I’m down on airlines right now. Actually, I should say I’m down on the US government for not regulating the atrocious behavior of airlines like United Airlines who just sent my 82 year old mother on a wild goose chase I wouldn’t even wish on the damn goose. So, forgive me dear readers, because this post will bear only a tenuous relationship with Italy.
Here it is: I can take a plane and get to Italy from California faster than my mother got from Palm Springs, California to Moline in western Illinois yesterday.
You see, yesterday morning we got up at 4:30 to get my 82 year-old mother on a 6:10 AM plane to Denver, going on to Moline, Illinois. Simple, straightforward, and damn early.
Of course, this was only the route printed on the ticket. What’s printed on a ticket means diddly to airlines operating in the US. They are unregulated. Hurray! They can do whatever they want with you!
In any case, mother has trouble walking, so the ticket also had a request for a wheelchair at each transfer point.
Now, here’s the thing. My mother got on the flight to Denver, which left on time from Little Palm Springs airport, where she was whisked away in a wheelchair without incident.
In the afternoon we got a call from Bill, who was supposed to pick her up in Moline. He’d waited for her original flight, then the next flight out of Denver, which he stated wasn’t nearly full. She was on neither flight.
We looked at her itinerary online, and all the vile flight possibilities were listed on a page that scrolled forever. So we called United Airlines, hoping to find out where they had sent her. We waited on hold for 30 minutes and gave up. Then we twittered United. They told us to try the same phone number again. But another twitter post to someone else said to contact “support.” The only support listed on the United Airlines web site was to web site support, but Martha called it anyway. It was indeed support from the web site—but lo and behold, you could actually get transferred to a live person who could actually help us. In India, I think, but still.
So we found out that my mother had been routed to Atlanta, then she doubled back to Moline—all due to a plane cancellation. She was scheduled to arrive in Moline at 11:38pm, 15 1/2 hours after her first take off. She got in later than that.
I called my Mother this morning to find out the details. Gruesome, to say the least. When she got off the plane in Denver and got to the gate to wait for her connecting flight she heard an announcement but couldn’t make out what it said—so she walked up to the desk and asked. The attendant informed her that there was a problem with the plane, so she was to go across the aisle and wait in a long, long, long line to get reassigned.
All of this without a wheel chair.
Finally she get re-ticketed. She had to go to a gate far far away. So far she had to stop and ask where it was three times.
Without a wheelchair.
Eventually she made it to her gate. No hurry, because the plane she was now taking to Atlanta wouldn’t fly for quite some time.
Eventually she got to Atlanta.
But the story does not end here. Not by a long shot.
According to my mother, the woman who would be flying the Atlanta to Moline route was in training. She knew this because she sat up front and they had the flight deck door open. She could hear them yacking. Apparently there is no terrorism on the Atlanta to Moline route.
So they took off. Then they circled the airport. Around and around they went. Practicing, evidently. It was nearing midnight, according to my mother. I suspect a great time to practice flying a plane in circles. My mother had been in transit for almost 18 hours at that point. Remember, it only takes 12 hours to get from California to Frankfurt.
They made it to Moline, finally. Moline had a wheelchair for her. So mom is talking to the wheelchair pusher, and she says, “I hope the guy who was waiting for me showed up because I was supposed to arrive early in the afternoon.”
It turns out that Bill had spent so much time in the Moline airport yesterday that pretty much everyone knew him. “Oh him, yeah, he’s here. He’s been in and out all day.”
Some people should get medals for what they do. Bill is one of them. As for the airlines who make their 82 year old passengers go through such hell, well, we know where we’d shove their medals, don’t we?
Isn’t it time we insisted on some reasonable behavior from people who take our money in exchange for transporting us (I mean to where we actually want to go)? Like this, perhaps:
Delays and Cancellations for European Union Related Flights
Unlike the U.S., the European Union (EU) does provide for compensation for flight delays and cancellations. In most, but not all, cases involving a delay or cancellation of a flight, a passenger is entitled to compensation under European Parliament Regulation (EC) 261/2004 for delayed and canceled flights. There are three levels of compensation:
- in the event of long delays (two hours or more, depending on the distance of the flight), passengers must in every case be offered free meals and refreshments plus two free telephone calls, telex or fax messages, or emails;
- if the time of departure is deferred until the next day, passengers must also be offered hotel accommodation and transport between the airport and the place of accommodation;
- when the delay is five hours or longer, passengers may opt for reimbursement of the full cost of the ticket together with, when relevant, a return flight to the first point of departure.
~ via AirSafe.com
So here are your travel tips. Always fly direct to Europe. If you run into trouble and can’t find anything on the airlines phone lines but crappy musak, find a twitter contact for that airline. Making your plight public should at least get a reasonable response.