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Enrique Marcarian / Reuters

I have started traveling frequently (5 days a week) again and that has inspired me to share my perspective from time to time on how dysfunctional the whole airline system really is.  I received overwhelmingly supportive response to my last post on this 23 Rules Nobody Told You, But You Need to Know About Air Travel

Please let all of us know if I have missed anything!  Bring your sense of humor!

1) When an airline cancels a flight, they don’t have to provide you any compensation above the price of your ticket.  However, if you need to change your flight, you have to pay $100 plus the increase between what you bought your ticket for and what tickets are now available for.  How about a quid pro quo or a chit system?

2) If you are a Platinum level frequent flyer on one airline and purchase a ticket on that airline via their website, you may actually have to check in and be subject to the mal-treatment of another airline in which you have no status.  MOST airlines are at best vague when you purchase a segment on a “partner” airline as part of a trip.  This mal-treatment includes the requirement to pay for bags, lack of priority boarding and seating, and lack of priority security line access.

3) You can only use frequent flyer miles for trips on Tuesday after 9pm and before Wednesday 1am.  All other frequent flier tickets are sold out a year in advance.

4) It costs $100 in fees to travel free on a frequent flyer ticket.

5) Weather delays absolve all airline sins!  Any rights passengers have go out the window with a raindrop near Atlanta.

6) You pay the same price for your ticket whether you get a seat assignment or not.  (from a recent post by @ToddSchnick) You won’t find out that you don’t have a seat assignment until you check in.  Many times even when you use the airlines incredibly “clunky” tools to choose seats ahead of time, they regularly change or take away your seat assignment.  Additionally,  as Todd discusses in his post, those without seat assignments are treated as lepers by gate agents.

7) Airline employees have lost all their empowerment since 9/11.  For example, apparently there is a Joe Lavelle somewhere that gave US Air some trouble somewhere along the way and has made it to their “terrorist watch list”.  Both times that I have checked in on US Air this year (see # 2 as I will never intentionally book on US Air anymore) it has taken over 30 minutes to find a supervisor with the right level of authority to verify that the address on my driver’s license is not that same address as “Joe the Terrorist”.  Keep in mind that the address on my license is not actually correct, so the whole thing is an exercise of bureaucracy and lack of employee empowerment.

Must we watch the demonstration on how to buckle our seatbelt on EVERY SINGLE flight?  My 3 year old mastered this when he was 1.  Most of the time the flight attendants come through and demand that your seatbelt is fastened BEFORE the safety announcements.   What I would give for the hundreds of hours back that I have endured the lesson on how to buckle my seat belt!

9) You have to ask for a full can of soda.  Give me a break, the cost of the full can is less than 20 cents.   And why do I always have to ask for more than 3 ice cubes?

10)  When you are stranded overnight  (due to #5) airlines are WAY LESS THAN HELPFUL including being indignant about their ability to get your luggage to you so you don’t have to wear dirty clothes, smell bad, and have yuck mouth on your 5:30 am flight after either staying all night in the airport or spending your own money for a Hotel.

Please don’t take any of my poor humor too seriously, but please do complain vigorously about the STUPID rules!  Happy and Safe Travels…..

Related posts:

1. UPDATED: Now 23 Rules Nobody Told You, But You Need to Know About Air Travel Due to the overwhelming popularity and response from my original...
2. 10 Rules Nobody Told You, But You Need to Know About Air Travel I have recently started traveling frequently (5 days a week)...

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