I don't fly much anymore (hey; I don't travel if I can help it). But I used to fly at least twice a year to conferences, mostly, and sometimes to visit relatives. I can remember at least half a dozen times that we called the airline the day before we were supposed to fly home and changed our flight (usually to fly home earlier). The only hassle was making the phone call and sitting on "hold for a few minutes.
Those days seem to be gone, at least if you fly USAir.
My parents flew into San Francisco on Thursday night. The plan was that they'd fly back out (to Las Vegas) on Saturday, to visit my mother's sister for a few days, then return to SFO and stay with us for a week. So far so good and they did fly to Las Vegas on Saturday. But there was a glitch in the plans.
When my Dad made the reservation, he goofed. He accidentally picked 10:15 pm instead of 10:15 am This is a side-effect of buying tickets over the web. Instead of a human to whom you can say "morning, please", you get to pick from a badly conceived menu. (I really hate the am/pm confusion; I prefer important times to be in 24-hour mode!).
The goof was discovered on Thursday night. On Friday morning, my Dad called the airline.
After much pushing of buttons, speaking to automated voice-recognition systems and music-on-hold, my Dad was connected to a real person. After a great deal more time (during which flight schedules were discussed) the agent finally got around to mentioning The Cost.
There would be a $100 fee per person to change the flight. Oh yes… and there would be a price difference incurred because this wasn't so much a "change" of flight time as a purchase of a new ticket less than 24 hours before traveling. The bottom line they could fly out in the morning for only $526 dollars more. Or they could try for standby on an earlier flight. That would incur a $25 fee per person.
Yowza!
My Dad was, shall we say, displeased. He informed the agent (and her supervisor) that he would not be flying USAir again. Neither would his friends.
Hubby suggests that the "Airlines are hurting". I suggest that if they're hurting, they should be more sensitive to customer service, not less!
I drove my folks to the airport at 7am on Saturday morning where they tried for standby on two planes (both, apparently overbooked something the agent failed to mention on Friday). Then I picked them up again and we all went off for lunch. At 9 pm Saturday night (21:00 😉 we all drove back to the airport and I dropped them off to catch their original 10:15 pm flight.
And next time they fly out from Pennsylvania, it probably won't be on USAir.
Slightly Off KIlter 