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 80th 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 80th
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.


