CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  28 September 2009 : by John Buckham   (South Africa)

LHR-IAH-DCA. After regularly flying in the Middle East and to Asia and Africa I was annoyed to pay for alcoholic drinks on a long haul flight. Seats had limited recline and inflight entertainment was not the best. Food average and Gluten free meal ordered did not arrive. Staff pleasant but not the cosmopolitan youth of some of the carriers I usually use.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  24 September 2009 : by Nick Fisher   (UK)

LAS-EWR. Bag drop efficient and friendly, security line long but not brutal. Got an exit row seat by checking on online as soon as it opened, very happy with the legroom. Cabin crew pleasant and efficient, didn't bother with IFE as dozing most of the way.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  15 September 2009 : by Ambrose Chu   (USA)

EWR-HKG roundtrip. EWR-YOW (Ottawa) one-way. They offered the best deal to get to Hong Kong. Newark to Hong Kong I felt a little cramped, but it's Economy class. The entertainment was the best I have gotten on a US airline. The food was okay. The staff at the Continental desk at Chek Lap Kok airport were really nice. For my connecting flight to Ottawa, when I booked the ticket, I was supposed to wait until 9:00 pm after arriving from Hong Kong at around 3:00 PM. Instead of waiting 6 hours in Newark for the flight, I headed for the Continental desk and told them that I want to get bumped up to an earlier flight to Ottawa. The lady at the desk was willing to help me get to Ottawa ASAP. Fortunately, the earlier 3:40ish flight to Ottawa was delayed by an hour, and there was a seat available, and I was able to get an earlier flight. I would definitely consider flying Continental again for trips to Hong Kong. Continental is possibly the best US airline for international flights. As for domestic and Canadian flights, they need to reduce the number of delays and find a way to reduce the delay time to 15 minutes maximum.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  10 September 2009 : by C Ahluwalia   (USA)

Newark- Bermuda. Lounge at Newark has a decent self service continental breakfast with nice views of the airport. We made it to the gate with 30 mins to take off and were advised that our luggage was about to be removed before being allowed to board - a tad harsh and unnecessary. The crew were most friendly and did several drink runs and offered muffins until they were finished- a nice touch. The flight arrived on time and the luggage was delivered promptly with local ground staff helping passengers as needed. The return flight was much the same - friendly crew, several drink runs and the luggage was there waiting for us. Liked the fact that both planes were Boeing 737-800s and cabins were neat and tidy.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  8 September 2009 : by Iain Bagwell   (USA)

ATL-BRS via EWR. After leaving Atlanta 2 hours late (on a code shared Delta operated flight) it was always going to be touch and go to make my connection. It didn't help that we had an ATC delay while inbound which made the flight another 30 minutes late landing. We were told that because of the bad weather in EWR most connections would still be manageable, after rushing from one terminal to another I ran to the gate only to find that the door had been closed, this despite the monitors indicating the flight was delayed due to late inbound passengers. The gate agents seemed to take a lot of pleasure turning away 15 or so folks from this flight. To be fair a lot of this is out of the airlines hands, so although frustrating I can't blame continental. What I can blame Continental for is their apparent lack of any flexibility in reacting to these issues. At the customer service desk it took an hour to get rebooked the next morning into London in coach and not business as originally booked (3 hour drive from where I needed to be). After much deliberation I decided that it was not worth the effort of traveling and missing the event I was going for and so asked for a refund. It took 3 phone calls and perhaps 2 hours to finally get to speak to someone who actually understood that it was the airline at fault and not me. The first 2 calls had agents who would not budge and insist that as the ticket was not a refundable ticket they would only give an e credit and a change fee. This was not acceptable as it was not through personal choice that the first flight was late and the connection missed. Finally after spending a night in a pretty good hotel (paid by Continental) I spoke to someone who understood the problem and agreed to refund the cost less about $100 and rebooked me on a flight back to Atlanta in 1st class, where I started the trip 24 hours earlier. Based on this experience it is difficult to say if I would fly with Continental again as the main issue was certainly out of their hands, but they could certainly improve their customer service and have a policy in place for giving refunds when flights and connections are missed due to events out of anyone's control.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  8 September 2009 : by R Marsh   (UK)

LHR-IAH-SJO returning via EWR. LHR-IAH and EWR-LHR I was pleased with the selection of movies on demand, TV shows, games, music etc. The seats were comfortable and crew personable. The food was what I would expect from a US carrier, plain and for the most part not great. The smaller flights 5h flight from San Jose to Newark was disappointing as the 737-800 didn't have any form of inflight entertainment and only 1 drink service was provided.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  27 August 2009 : by J Jablonski   (USA)

LAS-IAH-CUN-IAH-LAS. LAS-IAH was a short red-eye, beverages and nuts served. Went to President's Club Lounge in Houston. Continental breakfast and limited bar offered. Cancun leg a pleasant surprise. In spite of flight only being less than 2 hours, full breakfast was offered. We initially laughed at the cereal choice (which we chose because we are vegetarians), to have a huge bowl arrive with banana, yogurt and separate fruit bowl. Warm and delicious cinnamon rolls were handed out towards the end of the meal. On return, no choice, hot sandwich served. Vegetable soup had bacon (not good for vegetarians), but we enjoyed salad and dessert. Great service for 1 hr. 55 mins flight. On return, nuts & drinks due to later hour, felt more could have been served. Overall, good experience. DirecTV on two legs, did not work from Mexico until we were less than 1 hour from U.S.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  10 August 2009 : by A Gurevich   (USA)

Air Micronesia/Continental, Guam - Honolulu, BusinessFirst, B767-400. Check-in and security clearance expeditious, and the President's Lounge adequate, with a reasonable though limited selection of fast food type items. The cabin configuration was 2-1-2, and seats were like those in Business Class on a three cabin international carrier prior to the advent of the angled-flat bed seat. To me this older seat is preferable to the newer seats, and was quite comfortable for the 7.5 hour flight - seat pitch was generous. The one drawback to the flight was the entertainment system which was archaic. There were individual screens at each seat, but films available were only those shown in coach as well. The 5 or 6 channels all began at the same time, and repeated perhaps three times during the flight. There was no AVOD. On this long a flight having so few choices, and most of them tuned to a very low denominator was a real disappointment.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  10 August 2009 : by B Martin   (UK)

Business/First BHX-EWR. From the moment we stepped up to the check in desk until we disembarked at Newark nothing was to much trouble. I was pleasantly surprised that the Continental service was on a par and in certain aspects better than Emirates.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  8 August 2009 : by James Burke   (Canada)

YYZ-CLE-MCI. Flight time worked better than Air Canada, and was cheaper than Star Alliance 2nd choice United. Both flights operated by ExpressJet with Emb 145s. Flight left Toronto on time, and was at about 50% capacity. Arrived in Cleveland a bit early. Connection left for KC on time and arrived on time. I really enjoyed the ER4 - the 1-2 seating arrangement makes a small plane comfortable, particularly if you are on the side with one seat. Cleveland is a good place to connect. Perhaps once they officially join Star Alliance they will move to T1 at Pearson, but currently they are in T3, which is maybe the worst place on earth.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  7 August 2009 : by E Lowe   (USA)

MCR-EWR-IAH-UIO, UIO-IAH-MCO Economy class. Check in without problems, all flights on time. MCR to EWR was the only one to have seatback TVs. You could select a film at any time but there was no pause/rewind etc. Food was fairly inedible. Friend had a vegetarian meal confirmed on 2 of the flights but it never appeared. Came round with free drinks on a regular basis. All other flights were good giving drinks but food supplied was poor and little. Seats on most flights a bit hard, but fair amount of room. Flight attendants mixed.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  2 August 2009 : by A Gibson   (USA)

GVA-EWR: BusinessFirst. BusinessFirst service is comparable to a "good" Premium Economy service rather than a true "Business" class service and anyone used to flying a European airline in Business will be sorely disappointed by Continental's product (no beds, quite old fashioned seats with limited recline and a very poor Entertainment system). Check in was smooth and we boarded on time; the flight attendant handling rows A/B was either very overwhelmed or just very poor with the customer service, as she was flustered or rude most of the flight. I had no headphones and had to ask 3 times before she finally brought them to me, clearly annoyed by my pressing the button 3 times (which I would not have had to do if she brought them in the first place). She took so long to bring them that I missed the start of the movies, which are on a "loop" and over no opportunity to pause/rewind etc. The food and beverage service was adequate, although the fish dish is the same one CO has been serving for at least 3 years now - it's a standing joke among my friends that the world's supply of Halibut must be endangered by now since it's all CO ever offers up (exact same menu even). Flight attendants disappeared behind the curtain for most of the flight and seemed irritated by passengers asking or anything. My main gripe is that at the start of every CO flight, they show the same tired old "welcome aboard" by the airline's Chairman, which goes on to smugly announce his airline is the best in the industry with the finest crew. It is simply and patently not the case and it's irritating that this bag of wind blows his own trumpet so loudly when the product he is dishing out is clearly not up to par. CO has slipped behind a lot on the Business Class product as a whole- if the fares weren't so low, I would definitely switch.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  30 July 2009 : by C Timmer   (Netherlands)

AMS-Newark- San Jose and return. No real food on any of the flights (8 hours from AMS- Newark!) - a soggy, lukewarm sandwich. Cabin crew had no manners, very unhelpful and were very unhappy to work there. They barely came round with drinks. When I pushed the button for assistance, the FA showed up after 20 minutes, I asked if I could have some water, the FA looked around at the other seats and said in a very rude manner "anyone else need anything, I'm not going to walk back for one glass of water". The other passengers were quite shocked with her behavior. Extremely poor inflight entertainment. The plane was dirty. Seats were very tight and no footrests. Newark to San Jose was more than an hour delayed, due to the fact that the flight was packed with families visiting their relatives, they all had two or more bags per person. Of course there wasn't enough room in the overhead cabins for all the luggage. But did the cabin crew give any help or try to maintain any order? No, they just stood there, shouting over the AV that everybody had to sit down and they were not going to leave until everybody was seated. In the end everybody did sit down with bags shattered everywhere. I have never experienced this. I will never again fly with them. Their CEO who insists on telling us on every flight how great they are - I guess he has never flown Continental Airlines.