Airline food. No, that’s not the punchline to a joke.
Continental Airlines
Remember last summer’s overnight tarmac stranding incident in Rochester, Minn.? The government does. This morning it issued what it called a “precedent-setting” series of fines against two airlines in connection with the lengthy ground delay.
When Tim Milller tried to cash in a travel certificate to buy a Continental Airlines ticket, the system didn’t accept his PIN number. But instead of working with him to fix the problem, the airline charged him for the full amount of the ticket and told him he was out of luck.
There are certain items for which domestic airlines will probably never charge, like strollers and child safety seats. Cashing in on babies is just seen as tacky by most airline passengers. So when Continental Airlines inadvertently charged Greg Sykes for his child’s car seat, he expected a quick refund.
United Airlines’ Glenn Tilton. He was the third-worst chief executive officer, according to a new employee poll conducted by Glassdoor, a company that conducts online salary surveys.
If you think customer service on U.S. airlines is a dying art — and especially on legacy carriers — you’ve probably been reading this site too much. And while it’s true that service levels have plummeted to historic lows, there are some exceptions.
Here’s a story about an airline doing the wrong thing, then the right thing, and then a confusing thing.
This is an interesting twist. Remember the Continental/ExpressJet tarmac incident earlier this month? Everyone was quick to blame the airline for holding passengers overnight against their will. Now, a preliminary investigation by the Transportation Department has found that Mesaba, a regional carrier owned by Delta Air Lines, was the likely culprit.
The Transportation Department this morning a sent a letter to Continental Airlines inquiring into the circumstances of its recent Continental/Express Jet flight 2816 extended delay. So what’s next? I asked Transportation Department spokesman Bill Mosley.
The Transportation Department has fined three airlines for consumer rule violations, signaling a new “get-tough” approach to the airline industry, if not in practice, then at least in principle.
To those of you who say airlines don’t have a heart and who think they never bend a rule for a customer in need, let me introduce Teresa Stewart. She was on a cruise vacation recently when tragedy struck, and she needed to reschedule her Continental Airlines flight.
Ten years ago a United Airlines flight attendant appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman was fired for calling passengers “the enemy.”
Book an airline ticket, save the planet. Re-use the towel in your hotel, stop global warming. Rent a hybrid car, reduce our dependence on fossil fuel. Lofty promises made by airlines peddling gimmicky carbon offsets, resorts hawking convoluted green initiatives and companies with shiny new fleets of high-maintenance cars to rent. And empty promises.
The passengers on a recent Continental Airlines flight 89 from Newark to Beijing were given an unwelcome lesson in patience. Halfway through the flight, their plane was diverted on a medical emergency and eventually returned to the states, where it was canceled. Then, the next day, the same passengers were finally sent to China. Are these air travelers owed anything for the trouble?
Elliott is consumer advocate 
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