Luggage & Delays
SHANGHAI SHUFFLEMy first trip to Shanghai was in December 2006-January 2007 and lasted two weeks. I flew on AA to and from my town to Dallas and to and from Dallas to San Francisco, then took UA to and from Shanghai. This will become relevant soon.
When I got to my local airport at some wee hour in the morning, we found it locked tight as a drum and dead silent. Luckily, we still had time to floor it to Dallas (a two-hour drive) so I could board my plane there. It turned out that my travel agent had booked the flights to and from my town to Dallas separately so my whole itinerary didn't get cancelled in the end, which was incredibly lucky for me. The kicker was that I had checked with her the day before to make sure all of my flights were as scheduled. I have written to AA (the only carrier out of my local airport) and called the airport about this, but they pretty much said I was out of luck when it comes to a refund because I voluntarily skipped out of the flight. But had I waited for them, I would have missed all of my other flights and been just plumb out of luck.
That's only half of it.
I got to Shanghai okay except one of my bags was missing. It turned out that UA never even got the bag. It was still in San Francisco. I finally got the bag a week into my trip and the airport even had it delivered to my hotel room door. Very nice! I had no complaints about that, but little did I know my trip was about to get much worse.
Shanghai to San Francisco went well, and then it was onward to Dallas. Well, at this time there was a huge ice storm that had grounded a lot of flights across the country. We waited in our 777 (they had "upgraded" our plane because of an overbooking; it was supposed to be a smaller plane) as a Super-80 took its time getting out of the gate because of the icy weather conditions. When I got in to the airport, we were informed that we would be staying in Dallas for at least three days. Of course, I was not allowed to reclaim my luggage for those three days even though I was willing to have to check it again when I was about to go home. So a few fellow travelers and I got shuttled to a Days Inn (a place which was a story in and of itself) and basically called our airline every morning, afternoon, and evening for flight status. I had a friend who lived 2 hours to the south of Dallas; I asked if he could come and get me because his town had not been hit by the ice, but then it flooded so that was out of the question.
I was getting very antsy by the third day, especially because I was only a two-hour drive away from home. I ended up staying five days because I was stubborn and didn't want to take AA's bus back (which was going on days that the Greyhounds didn't even run because of the ice) because I had paid for a plane ticket. So, after all of that, I got home and my luggage was already there waiting for me. I didn't know this, though, and waited at the carousel and nearly had a heart attack when it didn't show up. Luckily I saw it when I went to the desk, but then the SOB on a power trip behind the counter would not let me have my bags despite the fact that I showed him my passport that matched the name on my luggage tags! He said that they were too busy and that I would have to come back next week or so to pick it up. Needless to say, I objected to that, and he looked very inconvenienced when I made him walk ten feet to get my luggage and another ten feet to bring it over. I understand that the weather had messed half of the country up, but I thought that was ridiculous.
That was the last time I ever flew AA and I learned an important lesson: when flying overseas, try to stick to one airline! I stuck with UA for my second trip to Shanghai that summer and everything was fine, and I will for my next trip this December for my wedding. :) 6/08 | <<Latest Stories
LIVING AT THE TERMINAL
Three months ago my boyfriend's brother...call him "Tom", calls us to say he is coming to visit for 3 days. My boyfriend....call him "Jerry", hasn't seen his brother in 3 years so we are very excited. He gets a flight from Philly PA to Dubuque IA with a layover in Chicago. He leaves Philly at 6:30 AM and was expected to be in Dubuque at 9 AM. We get up and leave at 4:30 AM and leave Southeast IA to drive the 4 1/2 hours to Dubuque. As we are leaving the house he calls to say his flight has been delayed and won't be in until noon. So we stop in the nearest town and get some breakfast and do some shopping.
We get to Dubuque and he calls again to say he's in Chicago and his flight has been cancelled. Now he won't be in until 3:00 PM and its a different town. SO we drive to Iowa City and wait for the flight. At 3:00 he calls and says the flight is now coming in at the Cedar Rapids airport at 6:00 PM.
To make a long story short, we drove between Dubuque and Iowa City and Cedar Rapids until midnight that night when his flight came in. We spent $225 in gas and parking fees waiting for a flight that never came in. At 12:30 AM waiting at the terminal we discovered his bag was sent to one of the MANY other airports we were sent to. The lady at the counter had the nerve to ask why we didn't let someone know where to send the bag? LIKE THAT WAS OUR JOB! We drove home and were back in bed at you guessed it....4:30 AM. We got his bag the day he left to go back home. We asked if he could fly out of Iowa City since that was much closer than Dubuque since we had already been VERY INCONVENIENCED by the airline. They said of course not, that was not what the ticket was and there were no exceptions. That was his first and last time flying. 5/08
LOST LUGGAGE LEADS TO GRUNGE LOOK
I was invited to my niece's college graduation commencement ceremony, plus 3 formal dinners. The airline I traveled on lost my baggage. They had me go to the airport 3 different times....no baggage. We went to all the ceremonies. The relatives and friends were dressed to the nines. As for me, well I wore a pair of jeans, flannel shirt and leather jacket. No one from the airline ever apologized. Oh I got my baggage 3 days after I got home. 4/17/08
WATER-LOGGED LUGGAGE
This tale of frustration occurred back in the spring of 2005. I had flown from DC to Syracuse to visit family for Easter break, and my return flight had a layover in Philadelphia (where I'm originally from). I was frustrated, as Syracuse-DC is already a short flight, and Philadelphia-DC is literally less than 25 minutes from wheels up to wheels down, but it had been the cheapest option for a poor undergraduate, and I flew USAir because my miles were on the Star Alliance. My flight from Syracuse was slightly delayed due to storms up and down the East Coast, but I had a three-hour layover so it wasn't a problem. We arrived in Philadelphia without incident, and I settled in to wait for the next flight.
About an hour later, it's announced that our flight has been delayed, as the storms are closing in on Philly and air traffic has been severely affected. Being a frequent flyer, it was an annoyance but certainly not anything beyond what I'd come to expect. My fellow passengers and I kept checking periodically for updates, but the ticket counter had no information about when the flight was actually taking off. In the meantime, however, we all noticed that our luggage was being loaded onto the plane. It had also started raining at this point.
Three hours later, it was finally announced that the flight was cancelled, and that we needed to queue up to rebook. For the record, the flight was originally supposed to leave about 1:30 PM, and it was now around 3 PM. After standing in line for several minutes, I was able to get myself onto a flight around 5:30. There was no gate assignment yet so I and my fellow passengers waited at the same gate, and to our horror, noticed that our luggage that had previously been loaded onto the plane was now being taken off...and dumped unceremoniously in a giant pile on the tarmac. In what was now torrential rain. We notified the gate agents and tried to flag down a few baggage handlers that were in the terminal (it was an Express flight and so we were at tarmac level in the terminal). No one would respond, even though we were standing literally 30 feet from our bags, and I could actually see my suitcase being soaked through. At this point too, it had been announced that a ground stop had been placed on Philadelphia, and there were no planes in or out for an indefinite amount of time. I spent the next three--THREE!--hours simultaneously watching my bag remain in the luggage pile next to the plane in thunderstorm after thunderstorm, and trying to get myself onto more flights as they kept being cancelled one after another. At this point I had been at the airport for over eight hours.
I finally was able to catch a flight that left at 12:30 AM and got into Reagan at 1 AM (having spent a total of 14 hours in the airport), but I knew that my suitcase was not on the plane, having observed it STILL lying next to the original plane just before I went to the new gate. My suitcase did not get back to me until almost midnight the following day, having been very reluctantly delivered to me after much time spent on the phone with USAir. It was still soaked through when I received it. 2/14/08
TRAVEL TREPIDATION
I generally do my best to avoid having to "Fly the Unfriendly Skies". Two recent Flights from Hell on United only confirmed that things don't get much worse. Even if they were giving it away, I would steer clear in the future...
The night before my UA flight from San Francisco to San Diego, I received an e-mail, inviting me to check in for my flight online. I logged on to the site, only to discover through a one line message that due to technical reasons, my flight would not be operating. Instead of a direct flight at 1:45 p.m., I saw that I was now booked on connecting flights through LAX, i.e. two flights that would take far more time to get me to San Diego than the direct one that I had reserved. I called UA and asked why I had not been informed of the problem and consulted before being rebooked on flights that didn't suit me. I was told that this was because they had no contact information for me -- patently untrue since they had my e-mail address (which they used to send me the invitation to check in for my flight!) and even my telephone number (that had been provided by Expedia). I asked to be put on a direct flight and was offered flights at 7 or 8 in the morning. That didn't suit me at such short notice and when I said that was completely unacceptable, I was transferred to a lady at the international desk since I had bought my ticket abroad. She was able to find me a seat on a flight at Noon, the only available seat on a direct flight other than the ones early in the morning. While she found me a palatable solution, the delightful discovery of my changed travel plans wreaked havoc on my last day in San Francisco -- I had to cancel dinner plans at the last minute since I only discovered the change just before dinner and spent almost two hours on the phone trying to sort out the arrangements with UA. I also had to cancel an appointment the following morning since I had to get to the airport almost two hours earlier than planned.
My return trip was even more exciting. The night before my flight from San Diego to Los Angeles, I checked in online with some trepidation, wondering what surprises were in store. Everything seemed fine and I checked in for a flight that was supposed to be operating normally, despite severe rains that had disrupted travel in Northern California and that were fast approaching LA and San Diego. The next day I got to the airport well in advance and was told by the woman at check-in to just go to the gate where I would be told when I would travel. She checked my luggage on my flight, but would not tell me when I would travel, just "get to the gate quickly and speak with the agent." Apparently there were problems with the weather, but nobody explained anything and it was bedlam. The gate agent said she would put me on the next flight (a flight scheduled before mine, but that due to the delay, would leave even later than my original departure time). I asked about my bags, which had been tagged differently, and she very dismissively said that of course they would be on the flight, and stalked off. This didn't seem right, since she hadn't even bothered to see my baggage stubs, so I asked the next agent, who actually bothered to check. She said that the bags were not on the flight and they would do their best to get them on, but couldn't guarantee anything. I told her that I had an international connection out of LAX on another airline, so my bags should travel with me. She was rude when I told her that it wasn't logical to travel without my bags and said "that's the way we do it in the U.S."
The "next flight" to LAX left even later than the announced time and was only half full. I hoped naively that this would mean that there was room in the hold for my bags. (I should mention here that we had a charming stewardess on board, who told us with barely masked glee that there would be no drink service since the flight was short and it would be bumpy. She announced a few gates for connecting flights when we arrived at LAX, but couldn't resist adding, "Don't ask me any questions, I don't have any information." By now I don't need to add that we were neither greeted nor thanked.) When I arrived at LAX, no surprises, my bags weren't there. After waiting a long time by the conveyor belt, I spoke with a UA baggage agent, who told me that they would be on the next flight, expected in 15 minutes. That there was another flight in 15 minutes surprised me, since I had just experienced first hand the chaos reigning at UA in San Diego. I asked, "Are you sure the plane has left San Diego?" The response was, "Of course, otherwise how would it be here in 15 minutes?" Needless to say, he wasn't right because a few minutes later, the monitor showed that the flight would be further delayed by another 45 minutes, so of course it had not even left San Diego! I continued to wait around the baggage area and another San Diego flight arrived and my bags weren't on it. My bags finally came on yet another flight (and no, it wasn't even the flight for which the bags were tagged) and each bag appeared on a different belt in different parts of the baggage claim area!!! So despite having left a big margin (three and a half hours) for my connection at LAX, I was now in danger of missing my international flight due to UA's utter ineptness. There was no guarantee that even if I missed my flight, I would find a seat on another AF flight later that evening. I virtually ran to the Air France terminal -- a good 15 minutes away -- but it was too late. My flight had closed and I had to pay Air France a $60 change fee.
An airline like this (if you can even charitably call an airline and not just a transportation company) that treats its customers like crap deserves every financial woe it has experienced. Too bad that U.S. bankruptcy laws allow airlines like this to write off their debts and start over again. This company should just be buried since it is incapable of functioning in an increasingly competitive, customer-oriented world. As for its employees, they should be made to work at minimum wage jobs in order to understand that their salaries are indirectly paid by their customers and that it is in their own interest to treat their customers well. 1/26/08
TREATED AS LESS THAN CARGO
Earlier this year, we flew from Newark to Beijing on United Airlines. Since there is no direct flight, we had to make a connection in Dulles. The aircraft came in late in Newark, and we sat on the runway in Newark waiting for the 26 planes ahead of us to take off. By the time we rushed to the Dulles gate for our Beijing flight, the door had just closed - we were barely one minute late. There were at least five of us making this connection.
United Airlines knew that we were making this connection, but decided not to hold the gate for us. We then had to stand in line for over 2 hours to see a customer service person. We were told that we had been re-booked for the next day's flight to Beijing. The airline assumed no responsibility for food and lodging - so we ended up paying to stay overnight in Dulles.
This kind of cavalier attitude towards customers is deplorable. When we purchased a ticket to go from Newark to Beijing, we assumed the airline would take us there on the day and time we planned. The airline treated us as less than cargo, because even Fed Ex guarantees that their packages get there on time. 12/07
HEATHROW HEART ACHE
Here is my flight from hell. Leaving Paris to London; BA plane was late and we only originally had 1.5 hours between flight from London to NY. So now we only have about 30 minutes to make the connection in London. Get off the plane after having been through 2 security checks in Paris and there is a line a mile long to go through another security check at Heathrow, even though all the people in this area were making connections and had already been through security. Everyone is jammed together and trying to get up to the front because they were all trying to make a connecting flight. Of course no airline personnel were around to help sort out the mess.
Finally get through the third security and have to run to the other side of the terminal which must have been a mile away...seriously. There were four of us, so one ran on ahead to try and get the connecting plane to NY to wait. By the time I finally got to the NY plane I was ready to have a heart attack. Get on the plane. Sit down. Announcement comes on...some poor passenger who just also ran like a nut to catch this plane is REALLY having a heart attack, so medical personnel are called and now we sit in the plane waiting for the sick passenger to be deplaned. But now we have missed our place in the queue to take off, so another two hours sitting in a hot plane before we can get back in line to take off. Needless to say we were about 5 hours late getting to NY. What a trip. Heathrow airport has to be the WORST. 12/07
TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS IN SPAIN
When I tell my tale of woe about trying to get home to USA from Madrid, Spain Nov 15th this fall, friends say “write a complaint letter to US Air.” And I think, “Why should I expect an exec at a dysfunctional airline to care about customer satisfaction?” If they cared, my day of hell would never have happened. But maybe being posted on this website will have some positive effect, if only to make me feel better.
My husband and I arrived 2 hours early at the airport for our flight home to Philly, PA from Madrid. We queued up at gate 25 B at appointed time for boarding (noon, Madrid time). About 15 minutes later we were told there would be a short delay in boarding because there was a problem with electrical equipment. Half an hour later we were told we would be boarding in another 20 minutes as the emergency exit did not function and would have to be fixed. Half an hour after that we were again told to wait. As the day wore on there was less and less oxygen in the waiting area and we were breathing in air loaded with heavy cigarette smoke. Spain allows a cordoned off (but not enclosed) area for smokers who puff away and fill the area next to gate with heavy clouds of stinking smoke. I used to smoke but am not that dumb anymore. Death from lung cancer is even more awful than air travel.
About 2:30 or 3:00 pm the airline employees announced they were going to treat us to lunch and we were told to follow a fast marching airline employee what seemed like a mile long concourse to an unattractive cafeteria with dirty tables. I don’t know how any very elderly people could have made the march lugging carry-on luggage. We are in our 70s and found it unpleasant. At this point the airline staffer left us and the restaurant shut down the metal screen separating us from the food. Then, after a wait, a Spanish speaking person announced in Spanish what the rules would be for selecting from the buffet, the metal screen was removed and a blessed blond lady (a passenger) translated for fellow English speaking passengers that we could choose one entrée, one desert and one beverage from the buffet. Those lucky enough to be traveling in a twosome could leave their partner to watch carry-on luggage. I don’t know how singles managed. I chose a selection for myself and husband and when I reached the end of the line the non- English speaking employee grabbed the 2 small wine bottles off the tray, saying I could not have them in addition to the bottled water I had selected.
We had been told to return to gate no later than 4:45. When we did so, we realized there were no airline staff there. They had left for the day. We looked out the window and saw that the plane had been pulled away from the gate and our flight number 741 was no longer listed on the overhead screens. Later, an employee appeared and announced that we had to go through arrivals door, reclaim our luggage and queue up at a desk for rescheduling. The wait was so long. We were still in the line at 6:00 pm. My heart went out to a young couple with a 7 month old baby. They had been up since 5:00 am traveling from France to Madrid with the ultimate destination of Maine, USA. If they ever got to Philly they would have to keep traveling.
When we finally got to the desk after waiting in that long line, we were told US Air could not get us from Madrid the next day on any outgoing airline to any city on the east coast of USA. They could not get us back to America. At no time during the whole process did any USAir spokesperson or employee apologize or express sympathy for the discomforts we were suffering. We were told to climb on a bus and go to a hotel of their choice that the airline would pay for. My husband told them that, based on the quality of the place they sent us for lunch, we would find our own hotel. They said that they could not be responsible for notifying us of our travel if we refused to go to their hotel. We were given a phone number to call to find out our options. We did so later and asked to have something on paper confirming new reservations faxed to our hotel. They agreed, but never complied.
We left Spain 2 days later on the same flight 741 with only a few problems. The business class bathroom had a malfunctioning door and another passenger (male) walked in on me at the most embarrassing moment. And the foot rest did not work automatically (row 3 B on the aisle).
Is safe, affordable, comfortable air travel an irrational dream? At present the comfort is missing. No one wants to give up safety. Maybe price is the variable that needs to be addressed. Should there be government subsidy?? Competitive free enterprise in the case of airlines has negative results. More money might result in better maintenance and hiring of more competent staff. 12/07
FEELIN' THE LOVE
Wound up on United today, although I usually don't fly them... The flight was supposed to leave @ 0630... We boarded the plane, then were advised after about an hour that there was a problem with the "trim leveler thing, which is needed for the autopilot..."
Disembarking, we were told to return to the ticket counters, where it became apparent that there were no openings on flights to our destination that day from this particular airport. The options (which were few) were at the other airports in the area, neither of which was closer than about 30 miles...
While people scrambled, they announced that they were bringing in a replacement aircraft from one of the area airports & that we should all go back to the gate. This was a surprise to the agents actually at the gate...
The promised 0955 departure actually took place around 1555, after another two hours spent on a "fuel pump problem that requires us to return to the gate to reboot the computers."
Let's see, ten hours later I get to my destination, with a grand total of $20 in food vouchers from United. All this for what is, in actuality, a 2.67 hour flight...
Yeah, I'm Feelin' the Love, United. 12/07
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