Q: Several months ago I bought a ticket for my cousin to fly from Budapest to Denver on British Airways. Her luggage was misplaced for two days and I paid $178.18 for some clothes so she could continue her trip.
After the luggage was delivered, I filed a claim with the airline. A British Airways [...]
From the yearly archives:
2003
Flying can be a nerve-racking experience, with its intrusive security screenings, cranky crew members, and antagonistic passengers. Never mind those queasy feelings you may get during takeoffs and landings and when there’s turbulence in the air.
It’s enough to stress you out. In fact, a recent study of business travelers conducted by Alertness Solutions, a Cupertino, [...]
Q: I recently flew from Miami to London on Virgin Atlantic Airways. About ten minutes before our 6:40 p.m. departure, we were told that there would be a mechanical delay. Three hours later our flight was cancelled. At approximately 11 p.m., I was offered a voucher for a shared van ride home.
While other passengers [...]
Make my trip more comfortable. Lose the surprise surcharges. And treat me like a human being, for cryin’ out loud.
When I asked what you wanted from a travel experience, that’s what you said. But your answers in interviews represent more than an abstract wish-list. The way these simple requests have been implemented by the travel [...]
Q: I recently tried to buy an airline ticket on Hotwire for a friend. I have made many purchases through the site and feel pretty comfortable with the screens. But as I was making the booking, I looked at the date and realized it was incorrect. I immediately called the company.
A representative I spoke [...]
On their return trip from a conference, Timothy Johnston, his wife and two students traveling with them tried to connect in St. Louis to their scheduled flight back to Paducah, Ky. They couldn’t. “We were told there was only one seat left on the 16-passenger plane,” the Murray State University professor recalled. It was the last flight of the day, and they were eager to get home. No problem, a gate agent said, and promptly issued each passenger $100 in cash compensation for the inconvenience. They ended up renting a car and driving home to Paducah. Later, Johnston’s carrier even refunded $418 for the unused portion of their tickets. Good customer service? Yes. Good business practice? Maybe.
Q: When I was planning a recent trip to France, I went to the American Express Rewards Web site to look for a rental car. The site directed me to make a reservation with a special code, and then return to the membership rewards site to request the certification. That’s what I did.
Several weeks [...]
Q: My wife and I were married last month and were set to jet away to sunny Mexico for a 6-night, all-inclusive getaway to a very nice resort in Playa Del Carmen. It was a honeymoon we had planned and saved for. But it never happened.
We had booked our trip through a travel agent, [...]
I recently found myself in Europe without a working cell phone or laptop computer.
A nervous client back in the States needed information from me urgently. To make matters worse it was a Sunday, so there was little chance of finding a post office or a hotel with a business center. In other words, I was [...]
Q: I was traveling on US Airways from London to Philadelphia on a return journey which had originated in Munich. For both flights, I upgraded to Envoy class using my frequent flier miles. I reconfirmed the upgrade last year.
At check-in in London, I was told that each of us had to pay a tax [...]
At a time when the airline industry still is struggling to pull out of a tailspin induced by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a soft economy and poor management, do we really need a new carrier? You could almost hear a collective groan from the airline industry’s talking heads when former travel executives Edward Beauvais and Travis Tanner last month unveiled Project Roam, a yet-unnamed discount airline based in Pittsburgh. This is hardly the time to start a new airline, some said.
A seat assignment in economy class is about as desirable as a protracted stopover in a smoke-filled airport terminal or consuming airline food that gives you heartburn, to hear travelers talk about it.
In fact, experienced fliers will go to great lengths to avoid the back of the plane. They plead for upgrades to business class [...]
People who spend a lot of time on the road often spend a lot of time complaining about it.
They gripe about intrusive security screenings, hostile hotel employees and bad restaurants. Most of all, they criticize each other for everything from bad hygiene to bad cell-phone manners.
Complaining, as I observed in a previous column, is part [...]
Q: I purchased a ticket for my son to fly home at Thanksgiving. I used American Express Travel Web site and had entered all of the correct information. After hitting the “purchase” icon, there was an error message regarding the inability of the transaction to be completed.
There was a “back” button in the screen [...]
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Mile-high madness
December 21, 2003
Ed Barrett is tired of airline employees who act “as if they are doing you a favor by acknowledging my existence.” But the software technician from Pratt, Kan., is equally exasperated by inconsiderate passengers. “They’re rude to flight attendants,” he says. “They act as if all the post-Sept. 11 inconveniences are their fault.” A new poll by the nonpartisan opinion organization Public Agenda suggests his weariness is widespread. The research, released just as the final leg of the stressful holiday travel season gets underway, finds that nearly one third of passengers believe rudeness is a serious problem. More than half of all travel employees say passenger impoliteness is the top source of on-the-job tension. Have travelers lost their manners?
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