I hate airlines with a white hot passion

D

DeadHorse

1,000+ Posts
So, Mrs. Deadhorse and I went on our anniversary trip to S.F. this past week. We took Delta because we still had vouchers from when they hosed us last time.

We bought a 6 a.m. flight that left to connect through Atlanta. We had a 50 minute layover before catching the flight to SFO. We bought the 6 a.m. departure because the odds of a delay on a 6 a.m. flight are lower than a later one.

Guess what happened? Bingo. 30 minute delay. Despite that, we ran like OJ Simpson through ATL and managed to get to our departure gate 10 minutes before our 9:35 a.m. departure. However, the counter agent closed the door in our face and told us "rules are rules" and that the door has to shut 10 minutes before. (Funny, there's a sign at the Cincy airport that says it's 6 minutes before. They also held our return flight from SFO looking for someone named Floyd. I guess the rules are flexible.)

Anyway, the woman at the terminal said "It's not my responsibility to make sure you make your flight." We went to the complaint desk. That woman said "It's not my responsibility to make sure you make your flight. I can only put you on standby for the next flight at 1:50. Just in case, I'll book you on the 3:50 flight."

Fast forward to the 1:50 flight. It's been oversold by a whopping 15 seats and magically, the people who paid for the seats actually show up. One woman, who lived in ATL and had no connection, showed up 30 minutes prior to departure and they had already given her seat away. They managed to find enough people to take vouchers to get us on but then at the last minute, decided to fly them.

We told the gate agent our situation and he said "It's not my responsiblity to make sure you get to SFO. I'm sorry."

After much anger and loathing, we made our way to another terminal to catch the 3:50. Upon getting there, we came upon another gate agent. We damn near demanded that he produce us confirmed boarding passes for the 3:50. He said "It's not my responsbility. I'm working another flight right now."

I told him "I've heard 'It's not my responsibility' from about 10 people already today. Can you tell me whose responsibility it is to make sure I get on a flight that I paid for?" He kindly booked us on that flight. We got the last two confirmed seats on that flight that had been oversold by 14.

We finally got to SFO after a 7 hour delay in ATL. WTF?

My problems with the airlines are as follows. Can anyone tell me if I'm being unreasonable?

1. They oversell these flights on purpose. If I have 100 widgets at my business and I pre-sell 110, guess what? I get sued. It's called bait and switch. Can we not have a law outlawing oversells?

2. If I tell my customers "It's not my responsbility," I get fired and they start being someone else's customers.

3. It's the only industry to my knowledge that you have to pay in advance and the level of service is strictly up to the provider. If it goes wrong, refunds are not awarded, only vouchers. Can we not have set up where they put a hold on my credit card and only charge me if the flight leaves on time and my bags aren't lost?

4. (This is the TSA's fault.) Our entire security system is designed to prevent fuckheads with knives. It's a total waste of time and it's all for show.

5. Airports are getting overloaded because the airlines are overscheduling aiport space. Can we not put a stop to this? If you want to run a flight out of a busy airport at the busiest time, shouldn't you as an airline pay more "runway rent?" Is this unreasonable?

6. The airline industry execs are almost as bad as the ones from the auto industry. They sell out all of their product and are still losing money. Nice. They then want bailouts from Congress yet fight every effort to expand the train system in America, allow foreign carriers in, and/or improve customer rights.

7. This has yet to happen to me but I know if a flight is undersold and even if you've already paid for a seat on that flight, it's cancelled and you're lumped into another flight whether it's convenient for you or not. With some airlines, if you then try to change flights, they ding you with a fee.

Am I missing anything?
 
The only way to get around airline woes is to take the airline of the equation. If that doesn't fit your needs I don't believe there is a good solution to the problems of flying in the US.
 
they smell
they are crowded and cramped
the security is stupid (shall we just undress?)
expensive for the services rendered
late
tardy
uneven service in baggage claim timing and service
and the freaking airports are not even fun to go to anymore
 
I understand the OP's pain.

Still, putting together an itinerary that will melt down with a mere 30 minute delay is really daring the gods. Next time.
 
I agree w your post but the only thing to do is vote w your feet.

I will never fly Delta again, The vast majority of delays, oversolds, reroutes, and missed flights I have experienced have been with this company. Their costumer service people are invariably unhelpful and more often than not rude. **** Delta, and **** the ATL airport for that matter. If Delta is the only carrier into a place, I will not go to that place. I am almost to that point w Northwest, as they make up the remainder of my bad airline experiences, but they are the only carrier that flies to my in-laws hometown, and they are VERY generous with vouchers when they **** up (probably bc it happens so much). One more bad experience, though, and **** them, we'll fly into Minneapolis and rent a car.

This bad behavior will continue as long as customers put up with it. As far as leisure travelers costing airlines money, who gives a ****? They have still agreed to provide a service for X amt of dollars. If you can't make money at the price offered, raise your price or stop offering the service.

I think a big problem here is the frequent flyer programs. People feel obligated to stick with one carrier despite ****** service in order to build miles. If you fly alot, get an AMEX, you can use your points for miles on any carrier, so you have more flexibility. Also, try to go nonstop if at all possible, even if it costs more.

Oh,and if I didn't mention it, **** Delta

As far as security, I don't know why airports and TSA haven't come up w express/vip check-in for security. I bet a lot of people would pay 50 bucks, hell maybe 100, not to have to go through the cattle shoot. These lines would be shorter so you could actually screen these passengers more thoroughly and still more quickly. The airport could clean up, and the govt could take a nice cut.
 
As far as the short turnaround time, Delta only offered flights through Atlanta with 50-60 minute turns. Trust me, I wasn't comfortable with a 50 minute turn. When the connecting flight came in 30 minutes late, I knew I was hosed. My question is, what's Delta doing selling tickets for turnarounds it knows it can meet 50% of the time at best?

As for Delta customer service, they have cancelled the 1-800 customer complaint line. Nice. Now some wanker/executive is going to stand up at shareholder's and brag about customer complaints being down 100%.

As for the issue of oversells not being as common as you think, every single flight we were on or almost on was oversold by at least 10 tickets. This happened both going to SFO and coming back.

I would be willing to pay more money for better service but I get the impression the level of service is fixed and paying more money won't change that.
 
I got ****** in ATL pretty much the exact same way on 11/2. No delay, but only had 36 minutes between flights. Arrived for a 5:06 at 5:00 sharp and got the hand from the gate attendant. Ended up having to fly into Richmond instead of Newport News since the only other flight was overbooked.

If there had been one single word of apology or condolence in the entire experience, I would not have been nearly as pissed. **** Delta.
 
My dad is a retired American Airline captain. I was raised in the airlines and have flown my entire life on almost every U.S. carrier.

That said, your first mistake was booking Delta. It could only go down hill from there. I am lucky enough to have rarely suffered any big setbacks while flying. But if I did, it was always on Delta. And the flipside is that evertime I fly Delta there seems to be a setback. They always have been and still will always be my last choice airline of desperation. Yet do random price checks of any itinerary and see if they are not always the most expensive. There is absolutly nothing redeeming about any aspect of their service.
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we had a three leg flight back from thailand on continental that i booked online. bangkok-tokyo-san jose-dallas. we arrive at the airport for the flight, and we're checking in, and we're informed that the last leg of our flight has been cancelled without warning.

what? after spending some 14-17 hours in travel time, we're supposed to have it together enough in san jose to get bags, go through customs, go to the check in counter, find some ******* way to get to dallas from san jose, because the issue was unable to be resolved before our flight was taking off from bangkok. so essentially, here - get on this flight to san jose, and good luck getting back to dallas when you get there.

*******.

had to fly through denver to dallas, so we added two more legs to our flight. seemed like it never ended.

contrast this with every experience i had on an asian airline, where they actually practice customer service, and the problem seems to be less of an airline one, and more of an american airline (not the company) one. US airlines do not put any focus on customer service, and it shows.
 
yes, i've found that treating airline empolyees, especially counter employees nicely can have some positive results.

example:
couple of friends of mine and me coming back from vegas to austin, through DFW. bad weather over dfw, so we circle over the llano estacado for some time. weather not getting any better, and we're low on gas, so we land in abiline or amarillo or some ****. i forget. either way, the airline decides that we should sit on the tarmac until the weather gets better. on the texas high plains. in the dead of summer. during the afternoon. with the power off.

so we're just ******* roasting, and i have the hangover of all hangovers - ****, we had just left the rhino at 4 that morning. as the minutes climbed, i was getting near riotous, when finally, after what i remember being about an hour and 15 minutes of pure hot hangover hell, they say we're going to dallas. yay.

we arrive in dallas, and there is but one flight to austin. buddy of mine and I go up tot he counter. we both smile, and he says something to the effect of "i know this is not your fault, and i know that this is a pretty ****** day for you with angry customers yelling at you, but if there's any way we could get on that flight to austin, so we could go home and see our families, we would really appreciate it."

she looks up, surprised, looks from my face to his, and sighs, smiles, and says "thank you, i'm sure i can get you all on the flight." this is while people are being told they cannot get on the flight, being given vouchers, and generally treated rather poorly.

but, she tells us to go to the gate, and they'd have our boarding passes there. what she didn't tell us was that she had given us first class upgrayyedja.

so american airlines taketh away by roasting your hungover *** on a runway, and they giveth with first class upgrades for good behavior.

i'm still pissed about waiting on that runway, but you catch more flies with sugar than vinegar.
 
I've never had anything like that happen to me, but there's going to be a problem if I paid for a ticket and you give my seat away. That's not cool. If that's not what happens, I stand corrected. Maybe I am confused.


Btw, I heard Jet Blue kept one flight on the tarmac for 4 hours. I think they made it a law to make it illegal.
 
I remember Jet Blue had a major cluster **** at JFK once because of a snow storm. Lots of flights missed and such. Their CEO resigned after that. He said that's not what customers should expect. I tip my hat to him. At least someone is accountable.

Trust me, I didn't want to take Delta but we had $400 in vouchers from the last time we got screwed by them and they were about to expire. I felt like I had to take them. That brings to me to an idea I had. If you do not get the flight you paid for, screw vouchers. They should be required to give you money. That'd wake their asses up.

What sucks even worse about Delta is their recent purchase of Northwest. They had trouble running one crappy airline and now they're going to try to run two crappy airlines. It'll also be twice as hard to avoid Delta. Ugh.

What got me, though, was the general attitude of no one being responsible for getting me to my destination. Who is responsible for running that damn airline? At Jet Blue, we know the answer.
 
Some of your experiences sound eerily similar to many recent times I have flown through DFW on American. I absolutely loathe connecting through DFW anymore. If it ain't bad weather in DFW itself, then it's bad weather in ORD slowing down DFW. Come to think of it, I'm not a big fan of connecting through ORD either.

We fly Southwest most of the time nowadays, mainly because they are one of the few airlines that still maintains the 2 free bag policy. Try bringing enough clothes for five people to stay with relatives for two weeks in a carry-on...it ain't happening. If I am flying on business, I tend to like Continental. I have had very few problems connecting through Houston.

I haven't flown Delta in a very, very long time, but there is something f'ed up about flying to SFO from AUS with a connection in ATL. My wife did almost exactly the same thing once -- she flew Delta from AUS to PDX via ATL. We got her ticket cheap on Priceline, and we learned our lesson after that.
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I've honestly never had much of a problem with any airlines. My flights are usually always on time, if not, it's no more than a 15 min delay or so.

I've even been paged continuously at O'Hare when I was walking around with my iPod in my ears. Oh, and they even opened the door up for me when I made it back to my gate.

I guess fate smiles upon me.
 
I would never consider doing a 50 minute connection in a US airport. Even if everything goes right and the plane is on time you are likely to get ******. I wouldn't do it flying through a place linke Singapore on Cathay where they lick my balls at every opportunity because I'm diamond.

Or if I did I'd just expect that if I make it it's through divine providence and luck.

You are especially likely to get ****** if you are on economy non-refundable tickets.

You are saying to the "Airline, place me at the absolute bottom of your priority list please and if anything bad happens help me after you've helped everyone else".

However the workers being pricks does suck.

I would point out:

"they smell - try air india/air china
smile.gif


they are crowded and cramped - US Carriers are, not so much the good Asian ones.

the security is stupid (shall we just undress?) - Security has never been onerous for me even in the US.

"expensive for the services rendered" - if by expensive you mean idiculously cheap, so cheap that they can barely if ever make money, then yes I agree. So cheap that people spurn all other types of travel with lower cost structures, then yes, you are right.

I note you are saying they are too expensive AND you don't want them to oversell flights. Which is it?

late - sometimes, more often in the US and UK

uneven service in baggage claim timing and service - certainly they are right vastly more often than I'd expect them to be.

and the freaking airports are not even fun to go to anymore -
when were they ever fun to go to? Other than Singapore, HK and Beijing, Austin and San Diego every Airport I've ever been to has been somethng i dread?

Still - I feel bad for you - that situation sucks. In Asia if your plane is late you can get foot massages which helps immensely.
 
OP - Why did you go all the way to ATL to then go to SFO? Why not SLC? It is on the way.

Hayden - Continental does not fly from Tokyo to San Jose or from San Jose to DFW. So I call ********.
 
Can we really vote with our dollars anymore? I refuse to fly delta completely...and lots of people seem to agree. Thing is, when they start losing money they'll just get a bailout and stay in business...nothing changes. In fact, there's even less pressure to make things better.
 
agreed, F Delta. kind of weird that there's alot of common complaints regarding them being fucktards and very rude on top of that. The 30 minute rule is rediculous.
 
I feel your pain. Anybody else remember American just straight up canceling DFW to Columbus the Friday afternoon before our game up there? What a clusterfuck that was. Part of us flew to Cincy and the rest of us wound up in Toledo, met some fellow Horn fans and drove.
 
Anything Delta or SkyWest out of SLC has been nails for me.

Anything Comair out of Detroit or Atlanta has been ******.

I've had nothing but problems with American, and don't fly them anymore. JetBlue cancelled a Sunday flight of mine out of Boston one time and didn't notify me until I got to the airport 6 hours later. Then was told that the only flight to get me back to Denver would be on that Wednesday.

Delta SkyMiles got my wife and I back early the next morning. Hooray.
 
My wife is the more experienced traveler, and she normally books the flights when we go somewhere. We almost always go Southwest, and she tries extra hard to find nonstop flights, even at less convenient departure/arrival times, and now I can see why.
Any business whose employees tell you "it's not our problem, or it's not our job to..." suffers from poor management of the employees, which comes from the top. I will try never to use Delta for any travel plans.
 
This is why I just say screw it if I can't get there by driving.

The airlines have made the joy of seeing places overwhelmed by the agony of traveling.

If it ain't in Texas I don't need to see it.
 
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