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I agree. I went through a similar experience with United several years ago, and I will never fly them again unless the choice is walking.

As the article points out, there are structural problems with their pricing, their policies (and how they communicate them), and most importantly their customer service culture (or lack thereof).

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The problem for the legacy airlines is that they started in the pre-deregulation era with excellent pay and benefits for their employees. Deregulation eliminated the financial basis for those salaries, and as a result the legacies have been engaged in a decades-long war with their employees to lower costs. It shouldn't be surprising that customer service is poor when people work in such a hostile environment. There's always a huge difference in morale between growing and shrinking companies. The post-deregulation entrants dont even have to pay more than the legacies; the fact that they're not constantly attacking their own employees is an enormous advantage.

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