Don’t forget paper cuts. Those can really sting.
Here’s my very minor but fairly telling airline story.
I’m on vacation, and I’m actually writing this sitting on the back porch of the rental looking down towards the water. This has no real bearing on the story, I just thought I’d throw that in there because I can.
To get here we had to fly and because I’m 6’6" I always do the economy “plus” upgrade to get more legroom. This time, the only extended room seats were in the exit row. No sweat, I have no problem listening to the extra instructions and I am very capable of opening the door and tossing the kids out first or whatever.
So we check in our bags and get our boarding passes and go wait at the gate. A few minutes before the boarding, we get called to the gate agent. Shell tells us that she can’t get me and my wife seated next to each other after moving our seats.
Wait, what? Why did they move our seats?
Oh, because we said we couldn’t fulfill the exit row duties. So she gave the seats to someone whom could and now she can’t find two seats next to one another. We’ll both have to settle for middle seats somewhere.
Wait, wait, I say, we didn’t say that. We WANT the exit seats.
No, she says adamantly, it says right here that we refused it.
At this point, I’m standing up to my full 6’6" and I’m speaking with a angry growl. We did not decline the seats, we chose them and she needs to FIX. This issue right now.
But she’s an experienced gate agent, she’s used to dealing with unhappy folks, and she’s not impressed in the least. It’s too late, the change is made, and we’re just going to have to deal with it.
I can see that this isn’t going to end well for me, and it’s just a two-hour flight, so I come to the conclusion that it’s better to cut my losses. I’ll write some nasty notes later on and maybe pick up a discount on our next flight for our trouble.
One last thing though: all right, we’ve lost our seats… how do we go about getting our money for the upgrades back?
Now it’s her turn to look surprised. Hold on a minute, you paid EXTRA for those seats?
Now I’m back to super-low, rumbly, dangerous voice: Of course we did. How else do you get an exit row in this day and age?
Oh, we’ll hold on a second.
Two minutes later and we had the exit row seats back.
The moral of the story: If the airline makes a mistake, its your tough shit, there’s nothing they can do. If the airline makes a mistake that will cost them money, then no sweat, they’ll fix it in a jiffy.
Nice that she fixed something that she had just said was impossible to fix.
What airline was it?
Please tell me it was United.
I can’t imagine how scared the mother was. Is shit straight from a horror movie.
The report doesn’t make it clear, but was the AC not working on the plane while it sat on the tarmac?
My experience is they won’t use it. I am not sure if that because they can’t or won’t. The few times I’ve had to sit in Phoenix or Las Vegas, and we’re talking minutes here not two hours, it was so dang hot it was fairly unbearable. This is while sitting at the gate… they don’t use it. It certainly worked fine once we left.
I’m doubting that was the case. I’ve been on a cancelled flight due to the environmental system being out. They take that shit seriously.
But it’s hard to say just how hot it was in the back. Babies get overheated quicker than we do. I could see this happening, but the story sounds … dramatic? Fading in and out of consciousness?
I don’t understand why this happened then. Obviously, airlines gonna airlines, but why would the flight crew be okay with being trapped on a hot plane? It’s one thing when the flight crew does something shitty to a customer because they lose all their empathy through the banality of bureaucracy. I understand how that happens. But this situation has a built-in incentive for the crew to also not want to be there. Why wouldn’t the flight attendants be screaming to get out of there as well?
I obviously don’t know what happened here, but infants occasionally have seizures when they overheat (usually due to fever).
I still maintain that current airline service standards, on aggregate, are exactly what the population wants and is willing to pay for.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4083702-united-airlines-boycott-amounted-nothing
Hey, I’d believe it. I’m surprised that the adults weren’t experiencing symptoms though.
This kind of seizure pretty much only occurs in infants, and it can occur with even mild overheating (ie low grade fever).
Capitalism, hooooo!
American in this case.
A lot of the time, they do not run AC on planes while waiting, because it burns fuel.
A lot (most?) jetways have GPUs that get plugged in to provide power when the doors are open, and many (some?) also have preconditioned air hookups (PCA). The AC from those isn’t as good but save a hell of a lot of money versus running engines just to cool off the plane.
I don’t know how you guys feel about it, but every time I Fly in the summer, I know I am going to bake in that plane either while landing, taking off or both if I hit certain cities. It’s pretty awful but usually a matter of minutes. I can’t imagine 2 hours of it though, as an adult, with an understanding on what is going on.
Ya, I meant once you’re out on the tarmac. At that point, the AC is usually off, and it’s done to conserve fuel.
I’ve had it happen a few times, and the plane got hot as shit… Captain said, “Hey folks, I’m sorry it’s hot, but this is short flight and if I blow too much fuel waiting here, we’re gonna have to go back to the gate to refuel, and we’ll be even later.”
I’ve read somewhere that running the engines for AC on a typical wait time can go into the thousands on fuel cost. I mean, as cheap as tickets are these days, you can see why they don’t do it.