I Was Cured All Right

If I wasn’t so tired I would have rented a car and drove home.

I helped my brother and sister-in-law move from Memphis to Alexandria, VA this past weekend. The deal was I was going to help them move from a 3rd floor apartment to a house and follow them in one of their vehicles. That went ok, but it was of course a ton of work. After the move the plan was to fly home. My brother bought the ticket and without asking me first he booked the flight on Air Tran Airlines (Sunday Sept 24th at 8:20pm). I went along with it not expecting it to be too much of a problem. Big mistake.

I got to Dulles airport and was told my flight to Atlanta, the location of my connecting flight to Memphis was delayed, but since I didn’t have any checked luggage I could get on an earlier flight that was also delayed. Since the earlier delayed flight was delayed to the approximate time of my original flight I accepted their offer of taking the earlier flight. They promised me it would get me in Atlanta on time for the connecting flight (to depart on Sunday, Sept 24th 10:55pm). I made the mistake of going against my better judgment and didn’t just postpone the flight for a day.

When I actually got on the plane I was told that the reason for the delays in Atlanta was due to weather and there was going to be an hour delay before take off. Instead of letting everyone off the plane so they could make other arrangements if necessary, they taxied the plane to a holding area. Then they told us that there was going to be a delay for an hour and 38 minutes. If the woman who told me I could get on this earlier flight had any sense she would have told me about the initial hour delay and I would have postponed the flight for a day. Oh well, if the situation was so bad in Atlanta they would have surely delayed the departing flights as well and everything should be fine.

My flight finally arrived in Atlanta to clear skies 25 minutes after my connecting flight was scheduled to leave. Where the hell was this “storm”?!?!? Combine that with the fact that there were so many people sitting and lying around in the Air Tran concourse of the airport that it looked like a refuge camp, I was sure that my flight was still there.

Wrong! My flight was the only flight to leave on-time. There were people from several cities that had to connect to that flight. That was the last flight to Memphis for 9 hours and Air Tran decided to let that flight go after telling its other flights from different cities to arrive hours late because of the weather. If the storm was so bad why was that one flight allowed to depart on-time? This was not a weather problem, it was a poor management decision problem and an “untrained employees who can’t see a problem when a flight is scheduled to arrive at an airport 30 minutes after the connecting flight departs” problem.

I tried to explain this to the poorly skilled customer service rep, but he kept repeating the “it was because of the weather so we won’t help you” line. He did however give me a phone number to call so I could get a discounted motel room (the cheapest rate was $50). I guess when a gate employee told me to go to customer service so they could “put me in a hotel for the night” that’s what she meant.

If I wasn’t exhausted from the move and lack of sleep I would have spent $80 for a rental car and drove home. Instead I just stayed at the airport all night.

So in summary, Air Tran lies, is incompetent and has piss poor customer service. But hey, it can’t be all bad because they have XM radio in the arm rests on their planes. God forbid they did something pointless with that money like train their employees. Next time I take a “budget” flight it’s going to be on United Express.