• What's elliott?
• About elliott
• Contact us

t o p i c s

• Business
• Commentary
• Destinations
• Help
• Leisure
• Technology
• Vault

Copyright Elliott Publishing. All rights reserved. For more information, call (305) 453-4781 or send e-mail to us.

Shuffle by United
The Travel Critic · November 16, 1998

It took Norm Gilbert 4½ hours to fly from Orlando to San Francisco a few weeks ago. Then it took him another four hours to fly home to San Diego.

Did he exchange his plane tickets for a hot-air balloon ride? Hardly. He boarded United Airlines' West Coast shuttle, better known as "Shuttle by United."

"Flying the United shuttle is like taking a bus," says the salesman and frequent flier. "It's extremely frustrating. In my last eight shuttle flights, it hasn't left on time once. My worst delay has been 2½ hours."

California's intrastate plane service is slow no matter which airline you fly. But United's is slower: on many routes, delays of 15 to 20 minutes are common, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Still, many frequent travelers seem compelled to endure the United shuttle. They're addicted to collecting United mileage points, or their company travel policy forces them to use the shuttle, or they've got to take it to catch a flight out of the carrier's San Francisco hub. So they sit and wait, like Gilbert.

A closer look at the DOT numbers reveals the extent of his frustration. Last year, two major carriers offered nonstop service between San Diego and San Francisco: Southwest and United. Southwest's planes averaged a 15.23-minute delay arriving on the inbound route. United's averaged a 25.26-minute delay.

On the Los Angeles-San Francisco route, a pattern begins to emerge. Of the five major airlines offering service, United ranked next-to-last, with an average 19-minute delay on inbound flights, and nearly 40 percent of its flights running more than 15 minutes late. (Alaska Airlines, bringing up the rear, averaged a 20-minute delay, and US Airways, which held the top spot for on-time departures from October 1997 to this October, averaged only an 11.53-minute delay).

It's pretty much the same story on the return trip to SFO. Shuttle by United was an average of 16 minutes late during the same time period, behind US Airways, Delta, Alaska Airlines and Continental.

"It's no secret that there's been a problem with the shuttle," admits United spokesman Tony Molinaro.

He blames the service's shortcomings on a variety of factors. Topping the list are San Francisco's inefficient airport design and its erratic weather.

"There's a ripple effect when one plane is delayed at San Francisco. It affects everything," says Molinaro. United recently switched schedules on some of its shuttle flights to take SFO's limitations into account, but it's too soon to tell if it will fly.

"Are we ever going to have a comparable performance to Southwest Airlines in Oakland?" he asks. "Probably not."

Any improvement would work for Anna Macaulay. "I am tired of United's excuse that weather at San Francisco delays everything," she says. "I have some serious problems with the United shuttle. I live in San Francisco, and travel to the Los Angeles area on a somewhat regular basis. These flights are always late and some are always canceled."

Macaulay uses Ontario International Airport, where the average Shuttle by United flight to SFO is 23.91 minutes late, according to the DOT. I've waited upward of two hours in Ontario for my San Francisco-bound flight to board, and can certainly relate to her agony.

United is more than capable of doing a good job. Check out its United Express operations on the East Coast. Its Washington Dulles-to-New York La Guardia turboprop service runs an average of 14.43 minutes late, the DOT reports, and only 27 percent of its flights are more than 15 minutes late. The numbers from Dulles to Boston's Logan airport are about the same. On that route, United has a better record than US Airways.

If United doesn't get its act together, there's always the high-speed rail link. But we'll have to wait until 2015 for the $20-some billion bullet train to begin operation between San Diego and San Francisco-and that's a long time, even for those of us who fly the friendly skies.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.