Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Airline rant....

OK, I know we have all been keeping up with the airline changes. I just have to rant a bit about my frustrations with airlines.

As many of you know, in May we went to Baton Rouge. We were originally scheduled to fly on Frontier. Well, a few months before the flight we found out through the Baton Rouge newspaper that Frontier was cancelling their service to Baton Rouge. I called Frontier and the reservation people (not even the supervisors) knew anything about it, and even after I emailed them the article they continued to not believe it. Shortly before we were set to leave they still had not called us back to get us to Baton Rouge. I called and we spent literally hours on the phone before they finally figured it out and got us re-booked on Continental.

Well, we got to the airport 2 hours early to have plenty of time to get the kids ready and get some food choked down. We went to the counter and the computer (self check in) indicated that I needed to see the desk worker. She says "Can I see your tickets please?" I said, "Ummmmmmm, what tickets?" She says "The computer says you were issued paper tickets." I say "You can still get paper tickets?" Long story short, Frontier never sent the e-ticket numbers over to Continental. It took them an hour and a half to get it right, and as a result we were rushed to the plane and it seems like from that point on it was one big hurry.

Now to this week.....We are set for a cruise in September out of Miami. We are flying from SLC to Newark to Fort Lauderdale. We get home from a camping trip and I see a story on the news. Continental is canceling their non-stop service from SLC to Newark beginning in September. Can you possibly guess who we were set to fly on to get there?

This experience was much nicer though. I called and within 15 minutes we were changed to being routed through Houston. This has not been a good year for air travel for us.

Now the airlines are increasing fares, charging for 2nd bags, some are wanting to charge for the 1st bag now, some are talking about charging for the little kid tea size drinks you get, and there has even been some talk about charging passengers based on weight. Here's an idea.....why don't you cut the salaries of everyone in the company? That will save you more money than bilking the passengers for everything. Once you have no passengers you will have no income whatsoever. Honestly, do you think that the airlines are going to just give up the extra fees if the fuel prices drop? Nope - these increases are here to stay.

0 comments: