Continental, thanks but no thanks

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Continental. They have some of the least convenient connecting flights out of CLT and are usually more expensive than other options so I rarely fly them.

Last week I thought I’d give them another look now that they are part of star alliance. They did let me enter my United number on the day it was official they were in the alliance. US Airways has been part of *A for a while and only recently allowed that.

Then it’s back to CO as usual. The GTAA kiosks at YYZ apparently denote elites differently than the CO tickets would and this new *A notation was not known to the gate agents. Agent announced elites could board so I handed my BP which said EA (for elite access) and *G (for star gold) but the GA did not know what this looked like and questioned me if I was elite. I had my *G card in hand just in case b/c the text size on the BP from the GTAA kiosk was rather small.

Then we get to CO really being CO. For some reason CO has really short minimum connections and most of my flights are exactly the minimum (but most DL flights from CLT to ATL will get at least an hour connection in ATL). There has only been 1 connection on CO at IAH where I didn’t have to run. This time I had to wait so long to get to a gate and have the gate agent match up the jetbridge for deplaning and get my valet bag that by the time I was finally in the terminal they were paging me to board immediately (plane was to depart at 9:00 pm and it was only 8:40 when this announcement was made). I had to run from 1 spoke of the C terminal of EWR to another. By the time I got there my bag was open and I dropped my papers. Some lady was in my seat and was quite mad that I’d want my seat.

…then we waited for 15 minutes with the door still open. I ran for nothing.