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What Did United Airlines Do To This Luggage?
By
Jen Carlson
Published Jun 21, 2010
Modified Jun 21, 2010
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Jun 21, 2010
Modified Jun 21, 2010
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Isn't is nice how airlines continue to come up with new ways to surprise us? Like, hey, your dog is dead! Or, hey, we're gonna make this trip take 10 extra hours, get to know your neighbor! Or that time they let you sleep on the empty plane. The latest: the luggage you carefully chose and packed for your trip has been inexplicably and utterly destroyed.
A tipster sent in these shocking photos, with an account of her story (surprisingly, it does not center around an in-flight bear attack). Her adventure began on June 13th at New York City's own LaGuardia Airport—after many cancellations, boardings and deboardings of different flights (all on United), she finally got on a plane that lifted off for Colorado. Upon arriving, our tipster's luggage was nowhere to be found, and three days later it turned up with no warning about the condition it was in. Everything was completely soaked, moldy and shredded (with some items missing all together); she tells us employees at the airport in Colorado didn't know the protocol in dealing with her situation because they had never seen anything like it before.
Customer service agents (via phone and in the airports) were uniformly unhelpful, made empty promises of monetary retribution to replace some of the goods during the trip, and yadda yadda yadda, it's been over a week and there are still no answers. Seriously, WTF do you think happened to this luggage? We've contacted United to see if they have any answers, and will update when/if we hear back.
The tipster, who happens to be a “premier” United Mileage Plus member, is currently traveling around the country and tells us: "Hours of my vacation, hundreds of minutes used on my mobile phone plan and several thousands of dollars have been either spent (on new items) or tossed aside (on irreplaceable items). I have been treated like garbage. My goal is to alert everyone I know of the disregard for my time and belongings, so they can avoid flying such a disrespectful and irresponsible airline in the future." Your move, United!
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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