A Quiz

[Peppergirl]

You're a tired business traveler.

It's 10pm on a Friday night.

Your flight from *major city* to *your small city* is turned around and brought BACK to *major city* because of a seriously ill fellow passenger.

The airline you're on re-books you on the first available flight tomorrow morning, since it's 10pm and there are no other flights tonight.

Do you:

A. Accept this and proceed to think about where you're going to lay your head tonight.

B. Be annoyed, but grateful for your own health. Life could be worse! You could be the person being rushed off the plane to the hospital.

C. Call the emergency travel line on your itinerary and scream/yell/curse at the agent because there are no other planes that fly to *your small city* after 10pm at night.

Christ on a cracker. I'm glad to have a job, DAMN does getting screamed at get old.

[scroob]

Asking for some sort of lodging or food reimbursement may not be totally out of line, so I'd probably go with option B. However, I wouldn't yell and scream at the airline representative. My bad luck does not need to affect my actions.

[Jack Doe]

Asking for some sort of lodging or food reimbursement may not be totally out of line, so I'd probably go with option B. However, I wouldn't yell and scream at the airline representative. My bad luck does not need to affect my actions.

Concur, I'd go with A, then contact the airline and see if there were any sort of discount hotels that they book with. I've had luck with asking. One flight delayed because of inclement weather, had lodgings provided (it wasn't the Ritz, but free is good) and another which was delayed because of mechanical issues. The airline provided meal vouchers (up to $20) for us to have dinner on them. I miss TWA...

[klhanson]

This kind of reminds me of a time when i was a SC. But i had a very very very good reason to be. I was flying from Philadelphia Pennyslvania to Jacksonville Florida and It was supposed to be a flight to Pittsburgh and then a direct flight back to florida. Well... let's say it didn't turn out that way. The flight crew in Pittsburgh refused to fly, then because it was 10 pm at night, there were no more flights till 5 am. And there were no hotels with open rooms.

Then on top of that they gave us a food voucher which we couldn't use 'cause the food court was closed. Then finally we go to Savanah Georgia, and we had a taxi voucher to get from there to Florida.. And we found out the taxi voucher they gave us was no good!

To say the least, This didn't end well for the airline. I not only called and complained, 3 other girls and I took the story to the press and we all got 2 free round trip flights to anywhere in the continental US and a few other things..

[LillFilly]

I'm betting you had someone choose C...

I'd choose an A/B combo. All my flight delays/cancelations have been fine; free food, extra time to go shopping, people to visit with and upgrades to first class. Course that was before 2001; don't know what I'd get now!

[PepperElf]

i'm betting he also did choice d
which would be to scream "how dare that sick man inconvenience ME, he should have just died quietly" or something equally horrible

[SG15Z]

So I'm guessing he ended up calling GK and yelled his head off. Something to look forward to on Sunday yes?

[Bandit]

I've had missing planes for hours on end with a connection that I knew I would miss.

I picked A - call the airline, get rebooked, get a dinner on the layover, and call the (now ex) wife to say I will be late.

Life is too short to get pissed off about things outside of one's control.

B

[Jester]

I had something vaguely similar to this happen to me.

I was coming back to Key West from Phoenix. On the first leg of the journey out of Phoenix, the plane had to make an emergency landing in El Paso for a passenger who had a medical emergency. (I have no idea what it was.) We landed, the passenger was taken off, we took back off. No one (that I could hear) bitched or moaned. No one was happy with being delayed, of course, but they took it in the same sense most reasonable people take when traffic is delayed by a serious accident: "This sucks, but it could be worse--I could be them!"

The similarity ends there. Because I ended up not getting home to Key West that night, NOT because of the medical emergency, but because of a comedy of errors that just kept snowballing with the airline and their (failed) attempt to get me home. While the delay in El Paso made me miss my connecting flight in Miami, there were later flights that night. But the incompetence and flat out lying of the airline combined with some just plain weirdness conspired to prevent me from getting on any flights that were actually, you know, FLYING. In the end, it took me 17 hours to get from Miami to Key West--which is normally a 40 minute flight.

And yet, that was not my worst travel experience. My LAST air travel in 2006 with US Air/America West was FAR worse. I just hope that Delta doesn't sink to that level for my impending vacation.

[bainsidhe]

I'm pretty sure things have changed with the freebies, at least with United. Last time I was stuck overnight, I had to pay for the room and I received no meal vouchers. Now the airline allegedly was paying 80% of the room, but my room bill was still $40.00 before taxes. Hmm, that was NOT a $200 room at a Quality Inn, thank you. Especially when I could go online and rent the room for less than $80.00. And yes, I know I'm whining, but I was pretty ticked off about feeling ripped off (which I did NOT take out on the airline/hotel staff). It was a whether delay coupled with sitting on a plane for an hour waiting to taxi (which was also due to the weather). I would've preferred to stay at home instead of only making it halfway to my destination, but the airline had assured me I'd arrive in ample time for my next flight. Grrrr.

Either way, a medical emergency should cause some forgiveness. But obviously it doesn't to the impatient traveler.

[Peppergirl]

Yeah - trust me, the airlines definitely are making my job a LOT worse lately with all their recent shenanigans.

They've always been bad, but anyone who travels even occasionally knows how much worse it's gotten.

As a travel agent, I'm fairly limited as to what I can do for a person in a case like this, especially since he was already reprotected on the next available flight the next day by the offending airline. I can look up flights, figure out why the flight was cancelled and try to get them on the next available flight, but I sure-as-shit can't make flights appear that don't exist.

To me, the main thing would have been where to sleep and who was paying. But he was too busy ranting and raving about there not being flights at 10pm (to his podunk town) for me to even get a word in about sleeping arrangements.

Serves him right. If he had taken a breath and calmed down, I could have helped him find a decent hotel. I have no idea what happened to him.

[PepperElf]

sounds like they took the discount off the "full" room price, which hotels almost never sell at.