Wednesday, January 23, 2008

USnightmAIR -- July 2007

Returning from Montréal was not an easy matter, when using USAirways – it seems that nothing is an easy matter when using that so-called airline. The executives andmiddle management folks at that company need to graduate from using crayons and poster paper to learning how to read and write, understand what a business is, get to know a little about capitalism and how that works, and then they need major courses in learning decency, how to treat people and their plans with courtesy and respect, and lots more.

Will they? Will Hell freeze over?

We were scheduled to leave on an early evening flight. Enough time to get us back to Jason could teach his class the next day. We took a taxi to the airport and that cost $40 (with the exchange rate being what it was, it might as well have been US dollars).

Got to the airport all smiles. (Well my stomach wasn’t smiling, it never does before flying.)

Smiled all the way up to the check-in counter. At this counter the woman told us that the flight had been canceled. In fact, it had been canceled hours before.

NO ONE had called us to tell us the flight had been canceled. They had the numbers to call. They just… didn’t.


I stood there looking at her in disbelief. But she wasn’t joking.

Even sweeter, they could not get us on a flight until 6:55 the next morning. That would have given Jason enough time to get to his class but he’d be tired as we’d have to be at the airport at about four in the morning. But we settled for that and went back home.

Another $40 taxi ride.

Back to the city. We had no choice but to wait. Had a nice dinner and then tried to get to sleep early, since we’d have to get up early.

In the wee hours of the morning, we got a call. The 6:55 AM flight had been canceled! What a record USAir was racking up.

I then got on the phone and for two hours tried making an alternate reservation so that Jason would not miss more than one class. Two hours later we had a reservation for a flight later that evening.

Of course, when we arrived, we got to the gate and I was told that Jason had a seat but that I did not!

Panic mode. The assured me that I would get on the flight but with their record, I didn’t believe them. They said they had “volunteers” enough to get me on the flight. I took that to mean they had people who volunteered to be bumped (because the rewards are so great) and that I’d get on the flight.

That did not inspire confidence. So, when they announced boarding, I went to the front of the counter where the airline rep was taking tickets and checking ID and I stood right nest to her so she wouldn’t forget I was there. I didn’t budge, instead I just stared into her eyes whenever she forgot and glanced up at me.

Eventually, a supervisor must’ve taken pity on me. He ordered her to give me a seat. I have to say that he was one of the most devastatingly attractive men I’d seen. And I’d have gladly rewarded him for his good deed.

Of course, the trouble didn’t stop there.


When we arrived in Philadelphia, the baggage for fifteen or twenty passengers seemed to be lost. A number of bags had been thrown up onto the conveyor belt and began their almost endless rounds. When one fat and unattractive bag was chucked out like a piece of bad meat, the bag slammed onto the conveyor belt and everything stopped.

No more bags were being sent out. Fifteen or twenty of us stood there looking, as though if we stared hard enough the damned belt would get moving again. It didn’t.

We kept staring. The belt did not respond. Eventually we became restless. But no one seemed to know what to do. We stood there dumbly for forty-five minutes.

Then I spied a large long counter with a huge sign overhead: USAir Baggage Information.

Foolishly I thought this would be a good place to start.


I went to the USAir Baggage Information counter where 3 “workers” were sitting, talking, and laughing. When I asked a question, they seemed bothered that I interrupted them (they were there obviously not to answer questions but to chit chat. I realized that they were kind of a USO act but not for beleagured passengers). But I wanted information.

I asked one of the clerks if he could check to see if the plane was still being unloaded or whether it had finished. We’d been there forty-five minutes and it was a reasonable question. He frowned and didn’t really care what I’d asked. He said, “Go fill out a baggage claim.” And refused to look up any information or make any calls though he had a computer and a phone at his disposal. I suppose having them and knowing how to use them are two different things.


I looked over at the claims room – yes a WHOLE room – and there were hundreds of bags, hundreds, all around the floor flowing over everything, with a tiny walkway so one could enter the large glass enclosed claims room and fill out a paper which they probably would shred later.

I decided not to do that just yet and went back to the carousel – not a happy, pretty-horse carousel, but the one that wasn’t getting our luggage to us.

One woman said that she’d been on the flight with her granddaughters and they’d gotten their bags and she hadn’t. We all shared similar stories. It seemed that maybe one whole cart of luggage was left behind and we would indeed have to fill out claims forms.

After another half hour, I went to the clerk again and asked if he had any further information. He said that he did not and that I should fill out a baggage claim. I refused again and returned to the carousel.

About 15 minutes later someone from USAir made an announcement about baggage but it was impossible to hear clearly. So I went to that same clerk, who had been sitting there the whole time (I know because I watched him), and I asked him if he could tell me what the USAir announcer had said. He said, “No. I wasn’t here.”

When I went back to the clerk a fourth time, along with quite a number of people from the flight, he just told all of us to go fill out baggage claims. He refused to look up information or give any assistance whatsoever. Just flung out his arm, index finger pointed in the direction of the sea of bags.

We all trooped over there and stood in line. Now we were trading outraged remarks. Composing letters we would send and just generally venting. We stood in line for twenty minutes at the claims office (which had a line of more than 50 people) when the granddaughters of the woman came running up to say that there had been a jam on the conveyor belt and that the bags were now coming out.

Why did that clerk not know this? More importantly, why did he refuse to try and find out anything? What was he being paid for? Why were there two other workers there also being paid?

I found out later that USAir has the worst lost luggage record: 9.62 reports per 1000 passengers and an 81% increase in complaints each year

It is considered by Forbes to be one of the Top Five worst airlines - On-time performance: 68.3% (third worst), Baggage mishandling: 9.2 per 1,000 passengers

Philadelphia is one of their hubs – they operate something like two thirds of all the flights out of the city. There are more than twelve-hundred flights daily. This means they lose approximately three to four THOUSAND bags a day!

Take a look at these:

www.youtube.com/findtheyeti

http://www.usairwayslostmycostume.com/

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