Not even free text but only allowing a limited set of answers via dropdown menus (most of the provided answers don't apply to me either, so it's both insecure for them and hard for me to remember as well)
I tweeted at them about this when those dropdown answers came out and they actually responded to me, but never took action to change things.
The official United response on FlyerTalk (linked from the Slate article) is naïve to say the least:
> We purposely chose to use preregistered answers as our first form of enhanced authentication to protect against this keystroke logging. We need to ensure that all of our customers have a high degree of security and our research also indicated that some customers had self-entered security answers that would be very easy to guess.
Not even free text but only allowing a limited set of answers via dropdown menus (most of the provided answers don't apply to me either, so it's both insecure for them and hard for me to remember as well)