As some of you know, I took my family on vacation last week. As a proud US1, I was looking forward to showing how great US customer service is despite the current situation. Although there were significant delays on the way out to SEA, they were attributed to weather. The return, however, is another story. The lack of PDT support at PHL struck again! Coupled with the ineptitude of staff in Terminal F,this experience, coupled with the changes to Preferred accrual and ticketing, might just be the end of the road between US and me.
US 138 Friday night was just fine..although there was a medical emergency on board we arrived early, and the flight crew did a fantastic job of taking care of the ill passenger and making sure the medics got to him before we deplaned. We now had a 3 hour layover in PHL--so we went to the club, caught a nap and around 8AM we went to the club in Terminal F. On the bus we saw the PDT DHC8-300 which made up the inbound 3307 arrive at gate F-16. Knowing the airplane was there should have made me feel at ease but NOOOOO...
Around 9:20 we went down to the gate. The agent was checking people in (full flight) and the crew went out to the plane to prepare. Around 10 min later, just as the agent was about to begin boarding, the captain came back and made a phone call to Maintenance. The "story" was there was a problem with a radio, and the agent would let us know in 10 minutes or so what the deal would be. By that time passengers were getting nervous. The gate agent called for help from a supervisor (stupidvisor turned out to be more like it). He immediately cancelled the flight and said the only choice would be to fly to HPN (White Plains) and take ground transportation to ISP..that would have been 2.5 hours on a bus or taxi (especially with holiday traffic). They also said the 2PM to ISP was oversold (turned out not to be the case).
With a 12 year old in tears (she is nervous to fly after 9/11) and finding the airplane broken, I went back to the club and asked my friend there to get me a supervisor. The only acceptable solution was going to be for me to rent a car and drive home. Believe it or not they could not find a single manager in the F terminal!! Finally someone got on the phone "claiming" to be a line manager who had no authority. She chose to argue with me, trying to tell me HPN is only 37 miles from ISP and why wouldn't I do that? (You have to go around NYC to get there by vehicle, and it's more like 75 or 80 miles). She then said she had no authority to do anything and that she couldn't care less if I was a US 1 or a nobody, there was nothing she could do.
Well at this point after being treated with total disrespect I asked the club to have my bags pulled, rented a car and drove home. You can rest assured that consumer affairs will be getting the bill for the car rental.
Now the point--the plane sat at the gate for 2 hours before this flight was due to leave...surely the inbound crew must have noticed a radio problem and could have arranged for maintenance--since PHL maintenance is slow and doesn't like working on PDT planes, it could have helped..or at least they would have had extra time to reroute people. But they chose to wait until the last minute and cause excess strain on passengers (the Hertz bus I rode to the rental facility was full of passengers from that flight).
Now I know there is a problem servicing PDT aircraft in PHL. If they can't fix that then don't fly PDT aircraft at PHL!!! Of course the return ISP-PHL cancelled (they ferried the aircraft to SBY I think to fix it.) This is just a further example of what I have been saying earlier on these boards.
If it were me alone I could roll with the punches, and deal with consumer affairs later--there is no excuse for having someone pretend to be a manager and then argue. This person was rude, disrespectful and could care less about the problem. But I had my family with me, including a child who hadn't slept much and a wife who was freaking out. She asked me how I could ever fly every week with an airline who treats its best customers like that....good question.
Anyway, I put this out here for 2 reasons..because perhaps my friends at US can explain some of this and also to give you a break from the labor vs. management stuff which is happening on the board.
Sorry to rant, but I thought this experience would be of interest to some..