to call corporate. I am now considering my options, as I’m not wanting to call corporate, and now, thanks to you, I have e-mail addresses of several high level executives to complain to.

Unfortunately for me, the ONLY direct flight to EWR from RDU is Continental. Jet Blue will get me to JFK if I desire. I might have to start going that route.

Dear Customer Service (and the rest of Senior Management, Continental)

I addressed it to Customer Service, if you can call it that. I wouldn’t. Nothing of my experience with Continental seems to indicate that you have any concept of how to treat your customers, or what the concept of service actually entails. I have travelled an average of more than 100000 miles a year for the past few years and as such, I have expectations. Continental has managed to fall below every single one of them.

Shall we start with the on board service? I have never encountered a group of more disenchanted, bored, arrogant, insensitive, rude and less cutomer friendly staff as I have on your airline. The staff fling food at you, never, ever make the effort of eye contact or a smile, and seem to be under the impression that they are doing you a favour. You are not, but as a paying customer, I guess my opinion doesn’t matter. And I’m not “buddy”. I have never invited you over to my place for a beer, slapped you on the back or watched football with you and cheered the same team. Till I do all of the above, I’m “Mr. Chatterjee” to you. If you can’t pronounce that, or if you couldn’t be bothered finding out what my name is, a polite “sir” will work just as well. If you’re name tag has a first name, I’ll take that as an invitation to address you that way. Failing that, I will use an “Excuse me, sir/ma’am”. Till I agree to our mutual chumminess, please spare me the fake “buddy”, delivered with complete indifference and distaste at the fact that you actually have to work and talk to a pesky customer.

An answer of “You’re probably sitting on it” is not the correct answer to the question “I don’t seem to have received headphones. Could I have a set?”. The correct answer, surprise!, is “Of course!”. And an attendant who spends the entire flight eating cheese plates behind drawn curtains and then walks up and down the aisle with his tie tied on his head, Rambo style, does not inspire confidence in your customers who are supposed to look to him for instructions in case of emergencies. Seriously, you guys are running a business here? And the habit of putting your finger up, as if talking to a disobedient child who seems to be interrupting the grown-up muttered conversation you seem to be having with yourself, for any request? Are you kidding me???? I don’t need to take that from any self-aggrandizing air waitress.

We mourn for the time when travelling by air required a sense of occasion, an effort…Track suits suffice for now for a majority of the travellers, sadly…But would it kill your staff to clean up, to not come out as if they fell out of bed, to actually comb their hair and look…professional?

The food? I’ve taken the effort of taking pictures of the exquisitely awful food you sever on board, complete with the coagulated fat, the burnt pasta and the definitely unappetizing plastic shards. My pregnant wife was left without a meal for more than 7 hours, and I had to endure her wrath. Plan better – this is your bread and butter. Lactose free does not mean vegetarian (with milk included). That cheese sandwich looks as attractive as a used prophylactic. A blank look by the staff does not inspire confidence, and if you do not offer a service, it’s better to admit it than try and bully your way through the situation. A simple apology would have sufficed.

Your ground staff at Newark epitomize the prejudice most people have of American airports – rude, loud, completely indifferent to the needs of your clients, every request met with a martyred sigh. American service is usually fantastic, helped by the promise of tips, I can only presume. Remove that promise, and you’re left with a bunch of people who have the service capabilities of a surly teenagers on probation who have had their Xboxes, cigarettes and beer confiscated. I’ll leave a tip there if it helps better your performance. Failing that option, get them trained! Tips: eye contact, smiling, addressing the client directly : good! Indifference, boredom, loud exasperated sighs: bad. See a pattern? Bring in a few people from the Asian airlines- they could teach you wonders.

Of course, it would also help that you get your reps trained on the more complicated issues. As an international airline flying to Europe, you should know that you are under European jurisdiction (esp since I bought my ticket there and my flight originated there). Pretending you aren’t doesn’t make it go away. That’s another story that I shall take up with the Consumer Protection Agency back home. The bills will be coming shortly.

So, what’s one lonely and upset client to do? I don’t really care what you do with this feedback. I will never choose to fly your airline again – if I have to because someone else has so decided, I shall do so while holding my nose and sighing loudly. What I will also do is publicize. You know that social media that everyone talks about, and which most corporate dinosaurs are dying to manipulate and abuse? I’m a citizen there, with a far flung and widespread net. I shall make myself and my opinions heard there. This letter shall be publicized, and I’ll make it humorous … Throw in a few anecdotes, a couple of expletives and it gets funnier… people like that, and forward emails like that. A request to further post this to their own profiles, a quick blog and an email to choice friends and colleagues (esp those in the travel industry) will ensure that this experience lives on long after this trip. Some basic calculations: Sent to 500 friends (500). 60% forward or post to their profiles (to humour me), each with an average of 200 contacts (200 + (300*200) = 60,200 people will see that in one week. And that’s just one degree of separation. If it gets transmitted further, whoopee!

Hard to make companies understand their lack of respect for my hard-earned money, and the easiest way is through your wallet. Every potential customer out there who laughs at this email will always remember this review of Continental. I am happy to let you know that I already have converts!

If you’re interested: Continental flights ARN-ZRH-EWR on 12 May, EWR-ARN 20 May.

Have a wonderful day!

Regards

Neil

P.S. Please, please ask your pilots and staff to stop referring to each other in superlatives. I’ll decide if the people are “fantastic” and “the best flying the skies” or “can turn water into wine”. You trying to tell me is just annoying.

I also retain the right to publish any correspondence (if any) sent to me by Continental, either in full or part.

cc:
Jeffery Smisek
Chairman, President and CEO

Jim Compton
Executive Vice President and CMO

Mark Moran
Executive Vice President and COO

Zane Rowe
Executive Vice President and CFO

Ron Anderson-Lehman
Senior Vice President and CIO

Mark Bergsrud
Senior Vice President — Marketing Programs and Distribution

Mike Bonds
Senior Vice President — Human Resources and Labor Relations

Mark Erwin
Senior Vice President — Corporate Development and Alliances

Nene Foxhall
Senior Vice President — Communications and Government Affairs

Dave Hilfman
Senior Vice President — Worldwide Sales

Bill Meehan
Senior Vice President — Airport Services

Anne Munoz
Director, Customer Care

Scott O’Leary
Managing director, Customer Experience

Martin Hand
Staff VP – Reservations, Customer Care

Zeo Higgins
Executive Office