MasterPlanning!: Friendly Alternatives for Friendly Skies
by Tony Chavira
At this very moment it is 9:45 pm on the evening of Sunday, October 19, 2009. For the past three hours I’ve been sitting at a United Airlines terminal at the Chicago-O’Hare airport with a “confirmed” ticket that had no confirmed seat. That’s correct: my ticket said that I was confirmed for the flight, and yet I could not board. As the plane pulled away from the terminal and lifted into the dark western skies without me (and roughly 20 other people, some of whom are my new angry friends), our large and frustrated group of confirmed ticket holders and indefinite standbys were all informed that it has been United Airline’s policy to deliberately overbook flights with the assumption that some people just wouldn’t show up. Today, apparently, that assumption has been found to be consistently wrong. In fact, I spoke to our customer service representative and she informed me that—miraculously—everyone had shown up to board their flights today. Apparently people enjoy flying to places with better weather than Chicago. Who could’ve guessed?
At this very moment it is 1:33 am on the morning of Monday, October 20, 2009. The moment I checked into my “complimentary” room at the Wyndham Hotel, some of the 20 people I made friends with by being snarky and sarcastic while waiting for our compensation at the airport agreed to meet me for drinks at the bar. My new flight takes off at 1:30pm tomorrow, so naturally this is not the time for alcoholic abstinence. After a few rounds and straining the last droplets of resentment out of our systems, I found my eclectic company to be fantastically interesting. I met an Australian publicist and part-time gallery curator for a cool place in downtown L.A., a medical equipment salesman who was thinking about going back to school in international business at Berkeley, a really fun pinball and arcade machine technician, a great professional blues guitarist with a very appropriately-timed wit, a funny lifestyle journalist wife and her sharp-as-a-tack financial manager husband, and actor Elliot Gould with another crowd of leftovers who were kicked out of the airport and decided to do the same amount of retaliatory drinking as we did. At one point we all joked that we should just let United bump us each day for the rest of the week, collect six more free flights, and possibly make a business out of it. Seemed like a good plan, except who knows how reliable those flights will be. Anyway, at least meeting all of these cool people made the experience feel like it had an upside, somewhere.
At this very moment it is 9:34 am on the morning of Monday, October 20, 2009. The alarm that I set last night should be going off at exactly 10 am. I should be sleeping in, not awake, thinking about the fact that I have to make my way to the airport from this hotel two hours ahead of time, and definitely not awake reflecting on the fact that I stupidly checked in my baggage with both my medication (so that I can eat without getting too sick) and all of my clothes. Oh, and my toothpaste and deodorant. I shouldn’t have had to call work and say “Sorry, I know you need me to take care of those contracts and proposals, but I’m evidently taking a forced vacation day.” I shouldn’t have had to write the top two paragraphs and I really shouldn’t have had to edit the second paragraph’s sloppy drunken phrasing. Actually, maybe I should have just left that paragraph as was ... it’s a sort of period piece.
Speaking of medication, there was another lady who was very literally pushed to the point of tears because her luggage was sent to Los Angeles with her very expensive blood pressure medicine in it. I spoke to her for a moment before we parted ways to different assigned hotels and she was incredibly anxious. She had never gone 24 hours without taking a pill, and this would be the first time she’d ever missed. Although you’d think that this would open a huge can of worms for United if her situation took an unfortunate turn for the worse, United’s policy was to not pay for her prescription at a local Walgreens. Sorry for the stroke ma’am, but you shouldn’t have put your meds in your luggage.
At some point last night I updated my Facebook status with this: “So apparently United Airlines overbooks flights on purpose to guarantee the revenue when some people don’t show.... Good thing to find out as you watch your plane leave without you,” and I got an encouraging amount of responses proclaiming United to “suck,” and right now I’d have to wholeheartedly agree with them. However, I also received a response from a more-informed friend of mine that pointed me to the U.S. Department of Transportation policy that it is actually perfectly legal for flights to overbook, leaving some people behind to get “bumped” to a less-convenient time. The criteria for whether or not you get on the flight are totally up to the airline: it could have to do with when you check in, it could have to do with when you booked your tickets, it could have to do with the number of standbys, or it could have to do with how much money you’re willing to shell out to guarantee a seat on the plane. I wish it had to do with how charming you are to the airline hostess, because I’d have a few free international flights by now. Although if it had to do with how complacent you were, all of the leftover people on our flight would’ve been in the air by now. DOT policy also states that the airlines are required to give you some form of compensation if they bump you involuntarily, whether it’s cash, a free trip somewhere, food or lodging while you wait for your next flight. Technically, we all got a free trip, food and lodging ... which was not so bad, I guess. Except for the fact that it was imposed on me unilaterally; I would typically never say no to a free flight, food or lodging.
Because we were involuntarily bumped, the twenty of us are protected by Federal Aviation Administration guidelines that are pretty clear about the basic terms: you get another flight to your destination, a free ticket for another place, and a hotel if it’s overnight. Those are the federally-mandated terms. However, I found out that there is an insidious alternative to this negotiation that involves the federal requirement to ask for volunteers to give up their seats first: if you agree to get bumped voluntarily, you also agree to airline compensation terms that are not federally-mandated. In short, you should just wait until they bump you involuntarily and you’ll get a sweeter deal. Unless you’re an expert negotiator; then maybe you could squeeze them for a first class international flight or something. I need to bone up on my contract negotiation.
The moral of this story is that if airlines are allowed to overbook, we really should be given transportation alternatives. United Airlines had all 20 of us locked in indefinitely, and that’s just not fair to anyone. Especially not the United customer service workers at the counter, who are essentially paid to get screamed at all day. I might be frustrated with the budget shortfall for high-speed trains and I might want to advocate that we still maintain and build roads and runways with a manageable transportation budget alongside light rail and bike routes, but I’m only doing those non-green things because people need options. Last night (and today) my options were taken away from me, and I can’t help but feel totally helpless. I can go to the hotel, get my free flight, and wait for the next flight to Los Angeles like a good little boy, or I guess I can sleep in Millennium Park while clinging desperately to my dying laptop for warmth as I begin to hitchhike my way across the country. Any alternative would’ve been cool: a high (or lower) speed train, a super-coordinated bus system, alternative flights via other airlines ... any of them would have at least made me and my newfound pals feel that everything wasn’t entirely out of our hands.
Instead, I’m sitting alone in a hotel that was imposed on me, in the same clothes as yesterday, using up laptop battery life that could otherwise be spent watching the new episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia on the plane. But that’s what happens when you get no options: you do what you’re told until those in power give you permission to proceed. Can I get on my plane now, United? No? Okay, I’ll just wait then.
Or you break the law, since no other options are available.
It is now 2:13 pm Chicago time on the afternoon of Monday, October 20, 2009. I’m on the plane editing this article for the last time. Before I left on my flight, I ran into the lady who needed her heart medication in the check-in lobby. She had been bumped from one confirmed flight to another since 7:30 am. She had another confirmed ticket for a 3:30 pm flight, but still wasn’t given a seat number. That’s their trick, to keep you optimistic. She probably still doesn’t have one, and is probably still trapped at Chicago-O’Hare.
www.racaia.com | tony@fourstory.org
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