If you've read the news over the past two days one of the leading stories is that American Airlines has cancled 1,000 flights. Unfortunately I have been snagged in this travel nightmare today. I had a quick two night business trip that was to conclude with an evening flight home today. Of couse my flight was one of those that were cut.
I learned of the problems around mid-morning when a coworker jumped on the web during a break in our meetings. I remembered that I had been scheduled to fly on an S-80 for my return trip so I immediately logged into my frequent flier account to check my status. The remarkable thing was that the airline's website barely even mentioned the issues. A plain link to a quick PR blurb was all of the information given.
Next I pulled up my intinerary and was happy to find that my flight was still listed for departure at its original time. Satisfied that things were looking fine I went back to work. Unfortunately, right before lunch I again logged in to print my boarding pass. That effort was met with a website error and the suggested remedy was to "speak with ticketing agent at the terminal." That message is NEVER a good sign. Still my itinerary showed that I had a flight and that it was on time. Something was up.
My next move was to get on the phone with AA customer service. I was pretty suprised that the phone call was met with a message, "All representatives are busy. Please try your call again." What? They wouldn't even put me on hold? That is a REALLY bad sign. I tried calling a dozen more times and kept getting the same message. The system would not let me talk to a real person, and the automated prompt said that my itinerary was still valid and on time. Lies!
In a last ditch effort I followed the voice prompts to dig through the automated system until I was prompted to say "Agent" if I had a special need. A little weak I know, but that seemed to be the only way to talk to a real person. At that point I advanced to actually being on hold, which I considered progress. I then spent over 90 minutes on hold. During which time I drove across town (speaker phone rocks), ordered food, ate, and had plenty of leasurely water cooler talk. My cell phone battery died shortly thereafter, without me ever talking to a real person.
I had already checked out of my hotel and my rental car needed to be returned. It looked like I was about to get stranded at the airport. I called the car rental company and they were kind enough to let me know that if I were to return my car, I would be unable to rent another. All of the cars were booked so if I gave up my car I'd be without wheels. My solution was to immediately drive to the airport to talk to a ticket agent, but in order to keep my car I left it in hourly parking. The rep on the phone said it would be $75 if I were to ditch the car in the parking garage. If I could get a flight I'd pay $75 but if not I'd still have a car. It would be totally worth it either way.
After about an hour in line at the airport I was finally able to talk to a real person. I finally caught a break when they were able to find a commuter jet that had an open seat tomorrow morning bright and early. I immediately set to work getting my hotel to hold a room for tonight and extending my car rental. I caught another break when I was able to secure a room (places had booked up quickly) and even got them to match the prior night's rate despite the fact that they doubled the rate overnight. You've got to love a company that charges everyone double due to this sudden scarcity. Capitalism at its best.
So now I have returned to my hotel. I've spent the whole afternoon and evening working to get myself home, but now I've gotten as far as the hotel where I started the day by the time I was scheduled to arrive home. Today has been a-hell-of-a-day. Thankfully A little experience let me keep my rental car and some bargaining and quick action let my hotel room at a semi-reasonable rate. I have a boarding pass in hand that will get me home only 15 hours late. I managed to work the system well enough that it didn't turn into the total nightmare it easily could have been.
Today I learned that the airlines are not even close to prepared for this type of problem. They don't have enough phone lines or the ability to scale up their customer service numbers. They also are completely unable to give any useful information on the internet or by phone. In this day-and-age it is rediculous to expect someone to be face to face at the terminal to get a flight rebooked. I hope that this experience is a wake up call for all of the airlines (I'm sure none of the others would have done any better than AA) for their maintainance programs and their customer service departments.
I love to travel but these days it is becoming more and more of a bitter experience if I have to give up my fate to the airline industry. Come on guys, lets get our acts together.
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