Airlines never learn.
Almost two years ago, Northwest Airlines stranded more than 6,000 passengers on dozens of planes at Detroit’s Metropolitan Airport for more than eight hours. The incident forced the nation’s airlines to develop customer service plans to ward off threats by Congress to impose operating standards on the carriers.
Earlier this year, United Airlines stranded 200 passengers on an O’Hare International Airport runway for eight hours without food and with little water.
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On Monday, Northwest struck again–and in Detroit no less.Mechanical problems, including a broken windshield defogger and a generator malfunction, forced a nine-hour delay. And when the plane was finally ready to leave a little before 8 p.m., the captain decided it wasn’t safe to depart because of freezing rain.
Once passengers got back to the gate, they were met by police because one or more passengers had made threatening remarks.
To add insult to injury, the airline’s gate agents decided that the passengers were owed nothing–no food, no lodging–under its customer service plan because weather caused the flight cancellation.
“They held us hostage,” said Patty Mackay, 42, of Milwaukee. “They kept lying to us, saying to us we were going to leave. And we never did leave.”
Rather than trying to differentiate themselves from other carriers by offering more and better services, United and other airlines insist that if Congress imposes operating standards–they call it “reregulation”–that those standards will become the best service offered by the industry.
One thrill of a gift: Neiman Marcus, which this year offers a $20 million, 380-ton submarine that sleeps 11, doesn’t have a lock on the weirdest gift category.
Space Adventures offers a discount on its “once-in-a-lifetime” ride aboard a Russian MiG-25 or MiG-29 fighter jet.
The Arlington, Va.-based firm, which counts Buzz Aldrin and Kathryn Thornton among the astronauts who now are advisers, said it is offering rides aboard the Russian jets, which achieve speeds of twice the speed of sound and take participants to the edge of space, 80,000 feet or more.
Prices include accommodations in Moscow, transportation to and from Zhukovsky Air Base, a leather flight jacket and a display model of the aircraft on which the ride is booked.
The discounted ride aboard the MiG-25, normally $12,595, is $10,705.75, while the ride aboard the MiG-29, normally $10,495, is $8,920.75. Participants are required to provide their own transportation to Moscow. But, hey, if you are spending more than $8,000 for a gift, you probably can afford the $1,000 flight to Moscow.
Agent fees go south(west): Travel agents, who have seen the fee they get for booking an airline ticket slashed to 5 percent of the ticket price with a maximum of $50, are getting cut again.
Now the lone major holdout says it is joining the fee-cutting parade, which is led by Delta Air Lines and United.
Southwest Airlines, which had been paying a 10 percent commission to travel agents, said this week it will pay 8 percent on ticketless transactions and 5 percent on paper tickets. Southwest said it will cap the commission at $30 on a one-way fare and $60 on a round-trip fare.
Southwest has been paying the 10 percent fare since 1995, when Delta and United instituted a series of cuts that were adopted by the other major carriers.