FAIRNESS DOCTRINE: Given some of our past experiences, I'm obligated to say something nice about USAirways when I have the chance to do so.
Friday afternoon, Southwest texted to alert me that my scheduled 3pm return flight the next day from my Mountain West location to Philadelphia had been cancelled because of Hurricane Irene; indeed, they had cancelled all their flights in and out of PHL for the weekend. But from my aging Blackberry (Curve 8320), I was able to remain at my desk in the conference room and rebook myself through their mobile site on a 7:05am flight on USAir which took off on time and ended up being one of the last flights permitted to land here, giving me enough time to restock at the supermarket and otherwise prepare for the deluge.
Southwest, for its part, also was great. Between the text alert for the cancellation and offering full refunds (or waived change fees) for all affected flights, they performed exactly the way you'd want. Heck, when I called them Saturday afternoon on the phone to request the refund, I expected a prolonged wait period but was connected to a cheerful, helpful representative immediately. So thank you, America's airlines. You did alright.
Huh, imagine USAir making travel work for someone. I guess it's that old "stopped clock is right twice a day" kind of thing. I'm sure they didn't mean to get it right for you, Adam, but I'm glad they did.
ReplyDeleteSo you wrote a post to commend USAir for having a flight that was not cancelled and therefore not completely screwing you? Okay, great. Nobody ever said that they fail to carry any passengers to their destination successfully. Doesn't change the fact that if your flight were cancelled, you would have been subjected to apocalyptic customer service.
ReplyDeleteI just am intrigued that Adam, like Dick Cheney, was apparently at an undisclosed location. We, too, have continuity of government plans in the event of apocalypse. The apocalypse will be blogged, but we may not use Cover It Live--as it could crash.
ReplyDeleteGiven that it's USAir, I thought that giving them credit for doing their ordinary job was appropriate. It doesn't happen often.
ReplyDeleteWasn't the apocalypse blogged last week? From the way you East Coasters perseverated on the earthquake and rainstorm, you'd think it was.
ReplyDeleteWhere I grew up, there was a tornado too.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reminding me that Spaceman's post about that day was one of the funniest, best written things I've ever read on this Blog. Which means the whole damn interwebs if anyone is counting.
ReplyDeleteUnited is so dead to me after the way they treated my friend Melissa on a recent trip that I actually took the time to move all of my auto-pay stuff off my United card. It's a really long story, but I'll leave you with the image of a tiny woman struggling with 3 children under 6, 2 of them covered in vomit and screaming, being forced to deplane at 4 am after sitting on the plane for 5 hours (which was already many hours after they were supposed to have arrived on the other side of the country), and the United "customer service" rep refusing to help her in any way and expecting her to just hang out in the airport like that for another 6 hours before boarding a cross-country flight. I now have a "Southwest, Virgin or Stay Home" policy.
ReplyDeleteMy USAir experience this weekend was also good - was immediately notified of their "no change" fee for my Sunday flight from DC to Boston. I was able to change my flight to Saturday entirely online with no hassles and at no additional cost.
ReplyDeleteunfortunately, we don't have a button for HOLY SHIT THAT'S AWFUL.
ReplyDeleteAnd historic flood-levels in Vermont due to the hurricane (exceeding that from the 1938 hurricane). And 35 deaths -- which could have been much more had people on the coast not evacuated. Not like the U.S. has seen death from hurricane force-winds and flooding in our lifetime, so we can all just ignore the warnings to be prepared and to move out if necessary. Oh wait. (Now if you were saying that TV broadcasters were talking about it too much and standing out in the storm too much, yes.)
ReplyDeleteBut I suppose West Coasters prefer to perseverate about anticipated traffic backups, to the point of naming them after the end times.
Three out of my last four United flights were at least an hour delayed, including one connecting flight that was convenience-cancelled, stranding me in Denver overnight with an hour-long line to get a free hotel room (which I passed up in favor of paying for a not free hotel room). United used to do this irritating thing -- don't know if they still do it -- where at LAX you fly into one terminal but have to pick up your bag at an entirely different terminal. United charges for the first checked bag, charges change fees, charges for food. United's boarding procedures are insane. I think that there are five classes of people who go before they start boarding the numbered groups, and at some point the boarding groups were separated by how far you were from the aisle instead of how far back you were on the plane (don't know if they're still this way). The one time recently I was excited to be on a United (legacy Continental) flight was when they had Virgin-style TV shows, except that I accidentally tried to watch a 2-hour movie on a 1.75-hour flight.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet I will not cross United off my list of possible carriers, because you can't go everywhere without ever taking United or USAir, and USAir is so, so much worse. There are companies (like Southwest and Virgin, though YMMV) that care about their customers. There are companies (like United) that do not care about their customers -- that are actually and literally indifferent, because the bureaucracy is so large that it is just impossible to care about something that occurs at a level that is both as granular and as subjective as customer satisfaction. USAir is neither of those companies. USAir is a company that does things for no other reason than to spite its customers. USAir is an abused dog of a company, biting when it can, snarling and straining its chain when it can't. Somebody at USAir's corporate headquarters gets slapped every time a person gets off a USAir plane on time in the right place.
Oh, I didn't realize that was the standard. By the way, congratulations in advance, Plaxico Burress, for playing a football game tonight and also for 990 consecutive days of not shooting yourself in the penis!
ReplyDeleteI've never been a fan of United, but with the Continental merger, it's much harder for me to avoid them, since EWR and IAH are both massive United hubs now.
ReplyDeleteThere are 9 of us on a flight from Charlotte to Portland, ME, connecting in Philly. Of course we sat on the tarmac in both CLT and PHL, thereby making us miss our flight to Portland by mere moments. The gate agent told me that, had there been 10 of us, they'd have held the flight AND that I couldn't expect USAir to get us there in enough time to make our connection, despite the long layover that should have been sufficient. I asked her if she really meant for me to understand that USAir is incapable of providing the service they themselves offer.
ReplyDeleteMy husband ends up telling some USAir employee, every time we travel, that he hopes they go out of business. Since Charlotte is a hub, we are prisoners to their uselessness.
Of course, United is pure evil. Did you know they break guitars, especially expensive Taylor guitars?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/v/5YGc4zOqozo" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="170" height="140
You don't understand -- THEY WERE CLOSING THE 405
ReplyDeleteUSAir doesn't break guitars -- it gives them to Ke$ha and makes her band play them. WORSE
ReplyDeleteI was so flabbergasted to have a sort of mind numbing customer service experience with Southwest recently. In June we flew to Boise for a wedding. We didn't print our boarding passes back since we were in a hotel room assuming that there would be a kiosk at the airport that would let us just go up and print.
ReplyDeleteThat was wrong. There were kiosks that did that, BUT THE TICKET DESK PEOPLE MADE YOU GET IN LINE WITH THE PEOPLE WHO WERE CHECKING THEIR LUGGAGE TO PRINT YOUR BOARDING PASS!! I was flabbergasted. Finally me and somebody else just sort of cut through some of those line dividers to and unused (but inexplicably roped off) machine that was labeled boarding passes only (and roped off by line dividers) and printed our passes.
I tweeted southwest, and they seemed to think that I was crazy and that small airports sometimes have weird staffing patterns. I didn't want to talk to their staff, I wanted my boarding pass without any hassle and they MADE ME WAIT IN LINE!. Ok, so I guess I am still sort of sore about it, but for the love of Jesus Idaho this is why everyone thinks you are a crazy backwoods hole.