Jerry McClure and his wife were looking forward to a seven-day western Caribbean cruise on the Holland America Ryndam late last year, when disaster struck. McClure’s wife fell and broke her neck less than a month before they were scheduled to fly to Tampa to board the ship.
It’s not hard to image how much louder the public outcry would have been during the pat-down controversy last year if the Transportation Security Administration had also shut down it Screening Partnership Program, which allowed airports to privatize their security.
It’s easy to be an airline industry critic in an era of “no waivers, no favors” and fees on top of fees. It’s easy to paint airlines as heartless corporations that treat us like self-loading cargo.
Jesse Demastrie and his wife flew from Washington to Las Vegas without incident the day after Christmas. TSA agents waved them through the screening area, and United Airlines allowed the couple to board the aircraft.
That’s the question asked by Tom Westerman, who flew from JFK to Atlanta on Dec. 23 and returned the 30th. Both were among the busiest travel days of the year.
Karen Smith loses her paper airline ticket to Spain and has to buy a new one. Now her airline is dragging its feet on a promised refund on the second ticket, and her online travel agency isn’t helping. How do you get them moving?
Anyone who thinks tarmac delays are dead was in for a litte shock this week. Hundreds of flights were delayed in a series of powerful blizzards, and a few sat between the runway and the terminal for hours, waiting for the weather to clear.
Katie Anderson’s son is 6′ 7″. The average economy class seat “pitch” on a Spirit Airlines Airbus A321 — the distance between seats on an aircraft — is between 30 and 31 inches, hardly enough room for a big guy.
This column is usually called, “Is this enough compensation?” because frankly, the travel industry often doesn’t have a clue about customer service.
Think you’ll never fall for one of those email scams — you know, the ones where someone hijacks a friend’s Gmail account and pretends to be a traveler in distress?
