Untied Airlines

AN EVIL ALLIANCE MEMBER

(This is not the website of United Airlines)

Untied Airlines is proud to have no relation to United Airlines, which is not responsible for the contents of this web site, apart from providing the poor service that led to all of these complaints.

If you work for United and are upset at me for criticizing your company, please realize that I am not trying to disparage you, personally. I have no doubt that many of the employee-owners of United are professionals with a high degree of integrity. I have enjoyed corresponding with several of you, who share my belief that as passengers, we deserve better treatment from your company than we have received. In addition, I appreciate the employee perspective that you bring to the discussion.

If you have some comments to make regarding any of the material on my web site, or any information to provide concerning the passengers' reports, I will make every attempt to be fair. I have appended such comments where relevant and removed entire reports that were reasonably disputed by a UAL representative.

As a simple suggestion, perhaps United could set up its own version of these web pages, soliciting customer's complaints and responding to them adequately, in a timely manner, on-line. If your company addressed the concerns of its customers in a more satisfactory manner than it has in the past, then there would be no need for my own web pages.

If you're one of those Chicago heavyweights, please note the following:

If you have a legal objection to something on my web site, please inform me (as opposed to, for example, the University of Toronto), and I will be happy to discuss it with you.

Rather than sending me letters containing legal threats, signed by someone who no longer works for United Airlines, perhaps you could have an actual lawyer or current employee sign. Also, please use a spell-checker.

Contrary to your assertions, I had, as of early February 1997, complied with the request to remove United's trademarks and logos from my web pages (even though this request was never made directly to me). To the best of my knowledge, United does not own a trademark for "UNTIED AIRLINES" nor the phrase "The most unfriendly Skies," although I am finding the two terms showing up with increasing frequency in your own on-line materials!

While I do not presume to have any legal training, it seems quite obvious that the U.S. Trademark Dilution Law exempts my web site. To quote:

In response to legitimate First Amendment concerns, the new law expressly exempts certain uses of a famous mark, in particular:
(1) "fair use" of a mark in the context of comparative commercial advertising or promotion;
(2) non-commercial uses, such as parody, satire and editorial commentary; and
(3) all forms of news reporting and news commentary.

In case it wasn't overly clear to you in the past, my play on the United name as well as the concept of "Unfriendly Skies" is parody! (Of course, the sad fact is that for many of us, it's also reality.)

Finally, my web site is not a business, even though my individual record (during the first year this site was operational) for replying to related letters seems to be more successful than United Airlines' entire so-called "customer relations" department.