MESSAGE CENTER

I FIND IT interesting that Bill Steiner of United Airlines states that his carrier recommends that passengers arrive at the terminal at least two hours prior to departure for domestic flights and three hours for international flights. Where is that recommendation communicated or posted publicly? Not at United's Web site, that's for certain. In the "Airport check-in" section, under "Travel support," the written guidance is 60 minutes before your flight if you are not checking bags and 90 minutes if you are checking bags, for travel within the United States, and two hours for international travel.

Further, if a UAL passenger has an international flight leaving Dulles airport before 7:45 a.m. (as my family did in May when traveling to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, with a scheduled departure of 7 a.m.), he will be surprised to discover that the United ticket agents/customer service representatives do not open their counters to customers until 5:45 a.m. (United's current earliest flight to Puerto Vallarta from Dulles departs at 6:30 a.m.)

This policy (disclosed by the senior customer service rep at the airport that morning) is not on the Web site, and United's telephone customer service rep couldn't find any mention of it.

I can assure you that for the 20-plus passengers who arrived at or before the 5 a.m. check-in deadline and waited almost an hour with the counter closed, the recommended two-hour check-in time wasn't appreciated. Had we complied with Steiner's three-hour prescription, it would have been even more exasperating.

Michael McCune, Alexandria

BASED ON RECENT experience, I would say that the letter from Bill Steiner is extremely sound guidance. What he neatly sidestepped is that the necessity for this is due to his own airline's cost-cutting inefficiency.

Attempting to board a mid-afternoon, one-hour flight to Cleveland on a Friday, my family arrived 40 minutes prior to the 45-minute deadline for baggage check.

By the time we got to the front of the line it zigzagged in front of the counter and stretched to the end of the terminal. There were exactly two employees working behind the counter, leaving half the automated check-in stations unusable.

Unlike in the past, no effort was made to move passengers on flights approaching the cut-off time for luggage check to the front of the line.

Steiner's title notwithstanding, United has long abandoned any pretense of genuine "customer service."

We determined that driving to Cleveland took only marginally longer and was far cheaper and less stressful than flying United from Dulles. Next year we'll go by car.

Tom McIntyre, Arlington

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