US Airways aka Useless has one of the worst reputations in the world of commercial air travel. Unfortunately, I forgot this fact when I purchased my tickets to Portland, Maine. I can tell you that I will never fly US Air again. There’s a reason they’ve been in bankruptcy forever. They have quite possibly the worst customer service I have ever seen anywhere.
Last week, I had a flight out of Spokane, changing planes in Seattle and Philadelphia, and ending up in Portland, Maine. I had long layovers, so it seemed like everything should work out without too much trouble. The problem started when I got on the US Air leg going from Seattle to Philly. In US Air speak, there were “ATC problems” which meant our flight could not land.
This was bad news because that flight ranked right up there with possibly my worst flight ever. I was seated next to a 9-month old sick baby. Although the parents tried to contain Junior, he made endless attempts to crawl in my lap and spew noxious drool on me. To my (even further) dismay, those crappy meals they used to serve you for free actually cost $5 on Useless. Of course, Sick Baby Drool isn’t a terribly appetizing condiment, so I opted against “dinner.”
Eventually, the “ATC problems” resolved enough for us to land. After being liberated from the plane, I ran over to look at the monitors and see if I had any prayer of catching my connection.
The answer was no, since my flight to Portland was canceled.
Flights to North Carolina, Montreal, Albany, and other points were also canceled. I asked a gate attendant what I was supposed to do and she pointed at a long line. So I stood in line and watched as nothing happened. Nobody was moving. At all. Standing in a US Air customer service line is like watching grass grow. As with the lawn, movements are almost undetectable. In the case of Useless, I determined that the glacial line speed is due to several factors:
1. You may have 20 computer stations available; however, no matter how long the line, only three stations will have a human sitting at the computer.
2. One of the computer operators will have a terrible problem figuring out her computer. So she calls over another agent. This person can’t figure out the problem either, so the two call in someone else. Now you have 3 agents huddled over a monitor trying to figure out one ticket. The folks standing in the line are mentally doing the math (3 agents per ticket x 20 minutes per incident x number of people in line = wait time of forever). Meanwhile, outside the window, more flights depart without the line dwellers.
3. By the time people in line actually get to the front, they need to vent. Most of them need to spend a few minutes telling the agent how pathetic the airline is first. Needless to say, this is another setback.
By the time I got to the front of the line, the customer service agent announced that she was supposed to be going on a break. I must have looked pathetic or supremely pissed off, so she decided to help me first. When I say help, I use that term loosely. She told me that there were no other flights for 3 days pretty much to anywhere I might want to go on the Eastern Seaboard, and put me on Standby on the only other flight to Portland. When I suggested “other airlines” that was clearly outside her world view. Once I was ensconced on the standby list, I called my mom with the bad news.
I checked the monitors again and discovered that my standby flight was delayed for about 5 hours. Since I now had quite a bit of time, I called Mom again, who suggested that I go outside security to the “big” ticket counters out front. After describing her similar experience in the Philadelphia airport, she pointed out that the folks at the gate tend to be “morons” and the folks out front might have a few more brain cells firing.
Since I try not to argue with Mom and I had a lot of time to kill I went out front to the Mega Line. It had the same 3 issues going on in a magnified way. Now instead of 25 or 30 people you had 100-200 people in line. It was ugly. Many discouraging words were uttered.
Once I finally got to the front of this line, I encountered another customer service representative who really “needed to go on break.” But she managed to suck it up and deal with me. After determining that I couldn’t get to Portland any time in the near future and my chances of getting on a plane via Standby were grim, I suggested she search for any plane going North. I also asked why I couldn’t be put on a flight on a different airline. As it turned out, “ATC problems” are not covered. (I finally found out ATC stands for Air Traffic Control, and in US Air-speak, that relates to weather.) So no comp anything. It’s an act of God. The weather problem may have been in New York, but Philly was apparently close enough.
Finally, after much groaning, whining, and sad looks on the part of the agent, the computer screen barfed up a seat on the last flight going to Manchester, New Hampshire. I took it.
That flight too had been delayed. So after getting back through security I sat around the airport wandering between gate C17 and C19 (my standby flight and my NH flight), which were both going out later and later. At long last, at 11:45 the massively delayed flight to Manchester left with me on it. (The Portland flight may still be there for all I know.) There was some seating snafu on the plane that was instantly resolved when the Captain announced that if people didn’t sit down the flight would have to be canceled because the FAA only allows flight crew to be in the plane for a certain number of hours. ATC delays meant this flight crew was on the edge. You have never seen passengers sit down so fast.
We all landed in lovely Manchester at 1:30 am. I called around and the Four Points Sheraton agreed to put me up for the night. The nice guy at the front desk even gave me a free tube of toothpaste, since I had forgotten to pack my tiny travel one.
After a day of dealing with the horror of US Air’s surly customer service people, that small act of kindness really stood out. Although I did say thank you, he probably has no idea how much I wanted clean teeth and what that little gesture meant to me.