Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Am I being opaque?

I received a couple of emails from people saying, in effect, "What are the airlines supposed to do if weather screws up their schedules and their crews are over the legal hours?"

Let me make myself perfectly clear, if I have failed to do so up to now (and this is the same point I made to the multiple JetBlue customer service and corporate relations people with whom I spoke):

(clearing my throat here - ahem)

GET ANOTHER PLANE AND ANOTHER CREW AND PROVIDE THE SERVICE THAT I PAID FOR, IN A REASONABLE AMOUNT OF TIME! IF YOU CAN'T, STOP SELLING ME THAT PRODUCT!

So, in my example with JetBlue, they should have found a crew in Los Angeles or Las Vegas, flown that crew (either in a JetBlue plane or another carrier - I don't really care) to Portland and flown me and my fellow passengers to New York instead of stranding us at the Portland airport for (at least) three days with no hotel or food accommodations.

What? Can't do that, JetBlue? Too expensive? Not enough crew? No planes?

NOT my problem! YOUR problem!

Except that you chose to make it my problem by basically selling me a product you could not deliver. So I am taking your blue asses to court. So, STILL your problem.

I keep thinking my anger over how we are treated by the airlines will dissipate with time. But, to my amazement, it has not. It is constantly renewed by tales like the US Airway debacle in the Dominican Republic and the multimillion dollar salaries that the CEOs of airlines are being paid despite running their companies like third-graders.

If only the airlines could tap into the same source that is fueling all of our anger at them, they would never have to buy another gallon of jet fuel.

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