I got to SFO two hours
early for my red eye back east. My plans were to
complete the
loop by returning to Norfolk to pick up my son who I had
deposited at his grandparents, and drive back to Raleigh
tomorrow.
The first thing I do when I get to a terminal is to check to see
if the plane is at the gate. If so, you generally will leave
on time. If not, there may be problems. I saw the
plane, so I was lulled into a false sense of security.
The problem this time wasn't the plane. It was the
pilot. He wouldn't be arriving for three hours. You
see, he was busy flying another plane... one that must have been
delayed due to weather in some other part of the country and
wouldn't make it here for another three hours.
At 12:30 in the morning options are limited. We all lined
up to make arrangements as we were all going to miss our
connections. And there was only one agent to help us.
All of us. A 757 full of missed connections. So I stood
in line for an hour.
Options are limited at 12:30 in the morning because all the
other flights had left. I would have had more options two
hours ago, and they should have been able to figure out that the
flight was going to be delayed back then, but if they did, they
didn't tell me.
Katie was wonderful. She was working past her shift.
Her relief hadn't arrived. She had a long line of problems to
deal with. She dealt with each of us cheerfully and
knowledgably. The couple in front of me were going to
Aruba. They had saved up for a vacation. Now they were
going to lose one full day out of the week they had planned.
There wasn't much that Katie could do for them. The wife
tried to ask for an upgrade. Katie replied that this wasn't
an option. They asked for somebody else they could talk
to. Katie was polite but firm - she wasn't going to pass the
buck. She assured them that if there was any way it could be
done, she would have done it. They seemed to believe
her. I certainly did.
There are three flights daily from
DFW to Norfolk. One
that I would miss. The next one was full. I had a
chance to make the last flight out. It would mean spending
the day in DFW - not something I relished. And getting into
Norfolk at close to midnight. I asked what other options I
had. She checked the morning flights through other
hubs. There didn't seem to be any better alternative.
So I asked what was the latest I could leave SFO to make the
flight. She seemed puzzled, but complied. There was a
flight at 12:11 pm that I could make. But she didn't
understand why that was better.
I asked to be put up in a hotel for the night. It seems
that when a flight is missed due to no fault of the passenger and
no reasonable alternative exists, the airline will pay for one
night at a hotel. I'll take a good night's sleep over a
zombie like existance due to sleep deprivation at DFW any
day.
Besides, there is generally better access to power sources and
the internet at a hotel.
She had to make a phone call to her supervisor. He
approved. Suddenly I had more options. The airline was
faced with real expense. Another call to the
supervisor. Would I accept a flight to Richmond instead and a
shuttle ride? I would get to my father in law's house by
three.
That beats a hotel room any day.
Air Travel Sucks. It simply amazes me what an incredibly lack of innovation and change has occurred in air travel in the past few decades. The concept of service has regressed to where its becoming an endangered species.
Managing an airline is one of those things that, on its face, seems simple. But don't underestimate the difficulty of large-scale logistics.
An airline depends on the carefully coordinated movement of aircraft around the country to keep flights happening on time. Heavy weather in Chicago or a pilot missing a flight in New York can cause problems to ripple throughout the network.
This is a very complicated problem to solve. take this complexity, and factor in one ticketing agent working overtime at 12:30 in the morning with 200 angry customers in line, and you can see that the ticketing agent might not be entirely focused on data mining.
Re. "when a flight is missed due to no fault of the passenger and no reasonable alternative exists, the airline will pay for one night at a hotel"
Two things to know: (a) the job of the customer service representative at the desk is to get you to sleep in the terminal and (b) they always will issue a voucher if you insist long enough. So when they start giving you trouble, begin repeating in a firm tone: "I'm not going to be unpleasant about this, but I'm not going to leave until I get a voucher. If you don't have the authority to issue a voucher, please let me speak to your supervisor." You might have to loop 20 or 30 times.
The airlines can always accommodate your needs, whatever they are, but usually involves the customer having to treat the representative like crap. More than once my plane has arrived late, the end result meaning I miss my connection, sometimes that can be a train.
When you miss a train connection, the airline claims no responsibility. The first time I grinned and beared it. Bought a new train ticket, arrived at 3:00am, etc. However, The second time I wasn't in the mood to deal with yet another airline problem. So after being told "no" by the head representitive of the airline (I went through about 3 levels), I called airport security down to the customer service desk, and demanded to speak with the person in charge of the terminal.
Turns out that although the airline's policy didn't require them to accommodate me, the airport policy did. He told the airline that they had to buy me a taxi to the final destination.
Update: I just got an e-mail from the airlines. At the bottom of the e-mail it says that the contents are copyrighted and that I am not allowed to reproduce it in any medium.
Suffice it to say that they have made an adjustment to my frequent flier miles that was totally unexpected and appreciated.
I'll never know if this was as a result of this weblog post.
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thank you
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