Because they suck.

Let me elaborate. Over the past decade living in Asia, I had formulated a simple policy: never fly a US air carrier anywhere that an Asian carrier will take me.

Over the years, this policy has served me well, as I used airlines such as Singapore Air, Cathay Pacific, EVA, Thai and even, god help me, Garuda. My operating theory was that Asian carriers would either be distinctly better than US carriers (SIA, EVA, Cathay) or distinctly cheaper (the others). For many years I flew EVA's superb Economy Deluxe class from Singapore to the US via Taipei. For the price of an SIA economy class ticket I got about 50% more legroom, a wider seat and the little TV set that is so important on a 20 hour long-haul flight.

From Beijing, my choice of airlines for flights to San Francisco is more limited. EVA, for obvious reasons, is a non-starter. I have United, Air China, Northwest and ANA to choose from. Only United and Air China are direct. On my recent flight to the US I was willing to try out ANA, even with a connection through Tokyo, but I couldn't get the dates I wanted. Left with a choice between United and the inexplicably comparably-priced Air China, I gritted my teeth and opted for United.

When I was a kid, I once had a pair of root canals to fix up the two front teeth that I shattered while skateboarding. Over the course of several hours, I had my teeth drilled open, filed out from the inside, x-rayed, packed with gunk and capped. It was excruciating and dull at the same time. This flight was like that, only with less legroom and a worse chair.

First, United seated my wife and me in row 62, the very last row in a 747. The last row in any jumbo is an extra-special slice of hell, as you get treated to the bathroom queue, the bathroom odor, and the revolving cocktail party that develops in the open space by the rear cabin door. On a flight with mostly Chinese passengers, you get the bonus of extra-loud conversation and zany exercise sessions that often involve someone's de-luxe size ass going up and down just at the periphery of your vision, where it's really distracting.

Since United, which is bankrupt, can't be bothered to spend money on pointless amenities like modern in-flight entertainment systems, you have to watch the communal movies. Sitting in row 62 and watching the movie at the front of the cabin is like trying to watch a movie at a drive-in theater in the next county from inside a full school bus. I'm 6 foot even and I could only see the top half of the screen. My wife, somewhat shorter, had to imagine what "Mr and Mrs Smith" were doing from listening to the soundtrack. The good news is that the back of the plane amplifies turbulence, so as long as we kept our seatbelts loose, every bump on the choppy flight lofted us high enough out of our seats to get a brief glimps of the screen. A sore ass was a small price to pay for that kind of entertainment.

But I can't really blame United for where we sat. Every plane, no matter how nice, has its nosebleed row. I can, however, blame United for the cabin service. Call me sexist and stone-age, but I don't mind attractive, obsequious stewardesses. Some men might tell you that they don't care about this. They are lying. Forced to choose between being served by a hot girl in a sarong kebaya and an aging diner waitress from Fresno, most (straight) guys will choose the former. It's wired into our genes and there is nothing we can do about it.

However, even I, the troglodyte, would cheerfully accept service from anyone, so long as it was courteous and attentive. But it was clear that our stewardesses and the one steward were more accustomed to barking commands than making requests. On a plane full of Chinese people, a certain amount of drill-sergeantry is to be expected, but it would have worked better had more than two of the economy class cabin staff been able to speak Mandarin. There was a lot of hopeless flailing and gesticulating. On the return flight there was only one Mandarin speaking flight attendant on the airplane. The other, she explained to me, had been a no-show that day.

Now, here is where the comparison with Singapore Airlines begins in earnest. On an SIA long-haul, the flight attendants (aside from speaking Mandarin) perform a service the value of which, all jokes aside, is beyond estimation: they clean the bathrooms every couple of hours. They also tidy up the cabin, picking up stray bits of litter that clutter up the aisles over the hour. On a plane full of Chinese passengers, many of whom import the usual Chinese toilet ettiquette, the bathroom maintenance goes a long way toward making the flight tolerable.

I presume that United's  flight attendant union rules stipulate that cleaning the bathrooms and tidying the cabin floors are the sole responsibility of turnaround crews. That's nice for the flight attendants, and I'm thrilled their responsibilities have been clearly delineated. On our flight to the US, someone blew their nose on a two-foot wad of toilet paper and threw it into the aisle near my seat. Over the course of eleven hours this wad was kicked, unravelled, and shredded into a contellation of little, snot-impregnated bits scattered along the aisle. Meanwhile, the bathrooms (right behind me) were allowed to degenerate into a reasonable approximation of a hutong toilet in summer. The seats and floors were sprayed with urine, a mountain of toilet paper slowly accumulated on the floor and I had to fish in the cabinets for a fresh roll of paper twice since replacing the rolls also seemed to be the sole responsibility of turnaround staff. And passengers. As a final insult, I was twice abandoned by flight attendants who I asked to bring me a customs form; once in my seat and once at a galley by a flight attendant who asked me to "wait right here -- don't go anywhere", then went up to first class to do something or other and simply never came back. Ten minutes later I gave up and went back to my seat. She never came looking for me.

Mind you, I paid US$1000 per ticket for this flight.

I am a PR man, and I believe that everything a company does sends a message to its customers. United, and their flight attendants, really need to think about the message they are sending. It is this: We don't give a shit about our plane or cabin environment, and our passengers are an inconvenience to be dealt with via the minimum expenditure of effort.

On the return flight, despite our tickets having been purchased two months prior, United was unable to manage the simple expediency of seating me and my wife together. Since United doesn't offer online or phone check in for passengers who aren't Mileage Plus members, I had expected unglamorous seats. I had not expected to be separated from my travelling companion. The check-in agent explained that he had no control over seat assignments --something I had never heard before-- and that I would have to take it up with the gate agent. I spent the next hour sitting at the gate contemplating twelve hours seated between two strangers and waiting for the gate agent to appear. When she did appear, a qeueu of about twenty, similarly disgruntled people immediately formed behind me. To United's credit, they did manage to seat my wife and me together, in comfy exit row no less, but the suspense did them no favors in my eyes. I had sworn to never, ever fly them again by choice if they couldn't put me and my wife together.

Now, this isn't a complete bag on United or their flight attendants. Ultimately, the flights got me to where I wanted to go, safe and on time. That's pretty much the goal of any plane flight. Many of the flight attendants were cordial to me, especially on the return flight, which had a much cheerier crew than the outbound one, possibly because they hadn't had two days of Beijing summer air. (In one of the nicest gestures ever, a United flight attendant once gave my mom an unopened bottle of champagne on a flight to Singapore when my mom told her she would see me during my birthday.) I got full cans of the various beverages I requested, which is a small touch but a nice one since one of my domestic-flight complaints in the US is the "three ounce Coke". And the landings on both flights were surprisingly graceful, and not the spine-destroying belly-flops that Air China domestic flights have got me used to. But the whole experience did nothing to change my opinion of the relative merits of American and Asian carriers. I know where I'll spend my money given the choice.

I will offer this hint to anyone thinking of a long-haul on United, Northwest or any other carrier that hasn't discovered personal entertainment systems: invest in an extra battery for your laptop, get a headphone splitter so your companion can listen, and rip a few DVDs onto your hard drive before departure (it ain't hard, and "fair use" says you can do this as long as they are your DVDs). I can get two movies out of my Powerbook before the batteries choke. On a long flight, that's a lot of time not spent gazing forlornly at the back of the head of the person in front of you, wondering if Brad and Angelina are getting it on or just winded from the shootout.