Fly me to Cincinnati...

[pen_grunt]

Let me just take this opportunity to say that I've flown to Cincinnati probably...4 times...in the last month or so, and on every leg (there and back) there has been SOME kind of delay, cancellation or weirdness. I'm getting kind of sick of it.

We've also been flying on United instead of NorthWest--mainly because flying from Minneapolis to Cincinnati is possibly the most expensive inter-continental flight EVER--clocking in from $900-$1500 (that's not even direct), and NW isn't that cheap.

So we end up flying into Chicago and then onto Cincinnati in these little tiny planes (which give me further opportunities to wage psychological warfare on my slightly claustrophobic boss--but only if he's being really, really annoying and won't stop pointing out pictures of dogs in a magazine while I'm trying to read...).

This time our flight was delayed in Minneapolis...then there were tornadoes in Chicago, so we circled around Rockford, IL for about 2 hours. It's okay, during this time we were assured that we would probably have enough fuel to get on to Chicago. We landed in Chicago, but had missed our connecting flight due to the multiple delays.

We go up to the service counter and announce (in a non-harried, very polite way), "We missed our connection, what are our options for getting on another flight?" But we were greeted like naughty school children, "Why did you miss your flight? We schedule connections so that that doesn't happen." We explained that our plane had just landed. Of course, the attendant had to call and verify this. She gave us the stink eye and reluctantly booked us onto the next flight. I don't know what I was expecting--I'm usually really surprised by great customer service and don't really expect anything above cordial--but I would have liked a notch above "surly and reproachful" please. Maybe even a, "I'm sorry for the inconvenience," would have been nice.

Anyway, our flight from Chicago was delayed...but thank goodness we were checking the monitors periodically, because it became un-delayed when it changed gates...to the complete opposite end of the airport.

And now I'm in Cincinnati again. I come back home tomorrow night, then leave Sunday afternoon again for a week.

Fun times.

Comments

[luno.livejournal.com]

Welcome to Chicago - Service with a snarl, our specialty.

[pen-grunt.livejournal.com]

To be perfectly fair, I've had surlier customer service in a lot of other places...

But at least those other places didn't scold me like I was a misbehaving child...when the issue was THEIR fault and not mine.

[lisa-e-is-me.livejournal.com]

Yikes, that's terrible. I already do not enjoy flying (understatement!), but to be treated in a churlish manner after going through all that, I might have forgotten to use my indoor voice. I can't stand being treated as though I am inconveniencing someone, when all I am asking them to do is their job, especially if I need their help because of a problem that was not my fault. Ugh!

[pen-grunt.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the woman was pretty lucky that we were both in amiable moods (well, actually I shouldn't say that, I'm not a huge complainer even if I'm in a horrid mood). We just kind of rolled with it, knowing that we were SO in the right that eventually things had to work out our way--even if it took some doing.

Usually I don't mind flying, but there hasn't been a flight that I've taken in the past 4 months where something hasn't been pretty screwed up on one end or the other.