Of Airlines, and Their Wicked Ways

It’s a new year, and I know it should be a forgive-and-forget, looking-ahead, making-resolutions time. It’s also ages since I wrote, and I have lots of pictures – of Christmas, of our trip to Paris – to post. But first I must get all this hatred for airlines (or “evil-doers”, as I now think of them) out of my system. This post will be long, and over-detailed, because I have a lot of venting to do.

As the constant reader knows, I’ve done lots of flying about this year. Too much, perhaps. There have been some highlights, like getting upgraded to whatever Air New Zealand calls business class these days, after the bird-strike/Victoria Beckham incident this summer. Of course, in order to enjoy that particular highlight, I had to spend the night in an airport hotel, without luggage, and spend c. eight hours in the Koru Club at LAX, looking forlorn and disheveled. I’m trying to think of any other highlights, but that’s about it, aside from the time they brought around a tray of Afghan biscuits in the Koru Club, and perhaps the time they let us board late in Auckland so we could watch New Zealanders winning Olympic medals in rowing.

Lowlights, however, have been ample. Often they involve these so-called partnerships between airlines, and lead to a conversation like this:

United person: Here is your boarding pass for the LA flight. You’ll have to get the boarding pass for your international travel when you arrive at LAX.

Me (thinking of time it takes to catch bus to other terminal, stand in line at check-in, etc, and worrying about tight connection, chance of losing my seating assignment and getting stuck in a middle seat for twelve hours WHICH HAS HAPPENED BEFORE): Why can’t you issue it? It’s all on the same ticket, and Air New Zealand is part of the Star Alliance.

United: Because you didn’t book the ticket through United.

Me: But when I fly from New Zealand, they give me both boarding passes, even when I don’t book the ticket through Air New Zealand.

United: We cannot issue a boarding pass for another airline, even a partner airline, unless you book the whole ticket through United. Now go away and enjoy the lack of facilities in Louis Armstrong Airport, like the PJs coffee house that closes at four, and don’t even think of visiting the Red Carpet Club, because we don’t have one.  [That last sentence was implied, rather than stated aloud.]

OK. So that’s the United rule. Except the next time I fly United, I’m given both boarding passes, even though I didn’t book the ticket through United. And then the time after that, I’m NOT given the second boarding pass. And so on. When I ask Air New Zealand about this, they say that United should issue the boarding pass. These two airlines need relationship counseling.

Other United lowlights: no food served on the three-and-a-half flight from LAX to New Orleans, though they do offer lame “snack boxes” for sale – nothing like a sandwich, say, because the flight is too short. No free drinks served on international flights, as we discovered flying to London: you’ll need to cough up six dollars. And, as T. Middy found out on his fourteen-hour flight to Sydney, no TV-screens-in-seatbacks, just four movies played back to back on those small cabin screens. (Note to United: this is why we usually fly with partner airlines.)

And this conversation, when I was checking in for my flight back to New Orleans at LAX in September, after spending the night there: at certain times of year, apparently, there is no way you can fly in from New Zealand and get back to New Orleans on the same day, even via Denver.

Me (after the machine has told me it’s too late to check in): Excuse me, I’m not being allowed to check in, but it’s more than an hour until my flight leaves.

United person (in nasty and sarcastic tone): You better check your itinerary, ma’am.

Me (producing itinerary, feeling flustered): Here it is, see?

United (reading itinerary, saying nothing at all, not changing facial expression, printing out boarding pass, handing it to me, tagging my luggage, not saying anything at all. Not a word.)

My flight time had changed to forty minutes or so earlier, and an e-mail had been sent to me in the middle of the night. But that morning I didn’t check e-mails: I got straight into the shuttle van for the airport, and then spent two hours driving around Los Angeles. I don’t think airlines should count on people having internet access at all times, especially when they’re in transit. And – call me old-fashioned – I think that people who work in Customer Service should be polite and helpful, rather than surly and bitter. Or at least they should know how to mask their bitterness, the way waitresses and teachers do.

Today I checked my Mileage Plus account, and discovered that at least four trans-Pacific trips are missing, as well as the trips to Sydney and all the trips to Wellington, though I know my account number was in the system. To ask for these (more than 30,000 miles) to be credited, I have to supply ticket numbers and seating assignments. So now it’s play hunt-the-boarding-pass time. This may be Air New Zealand’s fault. United can’t be THAT bad.

Not when there’s Delta and Air France. These two airlines make United/Air NZ look like exemplars of marital bliss. Delta and Air France are in some sort of alliance, but it’s one of mistrust, non-communication, and mutual frustration. I think they may be about to break up. Maybe they should. Their relationship is extremely dysfunctional.

In October, when T. Middy and I decided to celebrate my return from the deepest south (and what he sulkily termed our “long-distance marriage”) by spending the New Year holiday in Paris, it all seemed very straightforward. We were going to be in St Louis for Christmas, so we’d fly out of St Louis on Boxing Day and connect at some more eastern point to a Paris flight. We could book the whole thing through Delta. We were routed through JFK on the way out, and through Atlanta on the return. I went online and chose all our seating assignments, including a group-of-two on one side of the Air France Airbus.

The amiable and generous Dinaw Mengestu offered us the use of his Paris flat, while he and his fiancée were in Ethiopia. We booked a hotel in St Louis for the night we returned, Friday. We left our car with the Middy family, and arranged to take TM’s mother out for lunch the next day, to celebrate her 80^th birthday. Actually, this was a ruse: we were charged with getting her to the surprise party TM’s sister was organizing. Our plan was to attend the party and then drive part of the way back to New Orleans, staying somewhere in southern Missouri that night, arriving home on Sunday afternoon.

Instead, this is what happened. On the outward leg, we got a taste of the chaos and eccentricity that is the Air France seating system. Five days before we left, TM called Air France to check on our seating assignments. He was told that we had none at all, and the seats I’d booked back in October were unbookable, because they were always reserved (for unclear reasons). But we could have another pair, in a nearby row, so everything would be fine. Except maybe it wouldn’t, because at this point it was too close to the day of travel.

When we checked in at St Louis, about eight hours before our Paris flight was due to leave from JFK, we found we’d been separated and placed on different sides of the plane. The Delta agent shrugged, and said we’d have to speak to the Air France agent at JFK. So there we lined up for some time in the general melee, watching while agent after agent closed up his or her counter, until it was down to two people working. The guy who helped us, at last, was very nice and tried to help, something we found of most of the Air France employees at JFK and at Charles De Gaulle. But he couldn’t get us seats together. The flight was very full, he said, and there was the business of “unlocking” seats, which he couldn’t do; the reservations we’d made in October, and the conversation we’d had earlier in the week, meant nothing.

While we were waiting near the gate, I called Delta and Air France to investigate. The Air France agent said she couldn’t access our reservation at all because we’d booked through Delta, even though the agent T. Middy had dealt with earlier in the week had been able to call up the booking without a problem. The Delta agent said that the flight was not very full, so not to stress out – we’d be able to get reassigned once the unlocking took place. I told her that the flight was, in fact, very full. She said she couldn’t see that on her system. Also, she told me, I shouldn’t worry about the return journey, because that flight wasn’t full either. When I expressed doubt about her ability to see into the dark heart of the Air France booking system, she called an Air France agent, and told me that our seating request for the return flight had been duly noted. But Delta could never do anything but request seat assignments, because it was all up to Air France. I asked her if this meant that we should have booked through Air France rather than Delta, but she said it all came down to the eleventh-hour unlocking of seats. I don’t think anyone actually knows what this means, but a lot of airline employees talk about it the way people in the Middle Ages might have referred to the onset of the Black Death, as mysterious and depressing and beyond anyone’s control.

And Air France, I’ve learned, loves to lock up those seats. We saw some friends from London when we were in Paris, and they said they’d had the same experience on a flight to Bordeaux: their family of five had been separated, despite having booked seats together, and there was much talk of the drama of unlocking and its total impossibility. Later, at CDG, I was talking to an American who said he, his wife, and their small child had all been separated on an Air France flight to India, even though they thought they’d secured seating assignments together. It seems there’s nothing anyone can do about it, not even check in hours in advance, because all the mystical unlocking goes on at the last minute.

Finally, at the gate, an agent instantly gave us seats together, a pair of two by the window. Unlocked – voila!  The flight was very full, but we could sit together in the newly unlocked area. We were happy at last. The food was pretty good on board, the best Economy airline food I can remember. Drinks were free, including an aperitif of champagne, and there were TV screens in our seatbacks. Our bags arrived; we bought tickets and caught the train into Paris without a problem. We then had a lovely holiday, which I will talk about in another, happier post.

And then: the long journey home. On Friday morning, we returned to CDG, arriving several hours before our flight was due to depart. Too late! The flight was over-booked, we were told, and we would have to go on standby. A lot of people around us were hearing the same thing. Nobody was happy. The stress of the situation was exacerbated by the insanely long time it took to get through Immigration (more than 30 minutes in a queue of hundreds of people, with only two people checking passports) and Security (another half an hour, though at least they don’t make you take off your shoes). At the gate, everyone was standing in various snaking lines, for no apparent reason, as the flight was delayed and nobody was allowed to board for almost an hour. One agent tried to deal with all of us left-behinds, including several families – two of which had a mixture of seats and standby notices.  Everything depended, we were told, on people transferring from other flights: if their flights were delayed arriving, some of us would be able to wriggle on.

After everyone boarded, she told us only three could wriggle on: the two standby members of one family, who looked beyond relieved, and a fifteen-year-old boy traveling alone. The rest of us would have to stay overnight at an airport hotel; they’d try to find us flights for the next day. This process, of sitting in another area, waiting while the agent assigned to us tried to get us seats on a flight home, took hours. By the time we had our boarding passes for Saturday, it was getting dark outside. I used the ten-minute phone card I was given to call the hotel in St Louis and re-book for Saturday. TM sent a Blackberry message to his sister telling her we were going to miss the surprise party. The agent kept coming to talk to us, asking for ideas of other cities where we could connect to St Louis – I suggested JFK and Dulles. Some time later she returned: she could get us to the US, but not on any connecting flight. Finally, in exasperation she pleaded with her supervisor to unlock some seats on the Atlanta flight, and this worked. Of course, it meant that we were bumping people with reservations for the next day, just as we’d been bumped that day.

Another night in Paris doesn’t sound bad, I know. But we didn’t have another night in Paris: we had a night at the Park Inn outside Roissy-en-France. T. Middy was sick: he’d almost thrown up on the train that morning, and was clammy, feverish, and nauseous. And our luggage had been checked and could not be retrieved. So we went to the Park Inn, part of a charmless industrial park of jerrybuilt hotels ten minutes drive away, a hotel so given to primary colors it appeared to be made of LEGO. We had our free dinner, which was OK, particularly the free-glass-of-wine part, and listened to everyone else in the dining room complain about getting bumped from their flights. (“Welcome Air France!” read the sign outside the restaurant.) TM needed to sleep, and we’d decided to get to the airport first thing in the morning, just in case. It’s not a bad place to spend time – attractive, not noisy, you can get manicures and/or decent sandwiches – and there were no major lines at Immigration this time.

We got on the full plane – avoiding the gaze of the angry and despairing people clustered around the stand-by desk, complaining that they had reservations, that their families could not be separated, etc – and arrived in Atlanta more or less on time. In Atlanta we had about half an hour of false hope. “This is so much better than LAX and JFK,” we told each other. The TSA workers seemed non-belligerent and willing to speak. (Elsewhere, they favor curt nods, rolled eyes, and other minimal gestures over actual language, unless they’re shouting at people who don’t speak English.) The lines were long, but moved swiftly. Our bags came out right away, and there were helpful people to point us to the transfer area. We went through security again right away, without having to ride to another terminal.

But on the other side of security, it was a different story. We had no boarding passes for the flight to St Louis, because Air France said it couldn’t issue them. Of course they couldn’t. But we were booked onto the next flight, and had a piece of paper to prove it. I joined the line of over 50 people at the Delta desk, many of whom had missed connections and were frantic, trying to get to overseas destinations. Someone at the Info desk told TM we should just go to the gate. I’d just overheard this conversation in the line.

Desperate Passengers: We’re trying to get on the flight to Puerto Rico!

Delta guy, working the line: You can get your boarding passes at the gate.

DPs: We were just there, and they wouldn’t give us anything! They said we had to line up here.

Delta guy: You go back there, and tell them to give you your boarding passes.

DPs: What if they say no?

Delta guy: You tell them that THE SUPERVISOR SAID TO GIVE YOU YOUR BOARDING PASSES.

DPs: What is your name?

Delta guy: Just tell them THE SUPERVISOR.

I whispered to TM, as we ran to our gate, that we could mention that THE SUPERVISOR thing if necessary. It wasn’t, as it turned out. Not that we had seats on the flight. Oh no. The Delta agent told us the following: that there was no record of us on this flight; that the piece of paper we had from Air France was, in effect, so much meaningless nonsense; that we weren’t even on standby, though she would add us to the long, long list; and that it was a very full flight and we were unlikely to get seats.

But we did, after a tense wait while everyone else was seated and all the other standby names were called. And on the flight itself, we especially enjoyed the announcement made towards the end. There’d been turbulence, so the drinks service had been abandoned. The flight attendant wanted to apologize to those of us – most of us – who did not get the chance to get, as she said, “a cup of water, or … or a hot drink.”

So much for an aperitif, T. Middy said; now we’re reduced to “a cup of water,” which we don’t even get.

At St Louis, it was busy, busy, busy, and the baggage took ages to appear on the carousel. Not our bags, of course. They were AWOL. In the Delta baggage office, small and crowded, we waited our turn. The agents there were clearly tired from dealing with the annoyed general public. They were snippy and frowning. One of them raised her voice when some non-English-speakers didn’t know how to describe the color of their missing bags. The man gestured at his jacket sleeve. “IS THAT BROWN OR GREEN, SIR? BROWN OR GREEN?” We were next. We handed over our luggage receipts. She looked at them as though they were Tarot cards, maybe, or missives from an alien planet. She could not deal with Air France receipts, she said; we’d have to wait for the other agent.

We waited. The other agent explained that Delta had no record of our luggage, because it had been checked by Air France, and their numbers did not compute with the Delta system. Did we see it in Atlanta? Good. Because otherwise, Delta would have no clue as to the whereabouts of any of our bags. Maybe our luggage would arrive on the next flight, around midnight, or maybe not. Delta could not tell us. We’d have to wait until the morning. After some sob-storying from us, the agent said she’d call us on T. Middy’s cell phone if the bags came in that night. We decided that if she called, we’d come back from the airport hotel to retrieve them.

There was no call, so when we got up on Sunday morning it was Day Three for the clothes. After more than 48 hours without a shave, TM was developing a beard, which he alleged was George Clooney-esque. You be the judge.

He called the 800 number we’d been given, and was on hold for half an hour. (We couldn’t check online, because we hadn’t taken our computers to France. It was supposed to be a relaxing vacation.) Good news: our bags were in St Louis. They’d arrived last night. Thanks for calling, Delta agent!

So that’s about it. We caught the shuttle back to the airport; we retrieved our bags, returned to the hotel, and got to change our clothes. TM shaved off his grizzly whiskers. We visited the Middy family to collect the car, pack up all the Christmas gifts, and hear about the 80^th birthday party we missed. Then we drove for ten hours so we could get home in time for TM to go to work on Monday morning.

Here are the luggage tags of meaninglessness.

I don’t want to fly again any time soon. I have to go to Chicago in February for the AWP conference, and I’m paying more to get a direct flight. Also, I’m only taking hand luggage, even if it means dressing like Heidi en route. I’ll probably get snow-bound, or diverted to various regional airports. Or else there’ll be so much turbulence, I won’t even get my cup of water.

One good thing about all this, that we’ll appreciate long after all the hassle of the trip back is forgotten, more or less: the 1200 Euros in compensation we received from Air France for getting bumped off our original flight. This will cover our excessive eating and drinking for the week in Paris, turning what was an extravagant holiday into something approaching a cheap one. We were offered a choice – 600 Euros each in cash, paid into a credit card, or a travel voucher for 800 Euros each. Sorry Air France, but we’re in no hurry to fly with you again. Despite the aperitifs.

And now, after all this complaining, here are some pictures of our place decorated for Christmas. These were taken just before our party, the one day of the year when most of the apartment is tidy, and the piles of magazines are exiled to the back room. All of this should have come down today, I know: it’s carnival season now, time to move on.

Comments

[Brando]

There is one other bright spot: I think you'll be well prepared to deal with The Tribulation.