Usually this posts on Sundays, but I’m on vacation. Also, there is no usually. Deal.
For some reason, my attention this week has been on the epic failure that is modern airline customer service. It’s been a crazy week for the friendly skies.
On Spirit Air, an entire family was kicked off a plane because a man asked for a glass of water for his pregnant wife. Apparently serving water before takeoff is against regulations. Really? Why?
In Philadelphia, the TSA forced a disabled 4-year-old to remove his leg braces and crawl through the security screen. While the family eventually got an apology, there’s no telling how scarred the child and his parents will be by that experience. They have private screening rooms to search passengers. This seems like it would have been an optimal time to use them.
Just this afternoon, Air Canada stranded Her Bad Mother for hours because they’d booked her on a connecting flight 40 minutes after her plane landed, giving her 40 minutes to land, get off the plane, clear customs, get checked back through security, and make it to a new gate in a different terminal. Right.
And while it doesn’t include any kids — just people acting like kids — there’s the whole debacle with Southwest kicking Kevin Smith off a flight because he was deemed too fat to fly.
Clearly, the airline industry has one big, fat customer service problem on its hands, one that probably has a lot of airline execs crying like babies. It’s also one they’re not likely to fix anytime soon. US Airways told me my problem was standard operating procedure.
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