I tried to re-route my flight yesterday, to avoid Houston and Hurricane Ike, but you said the airport wouldn’t be closed on Sunday.
Amazingly, the airport will now be closed on Sunday.
You tell me that I can still fly in tomorrow morning, but I won’t be able to fly out until after the airport re-opens. For some reason, it’s okay to land planes during weather that is too dangerous to allow planes to take off.
Now, you are so swamped with problems re-routing customers that you aren’t even picking up the super secret inside phone line that the travel agents use. Your website gives me nothing but error messages. And, because I can’t get through to anyone, I can’t even get my money back from you to buy tickets with another airline.
You, Continental Airlines, define the word “Fail.”
Ugh, I hate Continental Airlines! The stranded me twice in July, leaving me alone in a strange city overnight and completely messing up my travel plans. No hotel voucher, no food, despite the fact that the problem was totally their fault and not weather related. When I sent an email asking them to look into this they said it was indeed weather related as there was a storm near Lexington, Kentucky that day. I flew from Toronto to Newark…so, yeah, that makes no sense.
Anyways, I wrote them a rude email, but they really don’t care, and I’m out an extra $300USD that I really couldn’t afford. Booo Continental!
I’d keep pushing towards the “higher ups” until you get some satisfaction. I realize that airlines can’t really be accountable for the weather, but they should still TRY to accomodate their customers, even if it’s some kind of weak gesture.
I would if I could. Their phone line hasn’t even been going through to the automated tree for the last 12 hours. It just says “We are unable to answer your call at this time.” Click.
What sucks more: I don’t have the money to do another option. My student loan monies won’t come through until Tuesday, even though the reason I’m traveling is due to school stuff. I used up the very last of my reserves staying not quite afloat for some other school travel earlier this summer. I even cashed out my meager IRA.
If I hadn’t bought the tickets, I could drive cross country. But, because I bought the tickets, I don’t have the cash to buy different tickets or drive.
You should check into the weather situation on that day, and see whether other airlines cancelled flights as well. If you can show that the “weather” problem was actually bogus, you might be able to do what this guy did.
I’ve often wondered about that. I’m sure they know what they are doing, I mean, you would think that they would want the fleet out of Houston if possible, at least to use in New York. Though maybe NYC and Houston have different fleets, without much crossing of the streams.
Continental is about the best US airline though, save Southwest. They have the newest fleet, as I recall, and the planes are all pretty nice. Unlike Delta, who will take you on a 10 hour cruise to South America on a 70’s cattle wagon. And don’t get me started on AA. They should have gave those shitty MD-80s to Air Albania a decade ago and written it off as charity.
I was assuming the hourly rate he got for the suit (938 / 4 = about $245) is half his regular hourly rate, so i took it to mean that his regular rate is about $500 an hour.
Alsaka- 8
Frontier 4.1
Jet Blue- ? (not on your site, which is odd, site seems pretty complete otherwise)
Thing is, I could swear I saw posters on the jetway in Houston claiming Coninental having the newest fleet in the country. If I’m remembering correctly, that’s a bullshit thing to claim; leaving out Alaska and Frontier and maybe Jet Blue. Frontier even flies international. It would be like saying "I’m the best looking guy here, except Bill, and Steve, and maybe Ryan. "
JetBlue comes in at 3.4 years. You’re also forgetting AirTran (4.8 years), and a few others I’d consider “big names,” though not legacies. If NW wanted to make the same claim, they could be just as fuzzy as Continental in drawing their selective line. “Newest fleet in the country! … oh, we didn’t count Continental’s.”
I have to say, that is awesome! I would love to just stick it to them somehow. Unfortunately, I am back in Canada and furthermore I have no idea how to find info on the weather that day, etc.
Both the gate agents and the guy I emailed were quite forthright that the problem was that the planes got messed up the day before due to bad weather in the southern US, and therefore there was no plane to send up to get us. Now, I understand that this could happen, but surely that is not *my *problem. I mean, they could use that excuse every single day of the year - there is always bad weather somewhere, right? Even in their customer service document it describes weather-related delays as occurring in the departure or destination city, not just any old city they feel like.
The bottom line is that they have you by the nuts at that point. What are you going to do? It makes me angry just thinking about it!
I hope you make it there somehow, Pullet.
