June 23, 2006
To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing you a letter of complaint, just to let you know up front. This is the second of two complaint letters I’ve ever written, both of which have been to your company. In the past week I have experienced what can only be called the most abysmal service from your airline that it has ever been my misfortune to receive, and this is on top of your normally less-than-stellar on-time performance.
To this day I still have no idea why it was necessary that I fly two different airlines, as it seems your two airlines are in close collusion, and I booked through my company travel agent. I work for a company which has some kind of discount arrangement with your airline, because that seems to be almost all I can book through our office travel agent; you get what you pay for seems to be the lesson here.
I was booked on a flight from Austin to Chicago via your airline, which went just fine (aside from the normal hour or so that it was late). I then caught a United flight into Peoria, IL. which also went fine. On my return leg, we boarded the United plane, and were then told we had to deplane because of software issues; I presume that you must have gotten a hell of a deal on the Windows 95 that seems to be controlling your flights.
There were no more flights out that day, so I had to spend the night in Peoria, which caused me to pray for death every time I became consciously aware of where I had been stranded. I was booked on a 1:00pm United flight into Chicago, and then from there I was due to arrive via American Airlines into Austin at 6:15pm. This had me somewhat worried, because I’d paid $150 for two concert tickets for myself and a friend to go see Beck and Jamie Lidell at The Backyard (the tickets were bought for that exorbitant fee because the concert was sold out months ago). The concert was supposed to begin at 9pm, plenty of time, I felt, if American kept up its end of the bargain.
That didn’t happen.
We sat on the tarmac while further software issues were worked out. Then we sat on the tarmac some more while our route was re-plotted to Chicago. My flight didn’t leave Peoria until 4pm, and I missed my connection. I was supposed to catch the later flight, which was also delayed, and I ended up back in Austin at around 11pm. When I got back, my luggage had somehow miraculously managed to get left behind, even with the 2+ hours of delay between the arrival of my flight in Chicago and the connection to Austin. The concert tickets are still sitting on my counter, a source of deep anger every time I look at them and think about what a sack of disorganized bastards American Airlines is.
Right now I’m sitting in the Dallas airport. My flight from Oklahoma city was delayed for something called “flow control”, which I have come to figure means “we booked too many flights and now we have to delay everything while we get organized”, because the weather in Dallas is JUST FINE. Now it’s Friday, June 23, 2006, and the flight from Dallas to Austin, which was supposed to depart at 8:50pm, is now departing at 10:00pm; I will be LUCKY to get back to the airport and receive my luggage by 11:30pm. Another weekend blown. Thanks American.
I have HAD IT with your airline. Your on-time record is by far the WORST of any airline I’ve ever flown, and don’t try and quote me statistics based on when your plane leaves the gate or touches down; the stats I know are how much time I waste waiting for your planes to take off, how much time I spend sitting on my ass in the airport, and when I’m actually home and thankful that I don’t have to get on another one of your flights for at least a day.
I am going to do my UTMOST to book flights on other carriers, and I don’t care if it costs my company a few extra dollars; I can easily justify my choice as measured in delays and stress for them to let me switch. I have already had more-than-satisfactory service on Delta, Continental and Jet Blue, and I’m sure they’d welcome my custom. I don’t need bogus “Gold/Platinum/Super-Titanium” plans to feel appreciated, or some surly blue-suited matron waking me up from an exhausted slumber to see if I want any damn pretzels. What I need is a carrier that is worried about the quality of the service it provides, rather than trying to squeeze maximum revenue from its customer base by overbooking its flights both in the number of patrons it carries and the number of planes it can jam into Chicago (which is a NIGHTMARE, by the way).
With utmost sincerity and no rancor towards whichever poor bastard reads this,
XXXXXXXXX
Clinical Research Associate
