Years ago, there was a movie called “Falling down” with Michael Douglas. Shortly into the movie, one morning, Michael Douglas’s character walks into a fictional fast food place called Whammy Burger and tries to order a Whammy omelet from the menu. The cashier refused the order because they stopped serving breakfast so the manager was asked to step in. The manager, his voice dripping in fake customer concern, said “I’m sorry sir, we stopped serving breakfast at 11:30 a.m.”
Puzzled, Michael Douglas looked at his watch and saw that it was 11:32 a.m. They bantered back-and-forth with the obvious intent to show the lack of reasonableness with respect to some corporate rules.
All of which brings us to American Airlines.
My recent American Airlines flight was scheduled to leave for my destination at 5:54 a.m. I was told to be at the Chattanooga airport an hour and a half early. I got up at 3 a.m. in order to help make the people at American Airlines happy to have me on their airplane.
I arrived at the airport an hour and a half early to find that there was a giant line with only two agents at the ticketing counter. Additionally, the baggage machine where you self-check bags was broken, and people were grumbling about the nonfunctional machine. It was a reasonably large mess.
The line progressed at the speed of a stoned turtle because American Airlines, in their infinite wisdom, had three flights all leaving at approximately the same time with only two agents at the gate. I finally got up to the counter and gave the agent the information as to my destination.
With not a hint of remorse, not a trace of customer service, and not a sliver of compassion, the agent glanced at me and coldly said, “Sorry, we have a 45 minute cut off and it’s 39 minutes ahead of time so you missed it by six minutes. Step aside and call the number on this card and rebook your flight. We are busy.” With that he flipped me a card with a 1-800 number.
We have all watched movies where passengers turned obnoxious. Not wanting to do that, I moved to my left, began a phone call that descended into an electronic rabbit hole and watched as the agent did the same thing to other people trying to get to my same original - now thwarted - destination.
After sitting on hold, I was finally connected with someone and explained to them the situation. The agent on the phone said “Why are you rescheduling? There is plenty of time. Why would they make you walk away when they didn’t have to do that? They should’ve gone ahead and let you get on the plane, you were only six minutes late?!?”
While I agreed and explained I was equally perplexed, I asked him to just do what he had to do to get me on another flight.
He put me on hold, disappeared for quite some time, came back and said “I’ve got you on another flight.” I begrudgingly agreed but American Airlines was not finished with the morning’s flogging. The agent then added: ”Because you are voluntarily rebooking the flight, there will be a $258 fee associated with this. Oh yeah…one more thing….the next flight is five hours after your original flight.”
With quick back-and-forth banter I expressed my possibly flawed logic - sprinkled with various versions of “what do you mean by “voluntary” ?!?!” -however I was met only by his “I’m sorry, too bad, so sad….sucks to be you” retort. So, with the hangries kicking in, I relented, gave him a credit card number, and he issued the new ticket. I sulked away, got some breakfast, and the seed crystals of this post began to form.
When one books a plane ticket, it typically shows the take off time and the arrival time. Those two times are assumably predicated on a hopefully intelligent staff at an airline ($53 billion in sales in 2023) sufficiently staffing their operations so as to allow those published times to successfully come to fruition. Further, even the “get their early” admonition is also based on there being enough non surly agents on hand to allow for quick processing of their customers. Should the airline have multiple departures, how about incorporating this novel idea……”Add some more agents when the gate is busy!!”
While no doubt, many out there will say, “I love American Airlines…..you should get there two hours early!” (a.k.a. my sweet mom), then others will likely change that to say “American Airlines is my hero, you should have gotten there three hours early”, and so forth. At what point does the “Get there earlier!!” admonition legitimately turn into either, “Don’t waste time trying to fly out of Chattanooga. They could care less about their passengers.” or “Get in the car and drive - it’s a heck of a lot faster and there will be no agents telling you that can’t get a Whammy Omelet plane ticket.”
One may ponder as to the statistical probability of me flying (or waiting on) American Airlines again……
Arch Williingham
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Mr. Willingham,
Thank you for letting us in on how American Airlines treats its customers at CHA airport. Your story was a good 'un.
For those not knowing, American Airlines is a DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) inspired company, which may explain their broken equipment and rude, unhelpful employees at CHA. Might make you seriously wonder about DEI hired AA pilots and maintenance workers too.
The CHA Airport Authority has, I'm sure, worked very hard to get airlines to service Chattanooga. I'm also sure they would hate to see customers use other transportation options because of poor service at their airport. My question ...does the CHA Airport Authority have a minimum customer service standard for the airlines to abide?
As for me, American Airlines has not been a high order choice for flying out of CHA. But, given Mr. Willingham's escapade and AAs DEI initiatives, an AA flight might be classified in the "last resort" category.
Phil Snider
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That was a “Falling Down” circumstance.
The systems in our nation that operated effectively and efficiently for a vast number of decades and are now broken. I ask myself, when did this systemic decline start? It seems to me, the problem starts with the quality or lack thereof of employees at all levels.
Your experience is one example. Air transportation is a well publicized problem. An airline company with extraordinary customer service could take the market regardless of what they charged.
The only aspect of these situations a person can control is how they respond, and deal with it later.
The $258 charge is outrageous. You should write a letter to corporate and recover the fee. That fee is unjust, regardless of the amount.
April Eidson
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Mr. Willingham, it is most unfortunate that you had this experience with the regional carrier for American Airlines. I can remember during my days in the c-suite when flying was a delightful and relaxing experience. Now, it is a challenging ordeal. I remember when a colleague and I were checking it at the very time of scheduled departure, the ticket agent notified the gate agent requesting them to hold the flight for us.
It is most unfortunate that so many CEO's and senior leadership fail to understand the importance of "servant leadership," that being to provide quality support and resources for employees that benefits the customer. Servant leadership is present in "best in class" or "benchmark excellence" organizations. Now, it seems that CEO's are so incredibly self-centered and personal financial greed!
I want to clarify what DEI actually means. While the Democrats and the woke crowd espouse its meaning to be "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion," it actually means "Trying to Make a Silk Purse Out of a Sow's Ear." Another definition I heard and like even more is "Didn't Earn It!" When Congress passed legislation that was signed into law by the President that simply lacked "critical thinking" (common-sense), we would bring in our corporate counsel and explain to them the unwarranted risk likely to occur to our organization and patients adhering to non-sensical laws. We would be looking for ways to work around them and not be subject to fines and penalties. We had a non-negotiable commitment to not engage in any practices that could be harmful to the well-being and safety of our patients in a major health system. We embraced doing our best hiring the best and most qualified employees without regard for race, creed, age, gender, etc.
Airline CEOs and their Boards are making a lot of irresponsible decisions by reducing seat width and pitch to crowd more people in the tube. I truly do not believe they can evacuate a fully loaded aircraft in the required time to be certified when taking into account a typical passenger demographic and likely distorted fuselage in an accident.
By the way, let's remember that the CEOs have significant influence on who is appointed to the Board.
D. E. Klasing
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What started out as a tough morning at the airport and missing a flight, which happens every day at every airport, has morphed into a political issue. Blaming Diversity, Inclusion, and Equality as well as all Democrats for Archie’s bad experience is another example of Republicans whining and crying about everything from missed flights to attempted murder of their savior Don.
Three words, Diversity, Inclusion, Equality. Making these words bad words is beyond belief. Blame American Airlines and get over yourself.
Pat Hagan
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Arch,
I sympathize with you. In 2021 we booked the first morning AA flight out of Chattanooga to Dallas to take the family on a quick ski trip. We arrived approximately an hour prior to our flight. I admit, cutting a little close, but its Chattanooga and the reason why I sometimes will pay more to fly from here instead of waiting in the security crowds for an hour to board in Atlanta or Nashville. In my previous job, I flew out of Chattanooga every couple weeks without checked bags and it never took more than 10 minutes to get through security. I regularly had the truck parked and was walking into the airport 20 minutes prior to take off and I never missed a flight. Granted, I wasn’t checking bags and had my boarding pass on my phone.
Back to the February morning in 2021. We stood in the front of the Dallas line (they line you up by destination, or at least they did to us that morning) with another couple on our flight for at least 30 minutes and the single gate agent told us Charlotte passengers had priority. We vocally iterated our frustration several times to the gate agent, who was nervously ignoring us and kept stating he had to “prioritize other flights.” When he finally told us to approach the desk, he said we were too late and that our bags wouldn’t make it. He began to find us another flight, but all the available flights had us getting to Salt Lake about 10 hours later than our original. I objected and he booked us the same morning flight the next day. We were going on a short ski trip, and I had to modify our condo, rental car, and lift tickets, which cost us over $500 in change fees.
Come to find out, the exact same thing happened to another couple we know leaving for their honeymoon. It caused them several flight changes and 36 hours to get to Europe.
It seems it might be standard practice for AA to oversell the morning flights and do this to passengers who “cut it close” in order to avoid compensating passengers for it being oversold. If something like this happens once, you can excuse the mismanagement and blame yourself for “cutting it close.” When it happens frequently, it indicates a pattern. If AA is going to oversell a flight with the assumption that not all the passengers will make it on time, then they need to compensate those willing to take a later flight if all the passengers show up on time, even if they “cut it close.”
Saving said that, we just booked another AA flight to SLC for this February out of Chattanooga. We will arrive two hours prior this time.
John Hollingsworth
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Nostalgia comes from the Greek noun nostros (return home) and from algia (longing).
I freely admit to my nostalgia for flying on Piedmont Airlines a few decades ago. The planes were spacious, clean and comfortable.
On one occasion, I was a bit late for my take off from Atlanta, and the plane returned to the gate in order to let me on board. The punishment for my tardiness was that I was told to sit in first class. I looked down the aisle and saw many unhappy faces. If looks could kill.
As Lewis Grizzard observed, "Why is it that the last words you see before getting on to your flight is terminal?"
Michael Woodward
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We have a great city and a great regional airport.The airport facility is divided in two segments. The land side and the air side.
I believe that the Airport Authority team sincerely cares about each passenger's experience. Parking, access, cleanliness, food service and security usually operate extraordinarily well.That is the land side.
On the air side, There are different bosses and requirements and priorities.Hopefully, based on this chain of letters and comments, the land side bosses will be talking to the air side bosses very soon.
Michael Mallen, former Airport Authority commissioner
