Good News/Bad News

Surprise, Surprise! Airline travel hit record highs over Thanksgiving, with very few problems. Dire troubles were predicted, but things went smoothly. According to Forbes.com, there were four reasons: Travelers are finally figuring out the new rules. Personally, I can’t remember how long it has been since people showed up at the airport not knowing that they couldn’t carry big pocketknives. The weather was relatively good. Nobody is even trying to take credit for that. Free airspace along the Eastern USA. As Bush predicted, that did help (everybody’s got to be right every now and then). Proactive airlines. In other words, the airlines really are trying. Forbes seemed to think this was a turning point—that maybe things will be a little better henceforth. I surely hope so. In the meantime, one can still run into airline actions that make no sense at all. Many of these revolve around trying to get a ticket in the first place. Last week I made a reservation for son Brett. He was riding; I was buying the ticket for him (with his money). First, I tried Orbitz, one of the companies doing a roaring business selling airline tickets to people who can’t stand dealing with the airlines themselves. For once, Orbitz got it so complex—seemed like they just couldn’t handle it when the buyer and the rider were two different people—that I finally gave up and called American Airlines. American gave me a reservation good for 24 hours to give me time to double check with Brett. They even gave me a six-letter identifier so they could find the reservation quickly when I called back. I was right happy with all of this, until I did call back that night to buy the ticket. I couldn’t get a person. Instead I got a recorded voice that supposedly had the power of voice recognition. Um, the thing she said most often was, “I’m sorry, I did not understand…†This recorded voice asked me every question imaginable except for the reservation identifier. She never mentioned it. She asked when my flight departed, what the flight numbers were, day of travel, cities traveling from—but never did she ask for the identifier they gave me to make it easier to find my reservation. I finally ended up screaming, “A person. I want to talk to a person. Give me a damned person, you automatic maniac.†This confused her so much that she finally gave me a person. The person asked for my identifier and allowed me to buy the ticket.