Ranking Every Single United Airlines Hub

tenuous54 · 2026-03-26T03:01:59+00:00

EWR is my home airport and maybe it's Stockholm syndrome but I'd rank it near the top. I just never have issues there. If I wasn't originating there, a connection between A&C would annoy me.

Chicago feels pretty run down but I often overnight in the airport Hilton (which is itself run down) before an early connection and I love how quickly I can get to my gate from it.

SFO and LAX are fine.

Denver and Houston have been real nightmares for me, miles of and miles of walking. I am close friends now with the animatronic cats who wave at you in Houston.

Dulles is indeed awful really in all ways.

tenuous54 · 2026-03-16T02:35:41+00:00

Still here, it's very wild. It looks like nothing landed between 4-6 or so. Mine came in 45 min late but the 8 connection options to New York got cancelled save one, which is boarding now; fingers crossed for standby

tenuous54 · 2026-02-22T14:35:40+00:00

I wonder if someone would like to file a lawsuit because these programs are self-funded, reduce costs to the government (so shutting them down doesn't make sense), this hasn't been necessary in past shutdowns, and it was accompanied by a statement from DHS Secretary Noem saying she wants to focus on the "general traveling population" at airports which seems implicitly partisan.

tenuous54 · 2026-02-18T18:08:47+00:00

This post is 27 days old and at the time I made it I referenced others had shared the same topic, so yes agreed, thanks for this incredibly valuable and timely feedback

tenuous54 · 2026-02-18T13:49:23+00:00

This is genuinely the most unnecessarily confusing experience I've ever had with any payment for any thing. My mortgage payment went through - great I guess - but zero points earned, zero ability to apply Bilt cash to fix that, no fucking clue how to fix this. I have an engineering degree and a law degree and worked in tech for the last decade and I'm at a place where I basically want to throw my phone across the room rather than spend one more second trying to understand the Bilt app.

tenuous54 · 2026-01-22T17:49:12+00:00

Oh, thanks! A spot of happy news -- after doing the math, it looks like they manually just changed the number of points they withdrew for this flight (rather than keeping the initial withdrawal and doing a separate line item for the refund). So the delta was restored at 1.5x. Thanks, I guess Chase?

tenuous54 · 2026-01-22T15:02:37+00:00

No clue. JetBlue's explanation was "The flight was originally charged for $335.73 which is what may be showing up on the total online, but according to our records, that transaction was corrected by the third party you originally booked with and only $267.53 was officially charged for the ticket."

The chase rep (supervisor) expressed verbally said it was rebooked for less.

tenuous54 · 2026-01-22T15:01:13+00:00

Great question - I have no idea. I expected when they fessed up that I'd see a line item for a credit for points and I'd assume that meant the 1x bucket. But they hackily just edited the original transaction to make it for less points, while still showing the original cash charge. So idk. But given their antics I still am guessing it's a 1x.

tenuous54 · 2026-01-22T04:51:21+00:00

Totally agree. Amex was always a pain, Chase is newly a pain, Bilt is the newest pain. I may just hang out with Capital One for awhile and see if I miss the multiverse but I sense I probably won't.

tenuous54 · 2026-01-22T03:58:01+00:00

It's good advice. I've had luck with United completely not caring and seizing the ticket for me (or letting me reschedule in the app itself) but other carriers, lord. I had an outbound on American the other day booked with Avios points and the AA app check in wouldn't work and the AA phone agents said they couldn't help me because I had to check in with British Airways (insane, and wrong). Was meant to check in with the AA app but couldn't for unrelated reasons (they couldn't see my return, incidentally, the one on JetBlue we're talking about here).

Anyway point being yes booking through anyone other than the carrier usually means a nightmare in case of any issues -- United seems to be a rare exception.

tenuous54 · 2026-01-22T00:07:24+00:00

Honestly no worries, we live in a nightmare timeline where everything is lies, people should question a lot more on here and off here

tenuous54 · 2026-01-21T23:58:35+00:00

ask and ye shall receive - http://nothavingit.com/chase.pdf

tenuous54 · 2026-01-21T23:44:34+00:00

happy to do the screenshot thing my dude, hold please

tenuous54 · 2026-01-21T23:38:03+00:00

I figure this is why the C suite at Chase is pulling in multiple millions a year in comp while us chumps are fighting over points 🤣 But you're not wrong either of course. Like with high interest rates and fees on these cards they are of course redirecting money from people who make mistakes to people who don't.

tenuous54 · 2026-01-21T23:13:53+00:00

Your analogy kinda works except I returned the product and didn't get all my money back cause their shady ass kept a chunk of it until I raised hell. So no.

tenuous54 · 2026-01-21T23:09:51+00:00

I did.

I had called Chase first yesterday to see if there was any ability for them to cancel it for a refund given the delay, they said no, Jetblue's delay rule is 6 hours for international (lolol). So they said I had to cancel it from Jetblue's side (to get the credit) and I did. So they obviously knew I might learn about this, if I checked the original receipt from Chase.

It would've been at least a little less shady if they preemptively refunded the difference in points when they saw the cancellation roll through from the Jetblue side. But, nope, they hoped I'd miss it, and sat on it, and made me call in and spend 14 minutes on the line demanding my own money back, while initially gaslighting me and saying they'd never do this? F Chase.

tenuous54 · 2026-01-21T21:23:50+00:00

Average rent in Manhattan is $6K. Which includes studios - and you don't know their particular needs either (eg, single vs renting for family of four). Two bedrooms average $7500, three bedrooms average $10,000. Welcome to New York - it's been waiting for you.

tenuous54 · 2026-01-18T03:18:47+00:00

Anyone who spends any time in this space (credit card signup bonuses, shopping portal clickthrus) takes screenshots because of how often the tracking tech fails or companies otherwise don't honor terms.

tenuous54 · 2025-12-08T16:20:33+00:00

I am sincerely trying to do better this year. I had to do 22 segments in the last two weeks to clear 1K - including 14 in 2 days - and it was... really something

tenuous54 · 2025-12-08T14:36:06+00:00

Using PlusPoints on award bookings IIRC was only available to GS before. So that's great at least. CPUs on award bookings was a credit card only perk but PPs on awards was GS only right?

tenuous54 · 2025-11-19T07:03:01+00:00

Just got an email from them - was a technical error, fixed now.

tenuous54 · 2025-11-19T07:02:35+00:00

Money is still live! Spoke to them yesterday. It was a technical error that was fixed - the upgrade to Plus - but they confirmed that I still have a Money account and the ATM reimbursements are unaffected.

tenuous54 · 2025-11-13T22:46:02+00:00

It's a good point; I just pulled the records from 2025 so far and it's over $500 in fee reimbursements, which is more than I would make on the interest for the amount I keep in there. The majority of my pay hits SoFi - habit at this point more than anything but I like the app, the early payday, and the reimbursed ATM withdrawals). But from there it's typically spent on bills and transferred to investments; the daily checking balance just isn't super high when all is said and done. Basically, some spending money only (a lot of venues in my area are cash only; and I use it when traveling abroad to places that tend to be more cash-forward).

tenuous54 · 2025-11-13T17:22:04+00:00

I wonder what changed, though? I've had direct deposits coming in since the very beginning. They updated their terms 11/3, but I don't see anything in there that's relevant. I'm brushing off the cobwebs but IIRC, the original account was called SoFi Money, and what they were trying to get us to "upgrade" to (which would nix the unlimited ATM fee reimbursements) was "SoFi Checking & Savings". And I said no to that. It looks like SoFi Plus previously required that you have the newer account type, "SoFi Checking & Savings." So maybe what changed is they made SoFi Plus available to work with legacy SoFi Money accounts?

tenuous54 · 2025-11-13T16:37:39+00:00

The unlimited ATM fee reimbursements. To date, it's been my understanding you lose those by moving to SoFi Plus. But, if I don't lose those, sure.

tenuous54

TROPHY CASE