Stranded In Syracuse

As a frequent American Airlines flyer I thought I had seen the worst the airline had to offer short of an accident.  If you fly them you know what I’m talking about.  Last week though may have established a new low.

It all started with a trip to New York City to celebrate my wife’s birthday.  Everything was perfectly planned to make this celebration extra special.  What I didn’t plan was the thunder storms across the Northeast. After circling in the air waiting for a break in the weather we were low on fuel and diverted to Syracuse – to sit on the tarmack for 2 1/2 hours. Finally at about 5:00pm, with the crew out of hours, American finally pulled up to a gate and let the passengers off.

The crew, who had appeared friendly and competent until this point provided absolutely no direction about what passengers should do once inside the terminal.  The only direction I got when I asked was to see American personnel inside.  That sounded reasonable until the hoard of frustrated passengers got off the plane to discover there were only two or three American employees in the airport and they had no idea what was going on.  But the person we spoke with said someone would be working on “it” and suggested we grab dinner and come back.  And that we did.

When we returned our bags had come in but there was no one, let me repeat that, no one around from American.  There was a rumor that American was contracting with buses to take us to LaGuardia.  I asked a number of people and none had actually seen or heard anyone from American say this, and it appeared the American employees had gone home or were in hiding.  So there were about 150 people milling about waiting for buses that we had no idea if they were really coming.

Since we had sat on the tarmack for over two hours it seemed to me that they had more than enough time to have a plan in place and appoint someone to take charge of the situation and communicate with passengers. Maybe this is the first thunderstorm American Airlines had ever experienced.  That would explain why they were caught so unprepared. Or it could be they are incompetent.

They were on that day.

So we rented a car and drove to Syracuse, losing a precious evening of our vacation and incurring the cost of a rental car.

From a customer satisfaction standpoint I am always interested in how companies handle their miscues. Readers of this blog may know that I have espoused that businesses will make mistakes and their customers will forgive them – if they are infrequent and they go above and beyond to remedy the problem. Coincidentally, I received a call from American’s customer service department about an unrelated item.  I mentioned the Syracuse issue and they said they were crediting each passenger with an extra 15,000 frequent flyer miles to compensate the passengers for the inconvenience.  I  asked them to reimburse me for the retal car and they said they would consider it.

Stay tuned.

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