APR
14

Be safe -- buy a backup ticket

By Dana McMahan
passengers,I was one of the 300,000 American Airlines grounded passengers last week and have taken an important lesson away from the experience.

My colleague and I were invited to speak and lead workshops at a conference in Dallas that took place last Wednesday. The flight from Louisville to Dallas Wednesday afternoon was cancelled Tuesday night. I learned this Tuesday morning and immediately began trying to reach American Airlines by phone. I wasn't the only one. Their phone lines were so overwhelmed that they simply played a recording that told me to call back later. (The recording ended with a "Good-bye!" that may as well have actually said what it felt like -- sucks to be you!")

I checked the gethuman web site to find out how to cheat and get to a person. Press 0 at the first prompt and keep pressing 0. This got me in queue -- with a wait time of over 60 minutes. 28 minutes into the call on my cell phone -- I kept it by my side as I got ready for work and ate breakfast -- the line went to a fast busy. I continued trying once I got to work, with no luck.

I knew at this point American may not be able to get us to Dallas in time for our presentation the next day. To hedge my bets while I continued calling, at about 8:30 I booked backup refundable tickets on Southwest to Dallas' other airport. By 10, even they had no more flights to Dallas.

I still hoped American could get us there. But once I got to the airport the agent told me with a complete lack of sympathy (guess they were tired of the unhappy would-be passengers by this point) that they couldn't get us there until the same time next day. We'd have landed after we were scheduled to speak. As far as American was concerned that was the end of their responsibility to us -- an offer of a too-late flight. Had I not booked the Southwest flight that would have been the end of the line.

The Airfare watchdog blog echoes my advice, recommending that passengers with tickets on cancelled flights or on airlines that go bell-up overnight book backup tickets on another airline. The blog also makes the same observation I've been thinking about since last week:

The sad fact is that in the US, airline passengers have no government-granted rights when airlines cancel flights, even if the cancellation could have been prevented by the airline ...

As travellers, we have to look out for ourselves. It's tempting to hope the airlines will take care of us when they mess up, but they simply will not. The most we can hope for is they'll say that they're sorry with a nice fat voucher -- and thanks to my cancelled return flight that left me in Dallas an extra night, American did just that.


Photo by theerin

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[ READER COMMENTS ]

  1. 1

    Brenda Bowling said:

    Don't forget to spread a little bit of blame to the FAA. American Airlines wasn't the only culprit.

    But all is well that ends well with the voucher.

    Posted at 07:19 AM, on April 15 2008

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