American Airlines flight cancelled due to booing passengers

by Grant Martin on

People love to get angry and take sides when things turn south during air travel. If you don’t believe me, go to Flyertalk.com, click on ANY forum, click on ANY thread, and you’ll probably see a labor vs. management or passenger vs. airline dispute.

These disputes come into particular focus during delays. Whether mechanical or weather related, it always seems like there are a dozen armchair pilots sitting in the crowd saying something like “It’s just a landing gear locking pin! Who needs that? I’m going to miss my connection!”

Just last week in Providence I sat next to a guy howling because the weather was fine in Providence and there was a weather delay. What he didn’t realize was that there was a ring of thunderstorms around the airport causing traffic. Not right above us.

Passengers on a recent American Airlines flight were so fired up from a delay in their crew showing up that they actually booed the employees when they boarded the plane. The pilots and flight attendants were so miffed that they canceled the flight, stranding passengers in Miami overnight.

Now who is the villain here? Nobody deserves to be booed at, especially when you’re just doing your job and connected in from a late flight. But as a rule, passengers don’t really know the full details of what’s going on so we can expect them to act like a fussy mob. Especially if your job is to deal with passengers all day. Should you have really canceled the flight?

It’s a close one, but I’m going with the passengers on this one.

[Via Gothamist]

United Airlines’ 1994 misstep multiplied

by Jamie Rhein on

The less than stellar reputation of United Airlines doesn’t surprise me. (see article) I decided back in 1994 the airlines wasn’t for me. As missteps go, it wasn’t major, but enough to lose two customers that I like to think have snowballed into the airline’s woes of today. Generally, I’m not spiteful, but If the service back then is any indication of what has transpired since, I’m sympathetic to anyone who has flown United.

My story started with the 12 p.m. flight from Los Angeles to Singapore via Tokyo. I was in a buoyant mood at LAX. I had on a new outfit and we had just finished a wonderful three days with friends in who live in Santa Monica, West Hollywood and Orange. We were heading back to Singapore for our second year as teachers after a summer of travel and regrouping. We were well-rested and fit.

The warm fuzzy feeling began to wane over the Pacific as soon as the pilot announced an engine had failed and we were heading to Alaska, but soon after changed this to San Francisco. I had just finished lunch and the movie had started. Alaska sounded intriguing. San Francisco–not so much. Besides, my mother would soon be getting on a plane in New York on a flight through Frankfurt, Germany to Singapore.

After we stood in line for six hours, getting re-booked on a flight through Hong Kong for the next day, it was clear to me that my mother would be arriving in Singapore before us. Originally, we were to arrive 12 hours before her. Making the best of a bad situation, I phoned a good friend of mine who lived in Livermore close to San Francisco. He was thrilled with the idea of meeting for breakfast.

The bad situation got worse when one of United’s personnel stood up on the ticket counter, waving a toothpaste/toothbrush kit, shouting to the 30 of us left waiting for our hotel vouchers. “There aren’t any hotels left,” he said. “If you want us to put you up, you have to fly back to L.A.”

Say, what? It was 9 p.m. My stomach was rumbling; the food from lunch long gone. “But you have to hurry,” he shouted over the din of protest, pointing us to the direction of the gate where a plane was waiting. The two Polish women who had somehow become separated from their tour group heading for China after the Tokyo transfer, recognized sympathy in our faces and decided we were the ones who knew something. Their English wasn’t the best, so my husband had to explain to them that we weren’t going to Tokyo at this moment, but to LA. The rag-tag group of us clutched our toothbrush kits as we found seats on the last United flight back to L.A.. So far, the kits were our only compensation.

The flight back to L.A. was accompanied by wine–lots of it. The flight attendants walked the aisles pouring from regular sized bottles. The stewardess pressed the remainder of a bottle into my hand before I got off the plane, patted me on the back, and said, “Good luck.”

By that time, my mother was halfway to Frankfurt. The sour woman at United customer service told me that there was no way they could let my mother know at the airport in Singapore where we were. “Great.” I pictured my mom in a country where she hadn’t been before, wondering where we were and unsure of how to find us. If she followed the directions to our apartment, I fretted that she might not find the key where we left it or know how to turn on the air conditioner. Singapore in August is BLAZING hot. There she would be in our living room dripping sweat with no food in the refrigerator wondering when we might show up. These were the days before cell phones.

Back at LAX, we looked for an airport shuttle to take us to the hotel, arriving there 15 minutes before room service ended. The restaurant was already closed. With the $5 phone card, the airline gave us, I started making calls to Singapore to find someone to meet my mom. The assistant principal was home and was more than happy to offer his help. Barely able to down soggy French fries, and a hamburger, I took off my new outfit so it might look halfway fresh in the morning. Our suitcases were who knows where.

The next day, there we were back at the LAX airport for the 12 p.m. flight. Could we get bumped to First Class after all we went through, we wondered? No! Any travel vouchers? No! Eventually, there we were once again flying over the Pacific eating the exact same food we ate the day before–same menu. The movie was also the same. Since I was wearing the same clothes, it felt like the same day, although this time we did make it all the way to Tokyo where we said goodbye to our Polish women friends who didn’t have a clue about when or how they would meet up with the rest of their travel group to China. No one at United was helping them out.

There was my mother and the assistant principal waiting for us at the other side of customs in Singapore.

What was United’s response to the letter I wrote as a complaint? We were each given a $200 voucher, good for any domestic full-fare price over the next year. These were totally not usable given that we were living in Singapore at the time.

The result of the fiasco has meant I haven’t flown United since. Where the airline made its first mistake was not helping me contact my mother–particularly since those of us who flew back to L.A. were not enjoying a hotel in San Francisco with the other passengers and dinner at a reasonable hour. It was the least they could have done. Since that didn’t happen, something else needed to have occurred to sooth our nerves. I can’t imagine what the decision makers were thinking when they sent us back to L.A. and didn’t bump us to First Class at least on the LA to Tokyo leg, even though there was room. These were two easy solutions that would have kept me coming back. Instead, my alliance switched to Northwest and I’ve never looked back.

The photo by Alan Light is a United Airlines flight in 1987. Things sure have changed.

Plane Answers: Is “Free Flight” the answer to ATC delays?

by Kent Wien on

Welcome to Gadling’s feature, Plane Answers, where our resident airline pilot, Kent Wien, answers your questions about everything from takeoff to touchdown and beyond. Have a question of your own? Ask away!

Kent:

I know a lot has been written lately about airport delays, I have also read something about “Free Flying.” With TCAS is ATC obsolete? Should ATC be more focused on ground operations, to get planes in the air? I know from most recent articles the ATC system is operating on antiquated systems and in need of a massive overhaul. I am interested to hear your opinion, is “Free Flying” in our future?

-Justin

Thanks Justin,

We’re not able to navigate or adjust our spacing using our Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS). This device, which is almost like a radar screen showing the other traffic within 40 miles of our airplane, is solely to keep us from running into someone. Think of it as a backup to the Air Traffic Control system. And just like passengers aren’t generally interested in pilotless airplanes, pilots may not be interested in a world without controllers directing traffic and keeping us safe.

The ability for airplanes to fly directly to a destination is one thing that would shorten travel times, but it’s important to put the benefit in perspective. The FAA is hoping to develop a system that would allow for a direct routing versus today’s system of waypoints and VOR’s that define a more jagged path, but it will only save a few minutes of flight time.

The FAA is even more interested in the ability to space flights closer when near the airport using a new technology called NextGen. Why are they so excited about this?

Because it’s low hanging fruit.

Even at $20 billion, it just might offer the best answer to the capacity problem. Using computers and GPS, we can have more direct flights and airplanes can take care of their own spacing as they approach the airport. Take a look at this video on “NextGen” by David Pogue for CBS News that explains what the FAA is trying to do (after the jump):

While they make the small airplane owners look like the bad guys in this story, it’s hard to see any reason to force Cessna 182 pilots to pay $6,000 for a box that will help ATC control traffic around a hub like DFW or ORD, an area that most general aviation (Cessna) pilots avoid anyway.

Unless we start doing formation takeoff and landings on ultra-wide runways out of JFK and other saturated airports-a highly unlikely scenario-we’re not going to see delays improve without capacity reductions or huge investments in new infrastructure. So the next step is to improve the infrastructure at airports by adding gates, revising taxiways and adding more runways. The trouble is, people living near these airports equate that to more traffic and subsequently, noise. And it’s yet another cost.

At airports with most frequent delays, airlines need to ‘bump-up’ the size of airplanes. A 19-seat Beech 1900 takes up nearly the same airspace that a 747 does. It might take the government to step in and mandate a minimum size of aircraft at these ultra-saturated airports, but this could be an effective way to fix the problem. The smaller airplanes might begin flying more point-to-point trips from lesser used airports in the same way Southwest does now.

We’re going to get some short term relief from the airlines that are cutting back later this year for economic reasons. But that’s no reason to sit back and wait until we’re near gridlock once again to fix the problem.

Thanks for the great question, Justin.

Do you have a question about something related to the pointy end of an airplane? Ask Kent and maybe he’ll use it for next Friday’s Plane Answers feature.

More than 26% of last year’s flights late. Blame congested skies

by Iva Skoch on

As far as airline delays go, 2007 was the second worst year ever, with over a quarter of all US flights arriving late. In December, more than one third of all flights arrived late. Only 2000 was worse, with over 27%.

Rising passenger demand and an industry preference for smaller planes causing congestion in the skies and on runways is to blame, AP reports. Experts say that flight delays will be getting increasingly more common. There is no hope for improvement anytime soon, because airlines continue to replace large planes with smaller ones in order to maximize profit margins by flying with fewer empty seats.

We can expect, once again, that the airlines will just adjust their flights times. If you tell passengers upfront that a flight from Boston to DC takes 4 hours (although it should only take about 1 hour) and you get them there in 4 hours, there is–technically speaking–no delay.

(Photo: NASA – Day In the Life of Air Traffic Over the United States)

Wasps nest inside planes, cause delays

by Iva Skoch on

The airline industry hardly seems to run out of reasons for flights to be delayed or canceled. Here is a really good one from Australia.

A total of five Qantas airline flights were delayed or canceled between January and March 2006 because of “wasp infestation.” Yes, apparently, wasps had built 20-30 nests inside parts of the A330 planes while they were waiting on the runway, according to BBC.

While the plane was taxiing away from the runway, the pilots noticed the brake temperature rose to 685C, causing six of the eight main landing gear tires to deflate. Smoke was coming from the main landing gear area, but nobody was hurt (aside from the wasps).

Qantas and the airport operators have been criticized for responding too slowly to the wasp infestation but a subsequent “enhanced pest eradication program” had now brought the problem under control. Man wins again!