That all sounds scarily familiar. I’ve always imagined the Soviet Block as being a whole economy run by the same people who are in charge of airlines.
Except that I thought that the situation in the airlines came about from deregulation, the free market at work, less government intervention and all that?
Obsidian, that sounds like laziness on the part of the airline not to accommodate you based on your obvious disability. It does take some effort to shuffle seats around and enter the changes in the computer system to update the passenger manifest. I wonder if you could’ve lodged a complaint with the airline and the FAA based on violation of the ADA.
As I’ve posted before, I often fly alone with my four-year-old. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to ask to have seats re-assigned because we were somehow separated; more than a few agents gave me a “so what?” attitude. Yeah, lady, like you’d want your kids to sit next to a total stranger. I’ve had to take this to supervisors, who are usually happy to make the necessary changes, if only to head off what has the potential to be a nasty situation.
This past June, I had the privilege (heh) of flying AirTran on the day that the FAA’s computer went down and there were storms in the Northeast causing massive delays and cancellations. Many, many people in the terminal had to make last-minute arrangements to get to their destinations to be able to attend weddings, graduations and so forth, and AirTran did their best not to cooperate. One family had to find an immediate flight to Seattle to catch a cruise ship that left at four the next afternoon, with or without them. There were also no provisions made for food and many, if not all, of the restaurants in that terminal were closed, adding physical hunger to the passengers’ already lousy mood. Fun times.
Robin
I refuse to fly if I can drive to my destination. Last year my brother’s family and I drove from California to Oklahoma to visit my dad instead of flying there. We all agreed we would rather take several days to drive there then have to deal with airports. Now granted we all do like driving and enjoying the scenery and stopping at interesting places along the way which we did.
I’ve only flown a few times and all but one sucked donkey teets.
The good flight was back when I was in high school my brother and I flew to Texas to visit my dad. Everything was perfect there and back. I forget which airline it was.
The next time I flew was to go to Hawaii for my honeymoon with my ex. He had to fly from San Diego to L.A. The flight got delayed but we made it to LA with 5 minutes to spare to run across the airport and check in. We made it and boarded the flight. The flight was full except for three open seats that were no where near each other. We go to our seats and I tell the people in our seats that they are in the wrongs seats and they say well other people took our seats so we took these. I tell them well then go tell the people who took your seats to move. Before they answer a flight attentdent comes over and tells us to take a seat and I tell her that these people are in our seats and she she says, “well we need to take off so take those seats over there.” She pointed at one empty seat. I told her we just got married four days ago and we would like to sit together and she said we could either take the seats over there, again pointing to one seat or we could leave the plane and catch the next one. So on our way to our honeymoon we sat at opposite ends of the plane.
On the flight back from Hawii we were taking a red eye. And apparantly the Maui airport has a policy that after midnight only two people may work at the airport. One person to check everyone in and the other to do every other job. Every flight was delayed becuase they said they were understaff and just couldn’t get people boarded fast enough. So they lined us up in order of flight take off time and the people who were supposed to be boarded ten minutes ago were at the front of the line and so on. Well we got there an hour early and were put at the back of the line. Two hours later we finally got to check in and head to the gate. We get boarded and wait for an hour due to mechanical difficulties. We are then deplaned for another hour and a half. We get to board agian and then finally take off. So when we land in LA we had missed our connector back to San Diego. Luckily they had another one 5 hours later. Fuck it we said. So we rented a rental car and drove the 2 hours back to San Diego.
The next flight was one way from Phoenix to San Diego. My ex-wife and I got flagged because it was a way one trip. We drove with her family to visit family out there but we needed to come back home before everyone else so we flew back instead of driving back with everyone else. We got the fun search, taking off our shoes, them going through our luggage and a gabillion questions on why we were only flying on a one-way ticket. Ok not too bad. Then our flight gets delayed for a couple of hours. Ok not too bad. Then it gets canceled. We had to wait until the next morning which was a Monday. So I had to use more vacation time because of the flight. That annoyed the hell out of me but the next morning we got home.
And that last flight was six years ago and I haven’t flown since. I’ve driven to Oklahoma to see my dad twice since then and I’ve driven to Vegas twice and I’ve driven to San Fransisco once. The only time I’ll fly again is if I need to fly overseas, not very likely, or if I need to go farther away than Oklahoma which is also not very likely since the farthest family from me is in Oklahoma. Most of my family is here in southern California
You know, I was too stupefied to even think about that. Also, since I’m normally able bodied, I don’t immediatly think ADA.
Some things never change, though. None of this is new, now that I’m thinking about it. Once, on a flight from Orlando to NY, Continental screwed up my family’s seats, scattering my parents, me (8) and my sister (18months) all over the plane. The agent basically said “too bad”. My mom says she remembers holding my sister up and saying, “You understand this is a baby, right?”
Add me to the list (what, it’s at about 2-3 now?) of people who like United and O’Hare (or as my co-workers and I call it, “The ORD”).
The one thing that ORD has going for it (besides the incredible people-watching opportunities!) is the relative abundance of flights. If you miss yours (for whatever reason), it’s fairly likely you can catch a later one. I make it a point to never book the last direct flight on an evening, but I’m paranoid.
I’ve had one bad experience with United, and it was weather-related. O’Hare can be overwhelming for a newbie, but read the signs, don’t be afraid to ask opinions of your fellow travellers (seriously…we’re all friendly in Chicago…stay away from the flights to Newark and LaGuardia!).
The situation you went through stunk, no doubt.
-Cem
I might get loads of people pissed at me because of this, but personally I dislike all American airlines (not AA, but the general term). Why? The food sucks the people are rude and the flight attendants are bitches/assholes. Especially the stewardesses. I feel like i’m in preschool all over again. Maybe my positive experiences on Lufthansa and BA and other European national airlines were a fluke, but for transatlantic flights I always choose one of the European carriers. There are usually TV screens, etc. I remember a flight from Copenhagen to Newark on Continental (I think) where they served hoagies and there were no inflight TV screens and the plane was something you’d normally see on internal US flights (one aisle down the middle with three seats on each side.
I think this has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of the flight attendants in Europe haven’t been doing it for 15 years.
I hate them ALL. The last time my (almost) husband and I flew, we were the last two people allowed on the plane. Why? Because they had overbooked the flight, and just barely got us on. We bought our tickets MONTHS in advance. The flight was delayed and shit happens but “I’m sorry sir/madam but we overbooked your flight and you are probably fucked and there’s nothing you can do about it, or even could have done to prevent it” bullshit pisses me right the fuck off. What the fuck do you mean the seat I bought and paid for months in advance is taken by someone else?!? What other industry gets away with selling you something and then giving you something other than what you paid for? (Don’t answer that, I don’t want to know.)
If the plane is overbooked, they should notify everyone who has a ticket for that flight. That way, instead of standing there at the gate with your luggage checked and with no prior notice being informed that you can “volunteer” to give up your (non-existent) seat and spend the night in a hotel or get fucked, people could actually volunteer their seats in advance, extend their hotel stay or whatever ahead of time and NOT be left standing there with their dick in their hands having to scramble at the last minute.
I’ve been ruminating on this for years, not that I’ve gotten very far. Mind if I discuss this a bit further?
My assumption is that most people want to fly nonstop as much as possible, and that a hub that’s not a destination for anyone just won’t fly, so to speak. Which would explain why Rockford (65 miles from I-94, and 80 miles from downtown Chicago) doesn’t get any major airline traffic, but damned if I can make sense of Gary. You’d think that with O’Hare’s and Midway’s takeoff/landing slots filled to the gills, somebody would look at Gary Regional as a potential goldmine. And where there’s money to be made, it’s hard to imagine that politics will stand in the way for very long.
Blaming it on the airlines doesn’t make sense to me, because anytime business is on the upswing, there’s going to be someone who’d like a bunch more takeoff/landing slots in the Chicago area. Plus, an underused airport like Gary that’s on the edge of one of our biggest cities, is an ideal place for the next start-up airline to use as its hub. And for a mature industry, the airline biz is uncommonly easy to break into.
I thought it started under Carter, but I could be wrong. (Deregulation of the airwaves, OTOH, was all Reagan, but that’s another story entirely.)
At any rate, I’m not going to piss on airline deregulation. Adjusted for inflation, air travel today is a tremendous bargain, compared to 30 years ago, on the vast majority of routes.
Truer words were never spoken.
I was a travel agent for 25 years, and during all that time, Denver was my nemesis. If it involved Denver, at any point, I kept the lube ready.
I’d sail through O’Hare. Never encountered trouble at Atlanta. New York/Jersey airports? A breeze.
Denver? Like going to jail, only with fucking Harry Krishnas.
United Airlines wasn’t very nice to the OP, but (non)service like that occurs way too often with all of the legacy carriers. Bastards.
The only problem the OP has is that he actually got some money out of 'em. If they had totally hosed him monetarily, the local news might have taken an interest, but probably not now.
Sorry your trip was screwed, dude.
They do.
I’ve been on flights where they’ve started of a sort of reverse auction, like this:
“We have an oversold flight. This flight will not leave until five people have made other flight arrangements. I can offer $100 and a next flight guarantee to anyone who will change to a later flight.”
(Two takers, and they do the ticket exchange switcheroo at the counter.)
“OK…$150.00”
(Two more takers)
“$200.00.”
(Several hands go up, but only one gets the offer.)
I’ve taken advantage of those myself. A couple hours difference in arrival time, plus a free ticket and some bucks…works for me.
Internet access. Cable companies especially are really bad about overselling their bandwidth capacity.
May I just say: Southwest Airlines. We’ve flown them several times lately and they’ve always been incredibly nice and helpful, and have actual legroom on their (pretty and new) planes. It’s a cinch to buy and change your ticket online (and they don’t charge you hundreds of dollars if you need to change your flight–they charge nothing at all, in fact). Don’t get me started on my experience trying to change a flight with American. I was ready to strangle someone before I even manged to get through their voice recognition phone system.
We ended up flying United about a month ago. Nothing terrible happened, just a few hours delay (in O’hare–ugh) which didn’t really matter to us but probably inconvienced others, but when we got on the plane I could barely squeeze into the seat because the legroom was so lacking. And I’m 5’2". We won’t be flying United again, particularly after reading the OP’s horror story. What assholes.
Ah yes like that time that everybody in the first leg of my Philly-Paris-Barcelona flight got moved to Philly-Newark-Madrid-Barcelona (and from there to Paris if that had been your original destination, you can imagine what the guys from Lyon were saying), which left three hours earlier and isn’t it a good thing I’d arrived over 5 hours early because otherwise I had to pay for an extra night? They had called my mother. In Spain. Someone who only spoke English. Out of three phone numbers they had, they go and pick my mother’s… and with two people there who spoke Spanish (one of them native), they don’t think to have one of them make that call. The airline was American and I wasn’t allowed to change my destination to Madrid, which is the same distance from my actual destination as Barcelona and I would have been home 3 hours earlier.
Just to add, United (and to a lesser extend American) get screwed, fairly or unfairly, because of Chicago/Illinois politics. The runways at O’hare are poorly designed and can’t handle the traffic when there is any sort of issue, such as weather. The politicians have to throw their weight around and the mayor of Chicago freaks out about any airport in the area that isn’t in the city (and thus under his control) so they are doing a slow and messy expansion of O’hare that will leave it better but still behind the times when it is complete.
But it’ll be in Chicago. :rolleyes:
I’ve had good and bad experiences with many of the airlines listed here, but what really irks me about United is their “If you want to have actual room for your legs, why not pay an extra $80 to sit in the part of the plane with more than 4 inches between seats” business model they’ve started recently. I was on a plane a few months ago in which all the seats in front of the emergency exit row were EMPTY - as in, NOBODY was sitting in them, and every seat behind the emergency exit row (you know, steerage) was filled with an adult. Even after the plane took off, the flight attendants wouldn’t allow people to move into the empty seats without paying the extra money. Aren’t seats on planes generally considered an expiring commodity, like hotel rooms? I mean, if they didn’t sell those seats (for the low, low price of an extra $80 on top of whatever people already paid) before the plane took off, they pretty much lost the chance to charge more. I really hate it that they scrunched up steerage and make people pay to be able to fit their legs between the seats. Either charge a little extra for tickets and take a row out so everyone is more comfortable, or allow people to spread out once the plane’s taken off. It’s not like most people regularly carry around $80 in cash to upgrade once they’re already on the plane.
I am so a fan of Frontier and Southwest and JetBlue. The older carriers are just shooting themselves in the foot when they make conditions worse or treat passengers like crap - for every person who has a story like the OP’s, that’s another passenger more likely to fly on one of the low-cost carriers that actually have leg room and good customer service.
Virgin asked me about that last week. I was thisclose to asking if they would decrease my fair, since I was a big, strong lad with training in first aid, CPR and AED usage.
To join the chorus, the airlines I’ve had fewest problems with are Southwest and Alaskan Air.
With those two, when something unfortunate happened (shitty weather, lost baggage, overbooking, what-have-you), at least the customer service was good. The people were friendly and as helpful as possible and as much information as the people had was passed on promptly and accurately.
Delays and cancelled flights happen sometimes, through no fault of anyone’s. If I get unlucky in the “Have A Tranquil Flight” sweepstakes, I tend to be philosophical about it once the immediate acute frustration wears off. Howsoever, if I get unlucky in the sweepstakes and then receive shitty customer service from the airline, that’s when I get pissed off. There’s no excuse for poor customer service.
Yes. But I don’t recommend Xanax and alcohol! So pick one or the other. My last United (Ted) flight was actually very nice, though. Go figure. It’s currently American that’s at the top of my Airline Shit List. And of all the airlines I’ve flown, my favorite so far has been Frontier. But I’m sure someone else has a horror story about them…