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Who among you has not yet fallen foul of a delayed take-off? I bet there are not too many of you.
Who among you got so darned tired of hearing the same old lame language being used over the departures tannoy system? I am willing to bet that most of you have suffered this annoyance and wished you could take pliers to the speaker wires and cut-off the source of frustration.
Who among you have had to wait over 8 hours before hearing why a delay has occured?
Who among you had connecting flights to catch at the destination?
Who among you had family or friends waiting for hours at your destination’s arrivals hall to greet you?
Who among you suspected you were not being told the complete truth about why the delay had occured?
Who among you is sick to death of hearing that the delay is due to ‘operational problems’?! What is ‘operational problem’? A leaf on the runway? Wrong type of snow? A baggage handler strike? A drunk pilot? A security alert?
Why can’t airlines just tell the truth so everyone of the 200 - 400 passengers on your flight can either catch another airline’s flight out, call family and friends at the destination to reschedule and finally to just allow us to sit back and while away the time without having to continually ask information for updates?
Who among you cannot understand why airlines do not tell you the truth so that you can reset your own expectastions, relax and adjust your plans and reschedule flights if required?
Remaining captive to a delay in a flight departure lounge at an airport is not the most ideal way to spend a day. However the frustration/anger level is increased tenfold if good and truthful information is not forthcoming regularly. In general, airlines fail miserably to communicate properly. Representatives should be in the loop constantly about what is being done to alleviate/improve or resolve the situation. Hearing “I dunno” from them is no good at all to customers who have paid their hard-earned money over to the airline in good faith.
What is the worst situation you have found yourself subjected to by an airline?
2 comments ↓
You’re still not over it, hey!
They are bastards. And they look at the frustrated shouting crying people like they are completely unreasonable, over-re-acting, immature customers. They give this exasperated glare of “Do not dare question me further on what “technical problem” stands for. While you get to sit back on your arse and do nothing, I have to sit on the phone discussing how meagre we can make your apologetic meal voucher.”
My latest story involved a backwater airport (Port Elizabeth) for over six hours of my precious holiday & life, all because of a light drizzle on the other side (Jo’burg). And from the departure lounge I was able to watch the 2pm flight take off, before my 11.30am flight had even made it to PE to pick us up. THAT was fun.
R30 doesn’t buy you enough vodka in the airport!
I spent over six hours in O Hare in Chicago a couple of years back, it was the only way to bounce into Dallas. It wasn’t so much the delay, or the continual moving of the departure gates which in the US is often a 15-25 minute walk but the fact that I had just flown 23 hours CT-LHR-Chicago and really needed my hotel room. But in the US you quickly learn to mask your frustration and behave yourself accordingly unless you want to deal with security.
I also waited a few hours in Llongewe in Malawi while a tropical storm passed, that was fun, a 100 people moving further and further inside the terminal as it started to flood, not know what was going to happen next. And then just like that it passed and we charged to board our plane which safely got us to Blantyre before the next bit of bad weather arrived.
From the 1st world to the new world air travel seems to suck.
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