Continental Airlines SUCKS!

I'm back in Hong Kong right now (left Toronto on the 8th), and I'm leaving for New Zealand on the 15th. I'm not doing much this time though; my aunt and uncle living in San Francisco came to visit my grandma here, so I've basically been doing family meals and staying at home working on my blog (yeah I know the past few posts have been pretty long) and finding out what I want to do and see in New Zealand (I still don't really know haha).

Anyway, I felt a post was needed to review Continental Airlines' terrible service (and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only traveller who thinks this). My original itinerary is all with Cathay Pacific (which offer great service, I have no complaints about them), but I had to book with Continental for my round-trip between HK and Toronto for my short time back home since it was the cheapest at such last minute booking. But I don't care how much it costs to fly with another airline, I will never fly with Continental again.

On the flight to Newark (I had to transfer through Newark both ways), the plane had an electrical problem (which led to a very short delay), but the crew decided to make the 15-16 hour flight from HK to Newark anyway! To paraphrase their explanation, they knew a lot of us had connections and they didn't want us to miss the connections (yeah that's always a good reason to use a plane with known problems right?). The poor folks in the 2nd half of the main cabin had the lights on the entire flight (so they couldn't sleep) and the entertainment system was down for the first 2-3 hours of the flight (hey, it's a long flight, we need some entertainment!). But the worst part was the flight back. My flight from Toronto to Newark was delayed by a half hour because we had to wait for the plane to come in from it's previous flight. Then the flight from Newark to HK: it was delayed by a half hour too at first because (again) the plane was late coming in from its previous flight, then delayed an additional 2.5 hours because 2 of the restrooms were broken and they felt the flight couldn't be made with 2 down(?!?) (and despite knowing this problem beforehand, they boarded us anyway and thus had to make us get off), so they had to switch planes and decided a mere $8 USD food voucher would make up for the delay (which isn't much considering the price of food in the airport), and then delayed the flight again by another 2 hours because after the new plane came in, they decided that they were going to change crews! A nice total of 5 hours of delay. When me and my family flew to HK on Continental a few years ago, we also had a large several hours delay at Newark. So instead of landing in HK just in time for dinner, we landed well after midnight (and of course all the public transport was now shutdown)...at least they had the decency to arrange some limited route shuttle buses, but I didn't get to my grandma's apartment until after 3AM (and she waited up for me!). Not to mention most of the Continental flight attendants are not exactly the friendliest; they serve you with a forced sort of friendliness.

So bottom line? Pay the few extra hundred and fly with a different airline. The simplest way to put it is: Continental sucks, especially if you value your life (really, what is up with all the faulty planes for long flights?!?).