{"id":2297,"date":"2013-08-11T10:35:39","date_gmt":"2013-08-11T01:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2013-08-11\/2297"},"modified":"2013-08-11T10:35:39","modified_gmt":"2013-08-11T01:35:39","slug":"more-airline-fun-the-impressive-price-for-checking-in-just-a-bit-too-slowly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2013-08-11\/2297","title":{"rendered":"More Airline Fun: the Impressive Price for Checking In Just a Bit Too Slowly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n

As part of my summer travels, I moved<\/span> from my\nsister's place in Washington State to my folks' place in Ohio this week.\nAs the last<\/span> time I\ntraveled<\/span> to The States, the flight schedule involved some unpleasant\nexperiences, but unlike last time where the memorable highlight was an anonymous hero<\/a>, this\ntime the memorable highlight is a check<\/span>-in agent\nwith a black<\/span> heart.<\/p>\n\n

(This is one of those “too long for anyone to read” story\nthat I'm writing mostly for my own memory, and as a bit<\/span> of a cathartic<\/span> measure, because it was a quite<\/span> frustrating\nexperience, to say the least.)<\/p>\n\n

The schedule was for Anthony and me to travel out of the tiny regional\nairport in Bellingham, Washington on a\npuddle<\/span>-jumper to Seattle (25 minutes), then to Atlanta and finally\nto Akron Ohio. Door to door would be 12 hours.<\/p>\n\n

The puddle-jumper out of Bellingham was scheduled for 7am, so we arrived\nat the airport at about 6:20 for what I expected<\/span>\nto be a leisurely<\/span> few steps to the gate (the\nairport has only four “gates”, doors that open up to the tarmac\nfor the walk to the plane, each accompanied by a\nbarrel<\/span> of umbrellas for use in inclement weather).<\/p>\n\n

My whole itinerary was ticketed as being on Delta Airlines, but it took\na bit<\/span> to figure out that this puddle-jumper\nflight was run by Horizon Air (which actually appears in this airport as\nAlaska Airlines), so it took a few<\/span> minutes for me\nto find the correct check-in counter. When I did,<\/span>\nI met<\/span> “Tanya”.<\/p>\n\n

Tanya quickly made three facts clear:<\/p>\n\n

    \n

  1. The official cut-off time for baggage check was 6:20 (it was now 6:25), so she didn't have to check us in if we had bags (which we did; Anthony and I each<\/span> had one).<\/p><\/li>\n

  2. She could<\/i> check us in if she felt like it.<\/p><\/li>\n

  3. She was not<\/i> going to check us in on this flight.<\/p><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n

    It was surreal because the area was almost empty, with two TSA agents\njust hanging around waiting to inspect luggage before what must be the\nshortest conveyor-belt ride in America. Tanya didn't give any reason for\nher denial other than that the cut-off time allowed her to deny us. If they were<\/span> short-handed in back, or if they were\nrunning late for some other unknown task, or if there was some other kind\nof practical reason, she never mentioned it.<\/p>\n\n

    Of course I apologized for not having paid attention to the\nAlaska-Airlines Bellingham checked-bag cut-off policy, and begged her to\nreconsider, since I had<\/span> multiple connections to\nmeet and a 10<\/span>-year-old child in tow, but she\nquickly went from “let me see the bags and decide” to a\n“nah, not gunna do it” attitude (seemingly making the decision\nwithout regard to the bags, so I don't<\/span> know why\nshe asked to see them).<\/p>\n\n

    A minute or two after we arrived at Tanya's station, a mother<\/span> and child also showed up and was told the same\nthing. The mother<\/span> mentioned that they had gotten\ncaught in an hour-long wait at the border (apparently having come from\nCanada), to which Tanya made an animated and incredibly smug\n“that's not an excuse<\/i>” involving a\nsweeping<\/span> “talk to the hand” motion with both hands.<\/p>\n\n

    They were trying to get to Disney World, so they presumably had other\nconnections and hotels and such also on the line. Not\nonly did<\/span> Tanya not seem to care, she actually seemed to enjoy the\nsituation. Maybe she enjoyed the rush of power in deciding others' fate, or\nmaybe it was simple Shadenfreude<\/a>. I suspect<\/span> the former.<\/p>\n\n

    The father eventually joined the mother and child and learned of the\nsituation, and made some attempts to plead, but it was clear Tanya was not\nin a charitable<\/span> mood. To the\ncredit<\/span> of all us customers, no one but Tanya ever raised their voice\nor said anything in anger, despite what was clearly a\nhighly<\/span> unreasonable situation.<\/p>\n\n

    As Tanya made preparations to leave the check-in counter to head to the\ngate, the words “I'm sorry” somehow came from her mouth, but it\nseemed clear to me that she wasn't the least bit sorry or sympathetic so\nI took<\/span> the opportunity to say (calmly,\nsoftly):<\/p>\n\n

    “It sure doesn't feel like you're sorry. In fact, you seem to\nbe delighted<\/i> to do this to us.<\/b>”<\/p>\n\n

    That was the key word for Tanya... “delighted<\/i>”.<\/p>\n\n

    She stormed off leaving us and the other family wondering what to do,\nand moments later the only other two customers in the area (talking to\na different<\/span> Alaska Airlines check-in agent) came\nover to me and said “I'm so<\/i> glad you said that. We were two<\/span> minutes late. I\nwanted<\/span> to say something, but couldn't.<\/b>”<\/p>\n\n

    They were two minutes past the allowed-to-deny-you time, and Tanya\nwouldn't check them in. Wow. Just wow.<\/p>\n\n

    Again, to everyone's credit, no one said the choice emotional words of\nanger toward Tanya that I'm sure we were all feeling... at this point, it\nwas still more jaw-dropping disbelief and wonder than anger.<\/p>\n\n

    I felt particularly bad for the Disney World family, because they left\nplenty early enough that they should have had no problem — no one\nexpects an hour delay at the Canadian border at 5am — and now they\nwere stuck in limbo. My situation<\/span> was much more\nmy own fault, and much easier to handle at the moment since I could<\/span> just call up my sister to return to pick us up.\nI had Anthony<\/span> wait at curb for her as I tried<\/span> to figure out what to do.<\/p>\n\n

    It was as that point that one of the TSA agents came over and said\n“I want<\/span> to compliment you for how you\nhandled that, keeping your cool in front of your boy<\/i>”. I thanked<\/span> her for her kind words, but since I certainly<\/span> didn't feel cool on the inside, I didn't<\/span> know that I deserved<\/span>\nthem. She said that<\/span> I\nshowed<\/span> great restraint.<\/p>\n\n

    “Does Tanya often elicit the need to show this kind of restraint?<\/i>”<\/p>\n\n

    “Not usually.<\/i>”<\/p>\n\n

    The other check-in agent, Thomas, was left to handle Tanya's discards. He was soft<\/span>-spoken and kind. He rebooked<\/span> us on\nthe exact same itinerary for the next day, took the $200 ticket-change fee,\nand said “see you tomorrow”.<\/p>\n\n

    What upset me the most in all this was not the fee nor the disruption in\nschedule, but the way that Tanya handled the situation. Even if the end\nresult would have been exactly the same, a little<\/span>\nbit of compassion and empathy in her words and tone would have made a\nworld<\/i> of difference, but Tanya displayed not the slightest hint of\neither. I'm deeply<\/span> upset by what she did, yet at\nthe same time I have<\/span> pity for her and what kind\nof life she must have had to have brought her to this.<\/p>\n\n

    Anyway, on a whim, later that afternoon at my sister's house, I called<\/span> Delta Airlines to confirm the schedule for the\nnext day, only to find that they had no record of any of this; they said\nthat the ticket hadn't been changed since May. An hour\nand<\/span> $625 more in fees later, Anthony and I\nhad<\/span> a confirmed<\/span> schedule.<\/p>\n\n

    Neither Delta nor I have any idea what the $200 I'd paid was for, nor\nwhat happened to the itinerary that had been created.<\/p>\n\n

    The TSA agent who had so kindly complimented me had suggested that you\ncan avoid the check-in line by doing the check-in online, then bringing the\nprinted barcode and luggage directly to a window<\/span>\nset aside just for that, so I went<\/span> to the Delta\nsite to check in, but they handed me off to the Alaska Airlines site\nbecause the day's travel was to being with them. There I\nfound<\/span> out that I couldn't<\/span> check in online\nbecause, for whatever reason, my name was marked with a\nspecial<\/span> request as “deaf \/ hard of hearing”. This was\na surprise.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

    There's likely a completely innocent reason for this... even perhaps my\nown mistake when I created<\/span> the reservation... but\npart of me wonders whether it's Tanya's idea of a “joke”.<\/p>\n\n

    I called Alaska Airlines to tell them that I\ndidn't<\/span> need the special request, and to ask about the $200 and the\ndisappearing reschedule, but the lady I talked<\/span> to\nhad no idea, and in what seems to be a recurring<\/span>\ntheme for the day, I missed<\/span> their Customer\nService hours by 10 minutes.<\/p>\n\n

    We arrived to the airport much earlier the next morning and saw that\nTanya was there, so I was<\/span> thrilled when lucky\ntiming placed us in front of Thomas. We did have<\/span>\nto hand Tanya our tickets when walking out to the plane, but I had<\/span> Anthony do it so that I\ndidn't<\/span> have to even look at her. We passed<\/span>\nwith the same cheery “Have a nice<\/span>\nday” that everyone got.<\/p>\n\n

    The Delta flight from Seattle to Atlanta had some stress because our\nshort connection time in Atlanta was made shorter by the flight running\nincreasingly late, and we were in the 2nd-to-the-last row (which meant that\nit would take forever to exit the plane). The\nflight<\/span> crew was kind and sympathetic, but there was nothing they\ncould do. At least<\/span> I\ncould<\/span> use the on-board Wi-Fi (a first<\/span> for\nme) to keep up to date with the flight status, but things didn't bode well\nwhen an hour out, our projected delay grew so big that the Delta iPhone app\nsaid that we wouldn't make our 5:15pm connection and started offering\nalternatives (all of which left the next morning). Yikes.<\/p>\n\n

    A kind lady closer to the front of the plane was traveling with\ndaughters seated right behind us in the last row, and since they had no\nconnection, I gently<\/span> asked whether she'd swap\npositions with me and Anthony so we'd have a\nbetter<\/span> chance to get out early. I felt\nhorrible<\/span> putting her on the spot, but she immediately said\n“oh, of course”, and so joined her daughters in the back of the\nplane. The kindness<\/span> of strangers can do wonders.\nThank you kind lady.<\/p>\n\n

    Atlanta is a big<\/span> hub for Delta, so many people\nhad connections, and most seemed tight. We were\nto<\/span> park at gate A1, and leave from F4. They're not the two\nmost-separated gates in the airport, but very close; to walk between them\nis over two kilometers(!), but there's also a\ntrain<\/span> for most of it.<\/p>\n\n

    We landed 14 minutes late, and on the way to the gate we promptly\nstopped and sat on the tarmac for a while<\/span> before\nthe pilot announced that someone was in our parking spot (another Delta\nflight with mechanical trouble), so it would be a\nfew<\/span> minutes while they looked for a\nspot.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

    I had the tightest connection of anyone I\ntalked<\/span> to, but the family across the aisle had a 5:30 flight to\nZurich (it was now 5:00) leaving from the same far-flung terminal I had<\/span> to go to. I didn't<\/span>\nthink any of us would make it.<\/p>\n\n

    Anthony and I ran like the wind.<\/p>\n\n

    Finally reaching the train out of breath and covered in sweat, we waited\nfor the train next to a pilot<\/span> of some sort. I jokingly<\/span> asked whether he was flying on Delta to\nAkron (he wasn't), but he advised me that the train was the best way to get\nto the gate, and wished me luck.<\/p>\n\n

    The train had to make six excruciatingly-slow stops before getting to\nTerminal F, but along the way the pilot comes up to me and, looking at his\niPhone, tells me my flight is delayed to 7pm. That eased the pressure a bit,<\/span> but just in case we still sprinted to the gate.\nWe arrived<\/span> almost exactly at 5:15, so if it had\nnot been delayed, we would have missed it.<\/p>\n\n

    It ended up being delayed until 7:30 because the flight crew was late\narriving from some other flight. It took a<\/span> while\nbefore the Delta Airlines iPhone app was updated to show the delay, so\nI bet<\/span> the pilot was running a\nprivate<\/span> corporate app. He said that<\/span> they\ndon't announce a delay<\/span> until they're really\nreally really<\/i> sure it's going to be delayed, because once passengers\nsee the delay they scatter throughout the airport and can't be recalled if\nneeded. Still, Delta knew the crew wouldn't even arrive to the airport (on\na flight<\/span> from Mexico) until almost 7pm, so they\ncertainly could have let us know many hours earlier. That would have saved\na lot<\/span> of stress. Maybe they were holding out hope\nthat another crew could be found. I dunno.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

    My folks picked us up after arriving 2½ hours late, and we\nfinally reached home at about 10:30. Thrillingly, it was actually with our\nluggage (it's been long delayed on a few<\/span> recent\ntrips).<\/p>\n\n

    I slept well the first night, but thoughts of Tanya and her\n“delightful” lack of empathy kept me awake last night. I just tried<\/span> to call Alaska Airlines customer service,\nbut they're not open on the weekend, so I'll give them a\ntry<\/span> on Monday to let them know about my experience, and to figure\nout the deal with the $200 I paid.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

    I've flown at least 250,000 miles over the years (including almost a\nhundred<\/span> transpacific round trips) and have on occasion called the airline\nto offer words of praise for specific employees, but this will be the first\ntime in all these years to complain about a specific<\/span> employee. It doesn't\nfeel good.<\/p>\n\n

    (UPDATE: I've posed a followup comment<\/a> below).<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As part of my summer travels, I moved from my sister's place in Washington State to my folks' place in Ohio this week. As the last time I traveled to The States, the flight schedule involved some unpleasant experiences, but unlike last time where the memorable highlight was an anonymous hero, this time the memorable highlight is a check-in agent with a black heart.<\/p>

    (This is one of those \"too long for anyone to read\" story that I'm writing mostly for my own memory, and as a bit of a cathartic measure, because it was a quite frustrating experience, to [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}