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‘Appalling and shameful’ flight on Continental

August 13, 2007

It probably doesn’t get any worse than this. The passengers on Continental flight 1669Y from Caracas to Newark say they were trapped on a plane for seven hours after their flight was diverted to Baltimore on July 29. They endured several medical emergencies, starvation and hostility at the hands of their crew and airline employees, according to a missive making the rounds this morning.

The letter speaks for itself. I am republishing it here in its entirety:

Dear Continental Airlines Customer Service Supervisor:

This letter is to notify you of the absolutely terrible customer service experience that I and my fellow passengers on flight 1669Y received from your company and many of your employees during our flight from Caracas to Newark on July 29th, 2007.

To briefly describe our experience in this letter will never do justice to the pathetic treatment we received during and even after this terrible ordeal. Nonetheless, we feel compelled to attempt to explain what happened in an effort to voice our concerns and frustration with your company.

In short, minutes before we were supposed to land in Newark, the captain announced that because of weather conditions, we would be re-directed to Baltimore. After landing in Baltimore, we were repeatedly told that we would either disembark there or fly back to Newark within a reasonable timeframe.

We ended up locked in the plane, sitting on a runway for about seven hours. We did not have water, food, toilet paper, etc… The toilets were clogged and completely unsanitary. Moreover, there were a number of children and older and special needs passengers (including a diabetic and a pregnant woman) who desperately needed attention, or at least food and water.

After we started clapping and peacefully voicing our frustrations (we’d now been on this plane for close to 12 hours for what was supposed to be a 4 hour flight!), the older female flight attendant proceeded to threaten us with arrests and even called the local police on the plane, almost as if hoping to escalate the situation (the other flight attendants were actually quite nice and supportive).

It wasn’t enough to not treat us with any decency or respect as customers or human beings, we were now being treated as criminals. After the local police came on the plane and realized that we were justifiably upset and in good behavior, they decided to let us disembark to a waiting room inside the airport, where we were yelled at to keep close to the wall by overzealous officers with an attack dog.

The only things we were offered were water and pretzels, and some of the passengers, especially the sick/older ones, were clearly in need of nutrition- a full 12 hours after we had received our first and last meal on the plane. Nonetheless, your Baltimore airport personnel were unable or unwilling to provide anything more than pretzels and water.

Moreover, on our way to and from the waiting room, no one was there to help senior and disabled passengers, leaving our fellow passengers the responsibility of pushing wheelchairs, etc… We were then back on the plane for close to another hour before taking off to Newark, where we landed a full 13 hours after we initially took of in Caracas.

But things almost got worse once we landed. Not only were we not greeted or guided by Continental employees to help us with transfers, flight re-bookings, etc.., but the service, incredibly, was even worse at Newark airport. Most of us missed our connecting flights, and only some of us received hotel accommodations, leaving other passengers, including some with children, sleeping at the airport.

The Continental personnel in Newark was not helpful at all, and far from reassuring and assisting us in good faith, was EXTREMELY rude to us, yelling at us and making offensive comments (they even yelled at a fellow passenger and told her to shut up and call the 800 number if she had a problem with their service). We would have expected that after 13 hours on a plane, your team would at least have someone waiting for us telling us where to go, and not leaving us to our own devices, running around from counter to counter, only to be yelled at by your counter employees if we were lucky enough to find them.

Needless to say, the experience was a completely appalling and shameful.

There is absolutely no excuse for what we experienced. While understandably, safety comes first and you do not control the weather, you should control your employees and their service level, and should have satisfactory action plans in place for when this happens.

What we experienced shows a complete lack of leadership and customer service management, from your management, captain, and down to your airport personnel. We expected a much higher level of service from your company, especially since you presumably pride yourselves on your level of customer service. Not only did we not get good service, we were actually insulted and degraded throughout this experience.

To say that we are quite disappointed, even appalled, would be an understatement.

We demand a formal apology and a full refund of our fare or comparable compensation for the terrible treatment we received. We will be informing our friends, family, and the media about this experience. If this issue is not satisfactorily resolved, you can expect us to further escalate it. Thank you in advance for resolving this matter promptly. Attached you will find 72 signatures from my fellow passengers supporting this request.

Sincerely,

The Passengers of Flight 1669Y

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

21 comments

  • Tab Stone

    The news reports in LA have all been talking about the failure of the computers which screwed up the international arrivals at LAX for most of last Saturday stranding people on planes after landing and others waiting in the airport to leave LA on those same planes. And today’s news was that there were still people at LAX waiting to make connections to wherever they were going when the outage hit on Saturday.

    Do you think anything will change because of these incidents?

    When I heard the stories, I had some thoughts”

    Why after an hour or so on the ground at Baltimore, didn’t they arrange to unload the plane and clear customs there and reschedule the passengers?

    And why at LAX after the first hour, they didn’t divert the incoming international flights to other airports where the government computers were working?

    I understand that it costs a significant amount of money to let people off the planes, and creates problems due to crew maximum hours rules, but at some point, airline management has to realize that they can’t just imprison people. (A radio host here in LA commented today that if he were on one of the planes, he’d have popped the emergency exit, gone down the slide and taken his chances with the police rather than staying on the plane.)

    Will these incidents tip the balance toward enacting laws giving passengers real legal rights which will include the airlines providing proper service once passengers have checked in, and especially once they’ve been boarded, no matter what the cause of the delay?

    While the problems were caused by weather and government computers, it’s the decisions of airline management that made things worse. And the decisions were both at the time of the incidents and earlier when they cut capacity so much that if passengers miss their original flight, they may not be able to get another one for several days.

  • Susan

    Will someone post Continental’s reply? I am most curious!

  • John Steinsky

    It’s not bad enough that these poor people were imprisoned on the plane but that the airline and law enforcement personnel had the gaul to **abuse** them after what they had been through?!!!

    What goes through these people’s minds???? It’s not like the passengers had any choice or free will in any of this. It’s like “well you chose to fly with Continental so you’re stuck with what you get os just deal with it”. It’s really disturbing that people who’s jobs it is to deal with transporting thousands of people every day (and I include law enforcement in this) would have so litttle empathy for the people they serve! My God, what has happened to common human decency?

  • BriCo

    Any well-run company has a “go, no-go” checkpoint for major business situations; e.g. when to announce a recall, when to pull a product from the counters, when the losses exceed potential returns, etc. Unfortunately the airlines ALL seem to think that no matter how much bad press they get, their seats will always be sold because travelers (as you stated in a related article) will continue to use the lowest-cost carrier (at the time). So they continue to keep passengers “hostage” when unforeseen incidents arise, blaming EVERYBODY or ANYTHING else for their bad (and inhumane) decisions. Who is going to drive (or take a bus or train) when a flight is unquestionably faster, (and likely much cheaper), just because they MIGHT encounter an unexpected long delay? I submit: no one. And who is going to stop flying their frequent airline after accumulating all those miles (or needing just a few thousand more for a free flight), especially the business travelers? I think boycotting is not the answer because it’s not realistic. As much as I hate government involvement in anything, I believe financial or administrative (loss of routes, etc.) penalties are the only thing to force airlines to care.

  • John Royse

    Did anyone send a copy of the letter to the Chief of Police and the Mayor? Their misbehavior was as least as bad as the airline’s. A lot of us in America are getting the idea that to “protect and serve” is the last priority of an increasing number of city police.

  • Honey

    We sent an email to Continental Customer “Care” from their website
    (requesting a response from them), telling them we wanted to see their response to the passengers of this flight. We also told them we have been Continental customers and, in light of their treatment of these passengers, are considering using other airlines for our business & airline travel. Perhaps it wold help if we all did this!

  • Sonia Vining

    Unbelieveable. Just unbelieveable. These runway strandings have happened how many times now this year? When will the airlines be called to task for this?! Prisoners in jails are treated better than airline passengers, it seems. So long as big business effectively runs the government, I guess we can expect this kind of treatment…

  • T Walsh

    My wife and I have already decided that if we are held prisoner on a plane for over one hour, I will fake a heart attack. Many people go into hosptials thinking they are having heart attacks when it is simply a stomach ailment or even a panic attack, so there will not be any “he must have been faking” from the airline.

    If we all agree to do this, what airline will take the risk to not allow someone to disembark due to a heart attack? I think we got them beat now.

  • Justin Stone

    The lead for this post says trapped. This is the wrong word to use. These people were held hostage. What is more shocking than this story is took so long for it to make it to the national news. Perhaps they were to busy reporting on hollywood stars and/or congress signing away the rights of American people to a president bent on spying on American’s phone calls.

  • Joel Shenker

    Traveling was once fun. There were businesses that transported us and took care of us and received us, and they all tried to pamper us. Making travelers feel special was the product they offered. Travelers should still want such service, and ask for it. But, travelers should not predict it anymore.

    So it is with airlines, where the bottom line has become simple: Passengers are cargo. Thus, airlines view customer service, at least implicitly, as something to get around or, at best, put up with, and as seldom as possible. The goal of an airline is to move as much cargo (i.e. us) for the lowest possible cost and highest possible revenue. Most airlines still lose money doing so.

    An airline (indeed, any business) misses an opportunity with this shortsighted view. As a customer, I will change plans and pay more if I can truly depend on getting service that is pleasant, effortful, polite, and competent. I look for chances to do so. As consumers we all should. We should say what we want, politely but clearly and assertively. We should vote with our pocketbook where we can.

    In the meantime, when you do dare to travel, be pragmatic: Do not predict that you are going to be treated well.

  • Lynnie

    I have just sent an online comment to Continental:

    “I am in the process of booking flights between Dublin and the New York area for after Christmas. I was considering using Continental but after reading about what happened to the passengers of flight 1669Y from Caracas to Newark on July 29 , I refuse to allow any chance of my family of four being held hostage in that manner and treated so horribly.”

  • Claude

    Honey has the right idea. I’ve just sent my e-mail out. It’s time to put pressure on airlines to empower their employees to use common sense.

  • Barfield

    Well, it was not *entirely* Continental’s fault, according to the news articles I saw (though some of the airline’s personnel seemed to make a bad problem worse).

    The real fault was with the government, which did not want people to get off an international flight at a non-international airport, where there were no passport checking officers and machines.

    This government policy may not be not bad per se (who knows how many known terrorists might otherwise take random flights in the hope they’d end up being diverted to non-international airports where they could slip into the country undetected?).

    However, the policy works badly when it’s combined with the government’s apparent complete lack of concern about what happens to the hundreds of human beings who then end up being stuck when planes are diverted.

    I say “lack of concern” because the government pursues its policy knowing that occasional forced diversions inevitably happen but it makes no provision whatsoever for the very predictable negative consequences of these diversions. It’s all just kind of “Oh, well…”

    I’ve endured one myself, in Orlando several years ago, and it’s really that. Plus a guy with a big gun just outside the plane in the jetway, with the implicit threat that that carries for anyone dumb enough to care about liberty. (Orlando’s an international facility, but our diverted plane landed at a time of day when the passport guys weren’t on duty.)

    I’m not saying it would be cheap to provide proper facilities to accommodate the affected travelers in these situations, but these expenses are properly part of the cost of the government’s current policy–and the costs should not be foisted off on members of the travelling public without warning.

    At very least they could provide a notice “If your flight cannot for some reason land as scheduled at an international airport, you may be held in captivity on the aircraft or elsewhere for an indefinite period of time, possibly without food, proper toilet facilities, sleeping accommodations, or other normal human amentities, and you will be subject to arrest, prosecution and imprisonment for a term of several years if you try to escape.”

    B.

  • Cristina

    Baltimore’s airport (BWI) is an international airport, its gates E are the ones that handle international traffic. I’ve landed there many times from Europe. Whatever the reasons used to hold these poor people for hours on end at BWI, lack of facilities to process international flights is definitively not one of them!

  • Barfield

    I hear you on BWI being international.

    But according to an article posted on ABC News on 08-14-2007:
    “Continental Airlines said because Flight 1669 was international, federal law prohibited it from allowing passengers off the plane.”

    (See http://news.aol.com/story/ar/_a/irate-airline-passengers-threaten-to-sue/20070814133609990001).

    So either the government was just being contrary at the passengers’ expense or, maybe, somebody was lying somewhere?? (Boy, wouldn’t THAT be a surprise!)

    Mystery.

  • Robert H. Henderson

    Instead of writing a blog or reponding here to this horror story, everyone should copy the letter and send it to Continental Customer Care and request a response to let them know that it might affect our continued loyalty to them. I did. Thank you.

  • Armin

    Where are all the politicians that talked about our “Bill of Rights” for travelers after the problems that passengers experienced at JFK Airport earlier this year? Typical, they all were talking to the press when it happened screaming loud demanding rights for travelers but when time is passing by everything is forgotten. But maybe I am wrong and I have missed the announcement.

    My Continental flight, last Continental flight from the airport out to Newark, was canceled today and all I got from Continental’s Customer Care was – “You get nothing because it was canceled due to weather – tough luck” not even empathy. Funny enough FAA did not report any weather problems for Newark or my departure airport. I believe that they didn’t have enough customers and made a decision to cancel rather spending fuel on not enough passengers to cover the cost for the flight. How about my hotel cost or offering to pay for a rental car?

    I want rights for all travelers. I have a tough time that have to accept the transportation terms dictated by the carriers.

  • Warren Ward

    Unfortunately, this is further proof of the breakdown of our society, as we are being maneuvered into becoming government sheep. They have been training us to value security over liberty for years in the hope that we will lie down and take it as they move to their new ‘One-world Government.’ The people react by becoming desensitized to common decency. Our airlines are a good example of what happens when you lose that sense of good citizenship.

    Like one TSA official said, “This is not about security. This is about teaching the American public to stand in line and obey their government!”

  • http://BangkokAtoZ.com Mekhong Kurt

    I’m way late coming to this story, and earlier contributors have pretty much said it.

    I will make this bit of comment. I worked a brief while as a police officer in the U.S in the arly 1970′s, then a much longer period in what amounted to a “private polcie department” — a security company — for considerably longer.

    Even way back then, my colleagues far too often didn’t take the “Protect and Serve” motto with the slightest degree of seriousness. Their attitudes, most of the time, was more akin to “Control and Convict.”

    And I have absolutely no beef with anyone willing to take up a badge and gun then hit the streets — except when they forget what they’re there for in the first place.

    Law enforcement personnel in this case don’t need counseling. They need firing, and for a big news event to surround it.

  • Tanya

    This is total BS that this happened to these poor passengers. First leaving them locked in a sardine can for hours with no food, water, proper bathrooms or medical help is nuts. Then to have law enforcement treat everyone as if they were criminals?? People were just trying to get to their destinations. The last time I checked thats NOT illegal! I would have asked if we were being held hostage by the gestapo. I would sue the airlines AND law enforcement responsible.

  • http://naoma@cheerful.com Naoma Foreman

    I don’t believe anyone could STARVE in 7 hours. Water would be needed,
    but food, no.

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