United Airlines

I have what might be a unique complaint.  I guess if the flight is on time the crew and those crew being shuttled to their next flight have the right to be rude to customers and are not subject to the rules of everyone else.  Here is my story, which I will preface with the fact that I fly frequently and have been Platinum on Continental and Gold on AA, so I have realistic expectations of things within and outside the airlines control, but this was a first. 

I had paid for the extra legroom of an exit row seat when my flight was booked and had a proper boarding pass etc.

When I got to my seat, there was a United employee who was flying to IAH for his next assignment in my seat.  In fact six of the twelve exit row seats were non-rev passengers. 

After ignoring my first three attempts to get his attention, he was using the strategic look away and pretend you don’t see him mode,  I finally got his attention and advised him I thought he was in my seat. 

He told me to find another seat as he was there first and he wasn’t moving.  (This is on a full aircraft)   When I asked to see if we were double booked in the same seat he refused to show me his ticket saying he didn’t have to. 

After contacting a flight attendant, the flight attendant, went to the gate agent and had the gate agent sort out the seating.  Once The on-duty FA went to the gate agent the crew member being shuttled left my seat and went into the back galley area.  I figured my rude guy was was probably a supervisor because no one wanted to get involved, and they removed another shuttling employee from exit row across the Aisle and made a seat for my rude guy.  Upon being reseated he commented “There are you happy now.” 

During the flight I noticed all the employes kept their electronics on, ignored the fasten seatbelt sign, passed their cellphones around with the active crew members showing pictures and so forth.

It was quite a party.  The remainder of the flight was incident free.  I am used to passengers being rude, stressed out etc or in some cases ignorant of the correct seating etc. but I have never been treated rudely by a uniformed employee active duty or not.

I guess the quality of Continental service we had grown accustomed to is gone.