United Airlines

Raised as a usability problem by 26 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2010–2025), in 23 threads.

People raised many different problems with United Airlines, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 26 complaints

Notification settings default to on and don't stop spam pushes when turned off2025-12-18
SMS link couldn't produce a boarding pass, and kiosks failed to check passengers in2025-11-10
Final price hidden behind carry-on, seat and bag fees, making comparison shopping take hours2023-11-23
Window-first boarding would confuse travelers sitting in groups and invite cheating2023-10-19
Phone wait exceeded two hours and forced the caller to give up2023-07-20
Credit only usable through hidden special portal, not regular search2022-11-16
Developers struggle with duplicated components and broken hot reloading, slowing productivity2022-02-23
App treats each leg of a round trip as a separate trip2022-02-23
Blocked from adding boarding passes to Wallet unless notifications are enabled2019-10-12
Security questions have no correct answer for some questions, forcing workarounds2019-09-06
No way to scrub, skip or restart videos; playback constantly buffers2017-07-08
Constant pushy upsells for seats, wifi and lounges make booking a hassle2017-04-28
Tiny next arrow zooms in instead of swipe-to-advance on phones2017-04-15
New users must click through about 50 extra slides and wait 10-15 minutes, with no obvious back navigation2017-04-15
New users find the onboarding process terrible to get through2017-04-14
Seat pricing is so complicated that paying for a better seat is nearly impossible2017-04-13
Fine print hides that paying for a seat does not guarantee the flight seat2017-04-12
Passengers cannot connect, and connections drop mid-movie2017-02-17
Answer lists don't fit users, so they must pick random answers and store them2016-08-14
Baggage fees make boarding slower and force travelers to lug bags2016-01-18
Forced to download app and scan passport to check in2015-06-24
Forced to download app and scan passport to check in from computer2015-06-24
"Search by" is cramped in a corner and input fields don't stand out2014-02-13
Gate changes and delay info conflict across monitors, the app and gate agents, so travelers can't tell what's happening2013-03-15
Fare class system is extremely confusing to a frequent flyer2011-11-14
Booked ticket never issued, so staff disbelieved passenger and it took hours to resolve2010-04-20