American Airlines earned an enemy
david.heinemeierhansson.com
david.heinemeierhansson.com
To their credit I took SFO->JFK->LHR this summer. The first flight was insanely delayed (in my experience many AA flights out of SFO are ridiculously delayed), and I had to sprint through JFK to make the connection. I knew my checked bag wouldn't have made it, so I didn't waste time waiting for it. I went straight to the counter and asked them if my bag was in London, it wasn't, it was still at JFK. They apologised profusely and a courier delivered it to my apartment the next day.
If you're wondering why I tolerate AA, it's because I have frequent flier status on BA, and get insane air miles (base plus 100% bonus, minimum) for flying on OneWorld carriers.
Ultimately, I have to say that I'm a fan of the brave new world of air travel. I used to hate all the nickle-and-diming, but while doing all that hating, I didn't realize how cheaply one can move around the country. JFK-SFO is like $300 round-trip now. 5000 miles in a FLYING MACHINE for $300! But instead, people complain that their bags are not insured for $10,000 each, or that they have to pay $100 for more leg room. Well, yeah. If it was "free", then someone else would book their ticket earlier than you and you wouldn't even have the option of getting more leg room.
(Also, am I the only person that likes American Airlines? 400,000 miles, and I only have one experience that really made me mad.)
Are there no customer protection laws in the US? I'm pretty sure that in most of Europe, it doesn't work that way, and for a good reason.
And if it really is like that, is that prominently advertised, or is that in fine print written in 8pt in light grey font on white background? From the customer's perspective, that makes a huge difference.
I for one (though mostly travelling from and to Germany, not the US) have never been told "we might lose your bag, and you'll get $20 in that case).
I had considered this but eliminated it as a dependable method because I assume that most countries have their own customs procedures for items shipped via FedEx/UPS and in some cases items might be tied up for days or weeks.
[1] http://www.luggageforward.com/
Disclaimer: no affiliation at all with them. In the end I never tried them because I now travel with carry-on only.
Taxes - personal items? They DGAF, you'll probably pay more in taxes than your items cost;
Proof of local address - y'see, they can't release your items without you having proof of your local address where you reside, WTF.
AND if they lose your stuff you're just as f'ed (yeah, waiting 3 months to get your insurance is fun)...
So, no, shipping your stuff separately via international post is not a good option.
Yes, Ground is now guaranteed time-in-transit for both FedEx and UPS and they both have 1, 2, 3 day options.
Shipping an actual suitcase, however, is not financially viable.
Getting an account or using an association like USAA can cut your costs substantially for expedited but ground rates don't move as much.
http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/ecc/consumer_topics/air_travel...
> If your registered luggage is lost, damaged or delayed, you may be entitled to compensation from the airline, up to about €1,220
Far higher than $20.
others not even close: moving departure times by two hours (forward) and not bothering to call, email or text to inform. closing the door then sitting at the gate for 3 hours so that you can say we departed "on time". Twice. fun and games around rescheduling people on delayed flights: no, it's not acceptable to wait 39 hours for a flight between a major focus city and your home hub because you have mechanical issues with your aircraft.
The incident I refer above was a ridiculous delay. The 762 they had for my SFO-JFK flight was broken in some way that made the plane flyable, but only fixable in LAX. They didn't tell us this, and loaded us on and taxied us out to the runway. There they told us we would be going to LAX, where there may be a new plane. Two hours later, we're in LAX, and waiting for a new plane. 6 hours after the scheduled arrival time, we're finally in JFK. Just fucking incompetent. Fly the good plane to SFO and board us there.
(Incidentally, I flew this route today, and sure enough, mechanical problem! We had to downgrade from a 763 to a 762, which was not appreciated, but at least we didn't have to fly all over the country looking for a better plane. And since I hadn't actually flown first class on a 762 before, it was nice to check it off my list. The seat was fine. Looking forward to the A321 on this route, though.)
As for flying to Japan, AA is a lot cheaper than JAL or Cathay. You get what you pay for. (AA is about $3000-$5000, Cathay is always $10,000+. JAL floats between the two extremes.)
Plus I think you're missing the larger issue. The airline is charging for this service, and they didn't deliver. Just because their terms of service are crappy doesn't mean that the OP should have to endure bad service like this.
Here are a few tips:
- Travel lighter! I was very careful to keep track of what I did and didn't use on each trip. There were very few things that went back into the suitcase if they weren't used (a brief-case umbrella and a tiny sewing kit are all I can think of).
- If you're traveling for several weeks, pack 5-7 days of clothes. Often they can be worn more than once without washing, and most hotels have laundry services.
- Traveling with kids is hard (I have four) ... especially infants. If you paid for a ticket for your child, they get a carry-on and a personal item too - even if they can't carry it.
- Rollie's are great but you can make them better. You can strap the handles together so that a whole set of rollies can be pulled via one handle. Some matching sets of luggage include these straps.
- If you do check a bag, make sure you can afford to lose what's in the bag. You will NEVER get the value of that bags contents back from the airline, so keep the value low.
- Keep your toothbrush, deodorant and at least a set of underwear in your laptop/personal bag (unless you also carry on your allowed piece of baggage.
Finally, the whole travel process can be irritating. Ticketing can earn an enemy quickly if they can't deal with missed flights, delays and cancellations in a reasonable way. So the real tip here is to not stress about it too much (hard for type A personalities). If you let a poor travel experience ruin your trip, you've lost more than a bag.
These people have a high turn-over rate and absolutely no incentive to go beyond the company policy. My point was that "the best way to win is to not play the game".
EDIT: As I thought about this, I realized we're a bit insulated from the problem, but consider this scenario:
"I tried to call SnapChat the other day to have them delete an embarrassing photo before it got to the recipient - Can you believe there's a company without a phone number? THEY'RE MY NUMBER ONE ENEMY!"
Also that is a crazy comparison, an airline is responsible for getting you to your destination alive and with your bags, it's not acceptable for them to have ineffective customer service. Even if what they offered wasn't so important the fact is you pay money for their services, the deal has to be two sided.
"I can't believe they just shut down my favorite application for doing X" - spoken by people without paid accounts.
"That company has so much money you think they'd do X" - (most commonly this one is "add my requested but obscure feature) - spoken by someone who doesn't realize that a company can be well-funded but "burning through cash" unprofitable.
Until the basic technology of moving around people improves beyond adaptations of 19th century passenger train processes and assumptions, the situation is not likely to improve. There are lots of ways the entire passenger flying process could be automated and service dramatically improved, but many of them involve rip-and-replacement of infrastructure that no one wants to abandon (and thence pay for new infrastructure, when they can barely afford just the maintenance on the current infrastructure). This is similar to the obstacles to change the shipping industry went through to get to the containerized state we recognize today (and even for them, there still remain massive loss problems).
I'm with some of the commentators who point out that being able to fly on budget tickets and counting the trip in hours or at most days around the entire frickin' world, for the cost of at most a year's gross wages of a working class person in any of the G10 developed nations, is an amazing feat of combined technologies and processes by itself. The carefully-budgeted yet still prodigious energy expenditure alone used to accomplish this feat is amazing. To complain about checked luggage when people are paying way below shipping values per unit weight and volume is to not keep the situation in perspective. Companies like FedEx and UPS can afford to continuously improve and upgrade their package handling facilities precisely because customers are paying these companies far more than they are willing to pay airlines for handling packages with worse attributes (FedEx won't allow you to ship most suitcases without additional securing, for example). If customers ponied up for the actual cost of the capital improvements to the shipping facilities at airports to keep them on par with the likes of FedEx, and sent through luggage that had the characteristics the freight companies demand, then the check-in luggage experience would improve to the expected levels.
In the meantime, there are tactics and technologies that help mitigate the experience today. Parent post hit a lot of these, and I want to expand upon them. A lot of these tactics are simply throwing more money at the situation. For example, most families with very young (and sometimes not-so-young) children just ride with the children in their lap. Even for entire trans-continental or oceanic flights. The reality is outside of the (mythical?) archetypal HN demographic of affluent youngsters, most airline customers do not have frequent flyer status or money to spend on a full ticket for a six-month old, for example. So the following tips are aimed at HN readers who I suspect might have the means to implement them, but this list is obviously out of reach for the general airline customer population.
* There are now socks and underwear that pack super flat, are antimicrobial, and fast drip-dry. They are really expensive (like as much as $30 retail for a boxer shorts), but you can actually get away with packing just a pair for a month. Wear one, hand wash it, hang it to dry while wearing the other; I've had them dry in as fast as three hours. The antimicrobial treatment gives way after a set number of washings. ExOfficio is one such brand supplying these.
* Pack with an eye to flattening anything you can if possible. It is worth it to get travel gear if it will save weight/volume/time. For example, I see lots of people run around with water bottles; I use a collapsible water bottle (just don't fold these up, only flatten them, and they will last a long time).
* If you get elite frequent flyer status, one of the perquisites is special tagging to prioritize your check-in luggage. Check in early and get this tagging, and you increase the odds your check-in luggage will arrive with you.
* If you travel enough, pay for the annual airline lounge subscription. I have found their ticketing agents are generally more experienced with working the reservations system than your average gate agent. Plus, the lounge makes it practical to arrive even half a day early if a client meeting goes better and faster than you thought, for example. This happens to me a lot, and I just get a lunch/dinner and work from the lounge. The lounges are very much worth it for wrangling children on long layovers. Bring anti-microbial wipes and fluids, wipe down the toys before and after letting the tykes pick them up and play with them, and you can pleasantly pass hours in the children's play area in the lounges. Tip very generously, and I suspect you can even get food delivered to you (though I've been generally satisfied with the lounge options). Lounges at major hubs usually have shower facilities, which are optimal for international itineraries.
* Attitude and timing is everything. If you are using airlines, even with elite frequent flyer status, just don't pack your schedule so tightly and expect problems, then try to get some work or play done in the given context to make up for the extra time spent around the traveling. If your situation is valuable and important enough to warrant super-tight scheduling and Type A douche canoe behavior if anything goes awry with the timing, then someone will pay up for that ride in the Gulfstream. Otherwise, many times I've gotten preferential treatment simply because I was laid back and chill after a flight cancellation, for example.
* Get the smartphone app for the airline(s) you are flying for your trip, and keep your airline's number on speed dial. Many times a gate change or schedule change shows up on the app sooner than it is announced at the gate. Being first to notice confers a large advantage when there are changes. This is one of the few tips I have that anyone, not just elite travelers, can use. When there is a gate change and if you are not a preferred boarding group, gather your belongings and head over to the new gate before it is announced to get a gate lounge seat that lets you get in the front of the boarding line. When there is a scheduling change (cancellation, long delay, etc.), speed-dial the reservations line and inquire about an alternate itinerary. Stall the reservations agent with booking the change until the gate agent announces the delay/cancellation (but not for longer than a few minutes, give the reservations agents a break), because on rare occasions a mechanical problem is resolved soon after it is reported, and the gate agent will know that before the central system that updates the app knows it.
This might make for a teachable moment on HN. If what you offer is actually lower-grade, perhaps you should set expectations appropriately, even if comparing to historical standards you take a hit on brand image by going down market (or spin off a new brand to go down market).
The airlines could probably introduce an upscale service for valet check-in luggage handling that comes with a high ($5K USD?) insurance coverage and a money-back arrives-when-you-do guarantee, and guarantees personalized (as opposed to bulk) attention to your check-in luggage that is hand-carried into a separate combination-lockable container with RFID tags plastered all over the outside instead of sent through the conveyor system by itself, or at airports with particularly antiquated or unreliable conveyor systems, actually hand-carried directly onto the aircraft itself. As much as it costs to ship luggage next day, they could probably cover their costs and turn a profit on the service by charging only half or 2/3 of that freight charge. Give the employees a healthy cut of the action and noticeable bonuses for a 100% success rate each month to cut down theft, and the airlines could address a vocal, unhappy segment of the customer base while adding an additional revenue stream at the same time.
In closing, my hypothesis is the airlines will not be able to offer a better experience at budget price points until the majority of the staffing on the ground is replaced by automation and some drastic changes are made in the basic materials and people movement infrastructure.
I learned that baggage losses are balanced against the cost of paying for more reliable and trustworthy baggage handlers, and customer service is subject to a similar balancing act.
I also started travelling lighter, and keeping an extra day's clothing in my carry-on bag. It's much more difficult to be prepared for baggage loss with a kid, but it was worth it. Try running out of diapers because planes are delayed. When was the last time you saw diapers for sale in an airport?
I don't think that is the way the legal system defines duty and fault.
Fringe benefits: since I'm not checking a bag, I can get to the airport a little later. And I also get to leave the airport earlier at my destination since I don't have to wait at baggage claim.
Of course, those of you traveling with kids have it a bit harder, but given the passenger mix on most planes I've flown on, most people could likely follow this advice.
"Checked luggage is lost luggage."
I survived a month in Europe shortly after with carry-ons. It was doable, pleasant even, but I had to make some sacrifices: one pair of shoes, no laptop, no heavy jacket. It's obviously not ideal and possibly not feasible for someone traveling with a non-ticketed baby to travel this way.
I spent five weeks in India for work last year, one of my coworkers brought an entire suitcase of shoes. He was nothing compared to the guy who brought two overweight suitcases. Our company policy would paid for extra bag fees but not overweight fees. He was pretty pissed when he got hit with those fees by Lufthansa. North of $300 each way out of his own pocket. For the life of me I don't know why he needed so much.
Nope, just minimum wage and very busy people. The 'miracle' the OA refers to is based on 'driving out cost' at every possible point in the chain.
American Airlines sucks, but I don't see their fault here.
In the end I did not try any of them but was pleasantly surprised that there are people working on fixing this.
What if it is a general problem with society as people become more and more absorbed in their virtual Internet lives and no longer care to do a good job at whatever company they work for?
They use concourse D at terminal B but called (or call) it terminal D. No amount of any communication on this would register.