Traveling is always a mixed bag. I recently flew from Washington DC to London on United. More about that in a moment.
The drive to DC was easy enough. It’s about the same distance as Phoenix to Vegas, which was always a sloooooow drive. But this went quite quickly.
As usual, I booked a hotel on Priceline. We ended up at the Hyatt right by Dulles airport, which was great. Not only were the staff attentive, professional and very courteous, they went above and beyond. As we checked in, I asked about airport parking. The associate checking us in, (who’s name was Katie, I believe) mentioned that the hotel offered free airport parking for anyone that stays there. Free! That’s a heck of a deal — in fact it more than paid for the stay at the hotel.
The next day was the flight to London. Flight 922 on United, if you’re counting. The bonus was that the flight was only $155. The taxes of course added another $350 per ticket. And now that the Monkey is officially a "big girl" (her words, not mine) she gets her own seat. The regular price for the flight is more like $900-1200 with taxes.
The flight left at 9:40am and landed at Heathrow at 10pm, which wasn’t ideal, but at that price, who’s complaining. I mostly have low expectations for flying these days. With the exception of Southwest, all of the domestic airlines I’ve flown in the past 5 years have been between awful and unbearable. Internationally, I’ve been a bit more spoiled. I used to fly BA from Phoenix to London and that was pretty good. But sadly BA don’t fly from RDU and their price from DC was a lot more expensive.
Fast forward to the flight… When we got off the ground, they served a crummy breakfast. What was surprising was that the crummy breakfast WAS THE ONLY MEAL. ON A SEVEN HOUR FLIGHT! Shortly before we landed they served a "snack", which consisted of a soggy cold microscopic sandwich, about 2.5" in diameter with turkey and nothing else. Oh, and a cookie.
Good times!
But that was just the beginning.
My daughter was attempting to eat the sandwich, when some Turkey got stuck in her throat. Those of you reading my recent posts know that she’s been recovering from miscellaneous toddler lurgy, and this was just enough to make her throw up.
For once, I had lightning reflexes, and my recently emptied plastic cup actually caught all the spew-stream. It was filled to within a millimeter of the top when she paused for breath. My wife grabbed a sick bag just in time for the scene-from-the-exorcist to continue. So now I have a cup full of sick and a soggy bag of sick to go with it. I head to the back of the plane to (a) get rid of the vom-pile and (b) get some napkins.
When I get back there, I explain to a Sandra W. that my daughter just threw up and I’m in urgent need of some napkins. She tells me I need to wait for the bathroom (there’s a line of 4 people waiting). I look at her with my best "I don’t think you heard me" expression, and repeated that my toddler was spewing vomit across the cabin, and while she had temporarily abated, it would be in the general public good to have some napkins on standby.
Sandra (an older lady with curly grey hair and a battleaxe attitude) repeated that I needed to wait for the bathroom.
I pointed out that there was a line and that I was carrying vomit. "_That_ has to be disposed of in the bathroom" she said pointing. This was where I lost patience a little. Quite frankly, I seriously toyed with just dropping the vom right on her shoes and laughing in her face.
Fortunately her shoes were saved by one of her colleagues who was less of a subscriber to Sandra’s bitch-on-wheels-that-could-give-a-damn-about-customers attitude. He came to the rescue with some napkins and the enlightened suggestion that the vomit could actually be deposited in the trash can adjacent to the bathroom.
Now I really don’t give a damn about fancy service when I fly, unless I’ve paid to fly first or business class. But I do care a great deal about basic levels of practical assistance and decency.
If you had a medical emergency in a hotel, you would not expect to be told to wait in line. If you had an accident in a grocery store, you’d expect some assistance. The airline has a responsibility for the safety and well-being of their passengers and they simply don’t take it seriously.
And how Airlines pride themselves on their customer service when they hire and retain cretinous (a favorite English word) battleaxes (nuther one) like Sandra W. is beyond me.
But of course no one from United Airlines will ever read this blog… not giving a damn is far too much of a full time occupation…
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