A Letter to US Airways

(Note: I actually sent this to US Airways today.  Eagerly awaiting their response)

To whom it may concern,

The austere logo of incompetence.

I am writing because your website gave me no number to call, and I didn’t want to click around looking for one and give you the satisfaction of any more hits. That is complaint Number One—if your customers are going to arrive (woefully late) at their final destination after a trip that made Dante’s nine circles of hell look like a honeymoon in Aruba, at least have the decency to make yourself easy to contact.

Yesterday I experienced the most absurd and frustrating day of travel of my life.  The weather was cold, but mild.  The airports were crowded, but not unusually so. US Airways aircraft were present, but entirely dysfunctional.  I’d have to say the same for whoever was handling logistics, as my bag arrived in Detroit before I did.  From what I can tell from yesterday’s shoddy operation, you probably flew my luggage first class, and served it cocktails.  Accordingly, my suitcase will be filing a gushing compliment.  My bitter complaint continues below.

I left Boston at 9am and did not arrive in Detroit until after 11pm.  Thirteen-plus hours.  I could have driven to Detroit faster.  In fact, I thought, my grandmother could have driven to Detroit faster (both of my grandmothers are deceased—thanks for bringing up painful memories).  I would be angrier about this if I were not wryly amused at the cluelessness of your organization.

Let me continue by saying I have flown US Airways many times in the past because of your competitive (cheap) prices.  Service has been generally good, meaning no one has screwed up.  That’s the level of service I expect—just don’t screw anything up.   I don’t have a very high bar.  As a kid, my Dad used

All I'm really looking for

to bring me little bags of airline peanuts as souvenirs from his business travels, and I would be ecstatic.  This should tell you something. I delight in airline peanuts as travel gifts.  All twelve of them. That’s my bar. And yesterday it clotheslined you.

During the Absurd and Frustrating Day, it became readily apparent why your prices are so low—you seem to fly crappy planes, with crappy maintenance crews taking care of them, and crappy people handling the issues that arise when all your crappiness gets heaped into one huge craptacular pile of failure.

I received four emails yesterday titled “Flight cancellation impacting MICHAEL WOLKING.”  Why do you feel the need to shout my name in all caps?  WHY?  WOULD YOU LIKE IT IF I TYPED THIS MESSAGE IN ALL CAPS?  I would think not.  I would guess that it would annoy you.

Here’s what annoys me.  You canceled flight 2590 from DCA to DTW at 11:40am.  Not pm.  This was not the last flight of the day from DC to Detroit.  Clearly my suitcase enjoyed its own posh voyage.  But some logistics program decided I would get to Detroit faster if I flew to Philadelphia first and then left there at 5:40pm.  Guess what?  That 5:40 flight was canceled too. Flight 4074.  You sent me three messages about it, two of them this morning, after my arrival.  Don’t remember them?  Here they are:

7:51 pm, Monday Dec 20: “We regret to inform you that US Airways flight # 4074 from Philadelphia (PHL) to Detroit (DTW) on Dec 20 at 5:49 PM has been cancelled XM1.”

7:31am, Tuesday Dec 21: “We regret to inform you that US Airways flight # 4074 from Philadelphia (PHL) to Detroit (DTW) on Dec 20 at 5:49 PM has been cancelled XD2”

7:36 am, Tuesday Dec 21: “We regret to inform you that US Airways flight # 4074 from Philadelphia (PHL) to Detroit (DTW) on Dec 20 at 5:49 PM has been cancelled XD8.”

I don’t know what “XM1”, “XD2”, or “XD8” are referring to.  Perhaps they are adverbial phrases: “…has been canceled extremely masterfully times 1”, “….has been canceled extremely deftly times two”, and “…has been canceled extremely deftly times 8.”  If so, I do not appreciate the degrees of escalating cleverness associated with the cancelation of my flights.  It’s very sneaky, and quite a disincentive to provide good service.  You ought to keep such designations to yourself, if at all.

These emails also included a number to call for “re-accomodation assistance.”  Such language is offensive.  “Re-accomodation” implies that there was some sort of “accommodation” in the first place.  Nothing was accommodating about my day yesterday.  Nothing.  OK fine, you did reroute me to an airport with a Chick-fil-A (ahem, thankyou.).  But what if I didn’t

The only reason you should ever divert my flight pattern.

love Chick-fil-A?  Repeat: nothing accommodating about yesterday.  Not a SINGLE peanut.

Consider what happened on my final flight of the day. To reduce the likelihood I would contact you to complain, you put me in first class.  I would have to say that backfired.  In reality, it only gave me the chance to experience more incompetence up close and personal—as we waited on the runway, an announcement came over the plane that we would have to return to the gate to “unload four passengers” because we were over weight restrictions.  Tip: you might avoid weight problems if you could provide service without rerouting customers to airports with Chick-fil-A.

As the obese among us shifted uncomfortably in their overburdened seats, passengers began nervously chatting about who was to be thrown off.  It felt like a bad episode of Survivor, one in which your clientele was collectively thinking that a scorpion-infested, otherwise barren desert would have been offered a more pleasurable travel experience than the one you were providing.

We heard a bump pulling into the gate.  Shocking.  Only a few of us realized it was the sound of your customer service rep getting thrown under a bus while your flight attendant announced that she had “no idea” how the outcasts were to be selected.

We waited.  And waited.  Your flight attendants discussed far too audibly how they thought those with children would be asked to leave first.  I would applaud such a strategy if our plane was leaking gas and about to explode, which I’m growing to suspect is a distinct possibility for the delicate aircraft tendered by your maintenance crews–last year, you did have to land a plane in the Hudson River “after striking at least one bird,” according to CNN.

Full double bird strike.

Your pilot himself referred to the attack as a “double bird strike” (thank heavens it wasn’t a “full double bird strike”). Had the flock recently been subjected to unnecessary layovers as well?  When a few angry sparrows can cause an emergency landing, someone has to begin asking questions.

So here’s another one–were you really going to strand women and children of our flight in Philadelphia for the night while the rest of us would fly home safely?  At Christmas?  The only positive I could see is if you found a way to use the lump of coal in your stocking in a more environmentally friendly manner than the jet fuel that’s currently melting ice caps and killing polar bears.

Fortunately, the fake weight problem was just another bout with incompetence, and no one was asked to leave the plane.  You had, however, successfully frightened everyone on board by announcing a problem and then failing to demonstrate how it had been resolved. While ignorance may be bliss among passengers, flagrant ignorance within your flight and maintenance crews ought to be something of a concern.

The cluelessness continued. We pulled out from the gate and again heard a loud thumping noise under the front wheel.  Your clientele began laughing, knowing what was to come over the intercom next: “Sorry folks, we’re going to have to go ahead and call maintenance again.”  Ah yes.  The old “Declare problems that don’t exist, then create new ones as you try to leave” strategy.  This generally doesn’t work well.  For more details, see the war in Iraq, which costs roughly what I would be willing to pay to avoid flying on your airline again.

Sadly, oh so very sadly, I do not have three trillion dollars.  Yet.  And as it were, I have to fly to Mississippi in less than a month.  My group has already booked flights on your airline.  I shudder to think I will be joining them from Charlotte to Jackson.  I long for the US Airways of my past, when no one screwed up, and I would arrive at my American destination in less time than it takes to fly to Tanzania.  A repeat of yesterday’s absurd and frustrating debacle would really leave me no choice but to send you another complaint that is as ineffective, inconsequential, and incoherent as your own service.

Sincerely (somewhat),

MW