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.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  20 July 2009 : by M Simon   (UK)

Newark-LHR. Check-in took ages, owing to insufficient desks for volume of international flights. Constant queue combing to alleviate pressure just added to the wait. We would have liked to and happily paid for an upgrade from our coach class, but, unlike Virgin, there was no opportunity to book on the spot, so clearly they're missing out on getting extra $$. Finally got to the desk, and told that despite booking 6 months ago all our 3 tickets apart. We have a 6yr old son, so this just adds to our consternation. The clerk advises "the computer" cannot get even 2 together, yet when we do get on the plane there are the odd few empty single seats - some computer. We asked for veggie meals, yet there are none to be found - just chicken and burgers for the 2 meals. Just before landing the steward hands round bars of chocolate here and there at whim - nice touch, not that we wanted it, but by leaving out said 6 yr old son this just upsets him. Thanks for the aggravation. These are minor gripes, but I mention them because there is a "personal" in-flight message from the CEO telling us what a wonderful experience we about to have. Sorry, buddy, don't need your smug message, just get in line and see for yourself.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  20 July 2009 : by P Elson   (UK)

Heathrow-Houston-Cancun and Cancun-Newark-Heathrow. Check in at Heathrow 2.5 hours before the flight - fast and helpful but husband, myself and 10 year old son all split up so the check in desk helped to seat my child with me. Luggage transferred to Cancan flight from Houston, flight was empty so we sat together - stewards and stewardesses were polite and friendly. Return flight Newark to Heathrow 2 weeks later was the opposite - overbooked, angry customers - once again we were all split up and this time there was no help, just rudeness (told we had good seats). Thankfully my 10 year old coped with it but what if I had been travelling with a 4 year old? Strangely enough it seemed that all the couples were seated together but they can't seat even 1 parent with their child! Lets be honest this is not a child friendly airline.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  20 July 2009 : by Simon Craimer   (USA)

EWR-MCO-EWR. ravelled with wife and four children under seven including a one year old! Elite check in a breeze, helpful check in staff. Entertainment on 757-200 is outstanding with an updated AVOD system which now has 40 movies and more tv series than before. Onboard crew were extremely helpful and great with the kids. I was dreading these flights because of the ages of my children but Continental came thru.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES customer review :  5 July 2009 : by D Joyce   (Australia)

A hellish experience. Arrived LAX with 1hr 45 mins to connect to Houston. After 1hr in customs, checked bags with 49mins to flight. The inattentive check-in staff made no comment about any time urgency, nor offered assistance to get through security to gate. We made it to gate 10 minutes before flight to discover it closed with a message scrolling that we had to be there 20 minutes before flight time. No one told us previously, and this was the only time we saw this with 5 subsequent Continental flights. 3 other Continental "customers" also fell foul of this trickery. We then entered the airline standby merry-go-round, with up to 8 other people trying to get to Houston. The airport staff seemed not to care about our situation at all, obviously as the airlines policy of overbooking flights meant our plight was common. We missed our connection to Mexico, this costing us a day and a half in airports with the expense of the meals and a hotel stay. When we finally arrived at our destination in Mexico after 4 days travel, we found our luggage had gone to Mexico city, despite staff assuring us several times that it would not board a plane until we did. We were told we would have it the following day. When it arrived the day after that, the pull up handle was broken. Needless to say, we had no official sympathy from the airline, merely some staff empathy as we travelling to attend a family funeral. No official assistance.

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES review :  3 July 2009 : by Jonathan Earnshaw   (UK)

MAN-EWR-TPA-EWR-MAN. Checked in quickly at Manchester, fast-lane access and in the lounge in minutes. Welcomed warmly on board, Business Class was only half full, drinks provided before take-off. Amenity kit, newspapers and meal and drink orders taken before departure. Inflight, very personalised service - brunch tasty and good. Warm cookies, drinks and snacks provided throughout the flight. Ahead of arrival, a warm chicken and cheese sandwich with fresh fruit and chocolates. Transfer at Newark slightly long, but on board my flight to Tampa on time and airborne quickly - drinks and pretzels provided which seems little for a 3hr scheduled flight. Returning a few days later, a full meal was served from Tampa to Newark. Flight from EWR delayed by an hour due to weather, crew very friendly and excellent supper service provided.