Hey, that’s MY job!
“The 15 largest U.S. airlines posted an on-time arrival rate of 83.7 percent, the highest rate since the agency began collecting comparable data in 1995. The previous high was 82.8 percent in the first half of 2003.”
Sadly, last I checked they still weren’t at my two local airports (LGA, JFK) though I think they are trying to get some slots at LGA.
It’s gotten so bad, I’ve found alternatives. I got out of going to a conference that I’d have to fly to, and found a similar one that’s a calm, easy one-day’s drive away.
And our family took our usual trip to Seattle (far enough that we’ve always flown), but by train! A lot more fun, no stress…
… and no body scan/frisking.
United and American are two of the main airlines I fly, and they haven’t had a great record recently. United’s on time arrival rate was a mere 64 per cent in July. Although it’s come up, in September it was 80 per cent, still below the industry average. American Airlines on time arrival rate was a ridiculous 59 per cent in September.
It doesn’t really matter to me that Hawaiian Airlines, Alaska Airlanes, and AirTran Airways might be pulling the average up, if the airlines I actually fly on have an abysmal on time performance.
That’s too bad. I’d guess they don’t want to pay the prices for operating at those airports.
ETA: I just checked to see if Southwest was operating out of Westchester. They aren’t, but they show routes out of LaGuardia.
The last time I flew United (over the summer), our flight was delayed after we had all boarded because the airline had had a computer glitch and sold five seats twice. Ten people, all with valid boarding passes, for half that number of seats. It was a lot of fun for the flight attendants.
I remember reading about them trying to get billets. I guess they succeeded. I’m right between LGA and JFK…if you drew a straight line between the two I’d be near the halfway point. Southwest flies out of Newark, but that’s not convenient. Neither are Westchester nor Islip. Next time I fly domestic, I’ll have to check them out. (Which makes me realize that its been a couple of years since I went somewhere in the US I had to fly to (shuttle flights excluded). My hatred of the TSA and the airlines has me planning vacations I can drive to or international travel.
So I did finally make it home. About 6 hours late, but I made it.
I understand that weather happens, and messes up the schedule sometimes. However when one employee slams a door in my face, and another flat out lies to me to get me to go away because their coffee breaks are more important than the problems of a traveller stuck 2000 miles from home, I get annoyed.
And since I missed the connection in Chicago, I lost my seat in economy plus, and they were being difficult about refunding the price difference. I won’t know if they actually did until I check my credit card balance. I couldn’t get a straight answer out of the gate agent. To give the gate agent her due, she was dealing with about 30 other people who were just as upset as I was.
So maybe United should look into their staffing levels? Their customer service left a lot to be desired yesterday. Just having a few extra people around would have helped considerably.
And then there was the screaming baby in the next seat. She cried all the way from RDU to Chicago. But then after we landed, she looked over at me and smiled. She was so cute I couldn’t stay mad. I think that must be the only reason they live to grow up.
By now all the airlines I depend on for my heavy travel have done it to me, so these days I make it a point to try and if viable, schedule myself at the destination no less than 12 hours before I actually need to be there, and keeping each layover above 2.5 hours, because it has become just so unpredictable. Last month I got to the airport already under advice of a 90-min delay, and upon tracking the system I realized the airplane that would serve that flight was still sitting on the ground in Florida so there was absolutely no way I’d be boarding in less than 3 hours. So why pretend it was still a 90 minute delay?
A lot of the aggravation would be, not reduced but at least mildly mitigated, by the carriers simply and plainly and promptly telling us** the truth** about how long are we really going to be delayed and why. Go ahead, we can take it, just a little transparency would go a long way. What? That then we’d know to call it off and switch plans? Well, bless your heart, isn’t that so?
I call it the “cuteness factor.” Prevents parents and others surrounding them from going crazy.
I’m flying out of RDU Thursday, with Delta though. Making me nervous, dude 
In May I had a US Airways flight that got stopped en route to Reagan because they “thought weather was too bad for the plane to land there and we had to refuel.” We ended up somewhere else in Virginia for a good forty minutes on the ground, then finally got clearance to fly out. It was clear in DC. The icing on the cake was that I was within 10 minutes of missing my next flight and had to take a damn bus all the way to the gate. Then I scrambled to get to the service desk. The kind man at the desk managed to help me catch another bus to the plane. Turns out it was the same damn plane I’d just gotten off of, or at least with the same flight attendant. The flight attendant and I laughed about it, but it was a little scary not knowing if I’d have a place to sleep that night.
As a corporate travel agent, I have to thank United Airlines, as their flight cancellations are keeping me employed. American has contributed a lot lately too, with their unofficial labor actions.
Another Southwest fan here. Fifteen years ago being no frills meant you were different from other airlines - no longer. I like SW because they have a rational pricing and boarding system. If you buy any but the very cheapest ticket you can rebook - very easily - with no fee. If you are ready 24 hours in advance you can get a low enough number to get a decent seat, our you can pay a small fee and get an even lower number. No charge for bags.
The business model of United, Delta and American is to pay attention to first class and squeeze every penny out of everyone else. The business model for SW is actually customer focused.
I flew from Austin to Oakland with stops in El Paso and LAX, so I got to see them turn the plane around. They were awesome.
20 years or so ago I flew United a lot and enjoyed it. Now I avoid them whenever possible. The major airlines don’t even pretend they care about coach passengers any more.
I had my own tiff with United in July. I booked round trip from LAX to Belize City and while there was a stop on the way to Belize in Texas, my flight back was non stop to LAX. Now, I had the choice of paying a little less and stopping in Texas coming home, but I decided the extra $50 or whatever it was would be money well spent in international travel.
One week before I leave, United calls me and unceremoniously tells me that the non stop flight had been cancelled and I would now be stopping in Texas when I come home. I explain to the woman on the phone that I specifically paid extra for non stop, so can I at least get a seat upgrade for my troubles-- after all, I’m a Mileage Plus member (their FF card)? No. She said, “No, we don’t do that. Sorry.” Meanwhile, I check online and all of the premium cabin seats and most of the First Class is wide open. Dicks. I shot an email to customer service about my displeasure only to receive no response.
Cut to the end of my lovely vacation in Belize. I’m at the tiny, dirty Belize airport and it’s announced that our flight to Texas is delayed because of bad weather in Texas. Three hours later, surrounded by screaming babies, it hit me: if I was going to LA and not fucking Texas, I would be on a plane right now.
Finally we board and get to Texas just in time for me to make my connection to LA (we had about 25 minutes). Except we find out that the flight to LA left early. . . and full, meaning they sold our seats. The gate agent handed us replacement tickets. . . for 7 PM Friday night (it was Thursday at 9 PM at this point). They also gave us some hotel voucher thing, but when I called, the only option was to pay $90 for the night (I say only option because we hadn’t eaten all day because the Belize airport shut down and now the Texas airport was closing, too-- we needed to eat). I went back to the counter and suddenly they “found” seats on a 7 am flight, so we got tickets for that and headed to the hotel.
Cherry on top? When I got my credit card bill, the hotel charged me $150 for the night. Hooray!
I emailed customer service at United again about this whole fiasco, but received no response. I started harassing them on Twitter, tagging them with the hashtag “Customer Service Fail” and that got their attention-- they followed me and direct messaged me that they would be in contact. A month went by. My harassment commenced again and soon there after I got a call from corporate.
The resolution? I got a whopping $75 credit with United and 750 miles added to my Mileage Card. Golly, thanks, United!
To further rub it in, here is how it used to be. When I was in college I flew to visit my roommate over Christmas, which was Boston -> Philadelphia -> Houston then a change to Corpus Christi. There was a rain delay in Philly so we got into Houston after our flight left. We got a voucher for a hotel room (in a nice hotel) and enough money for dinner that I bought an immense steak. No frequent flier, and as a student I didn’t have a lot of clout. Eastern used to serve you small but thick and tasty steaks in coach. Now I know things are cheaper now but I never remember the price of airfare being much of an issue, even when I paid for it myself in grad school.
Who would even want to work for an airline any more? I think the people who set the policy for customer service applied for torture jobs at Gitmo but got rejected for being too mean.
Oh yeah, the good old days. They lost my luggage once on a NY to LA flight and gave me two first class upgrades. I know people who just made up complaints to get vouchers. But those days, and most of those airlines, are now gone.
I’m guessing there’s a connection between these two sentences.
Is it just me, or are more people scamming businesses any way they can these days? Or has this been a universal, timeless thing?
There definitely is. In those days airlines advertised frills instead of low prices. It didn’t work out so well. I took a flight home from Miami on Eastern just before they closed down. The stews were on their last flight and passing out free bottles of wine and told people they could take the blankets home (like anyone wanted them 
). They were marginal businesses constantly hoping for the other guy to go out of business while the price of fuel and airport fees continually climbed. All while fighting the idea of airline regulation.
Timeless I’d say. But there are probably many more ways to scam now with the internet and the competition for customer satisfaction.
Apparently nobody here has heard of Untied.com. Yeah, I spelled that right.
I fly regularly on domestic flights in the US for business and personal travel. Maybe 5 flights per month on average, for the past 4 years.
I fly Southwest whenever I can. I have had one or two cancellations for weather, usually because of winter storms, but:
- they’ve never lost any of my checked bags (which they don’t charge for!)
- their flights frequently arrive early, and are hardly ever delayed
- they don’t charge a fee to change or cancel your flight
- their number-based boarding system, where you have a number and you line up according to your number, is much more orderly than the slow, disorganized, passive-aggressive shuffle towards the gate that the other airlines encourage (though I can imagine that a group of people traveling together would prefer having assigned seats).
If not for the hassle of dealing with parking and security, I would be perfectly happy with the past four years of flying Southwest.
The disadvantage of Southwest is that they are usually so efficient at scheduling and filling their planes that there are rarely any empty seats next to you.
On the other hand, my experiences with all the other major domestic US airlines have been uniformly bad. There’s a reason Southwest is pretty much the only one that reliably makes any money.
And their maintenance is actually quite good. The reason there have been a few stories about age-related problems on their planes is that they have a higher utilization rate and cycle count than other airlines (i.e. they use their planes more). Therefore, when Boeing miscalculates the fatigue lifetime of a given part, or makes a manufacturing error that causes it to fatigue earlier than predicted, Southwest is likely to be the first airline to encounter it.