Replies to '12/24 Fighting the System'

  But the airlines themselves are very good at it! And I'm speaking as a passenger. I have endured some horrible situations on different carriers and of course the airline got away with it. I have also had a problem with a fellow passenger who refused to let me have the seat that I was assigned and the flight attendant refused to get involved. That was the incident that angered me the most!

  I and my siblings had all flown south for a family reunion. I hadn't seen my sister who had moved to Texas in over 3 years at that time. When I made the reservations, I managed to actually get two seats that were together so my sister and I could be together on the flight back to Texas, where we would then go our separate ways. When we boarded the pain, "with assigned seating", I found another woman in "my" seat! I explained that she was in my seat and asked politely for her to move. She refused. This began to go on for a long time. This woman was adamant! She refused to get into her "own" assigned seat. My sister and I would end up on two separate ends of the aircraft!

  As I said, this went on for a long time with both of us refusing to give, and of course, the flight attendant was standing right there next to us, glaring at me, but not saying a word. Eventually all of the passengers began to yell at me to just sit down anywhere, so the plane could take off. Lovely! They were yelling at "ME"! And of course, all of this was allowed by ALL of the flight attendants. I was the troublemaker! I paid a lot of money for that ticket, made reservations well in advance so we could get this exact seating, and I was the troublemaker. Very nice!

  My sister finally told me to sit elsewhere but of course, I refused. I wasn't going to allow this to happen. Why should I? Wasn't it the flight attendants job to tell this other woman to get into her own assigned seat? One would think so. But instead, the flight was ending up delayed because of this. Finally a gentleman that was sitting on the other side of my sister said he would give up his own seat so I could sit there. This was very nice of him but it was still incredibly wrong that it had to come down to this. Finally, when this man offered, that was when the woman got up and "let" me have my own seat. That was my favorite airline but I have since lost respect for them because of their employees. I now fly with a different carrier.

  And BTW, this wasn't the first time that this airline has treated me wrong. And I would assume that this has happened to many other's here on the board, I have also had to stay overnight out of town because my connecting flight was over sold, and there was no seat available for me or many of the other passengers aboard the flight. I would really like to know how the airlines have been allowed to get away with this. It's a very common problem! My husband and I almost missed our cruise because the airline that we had booked with to get us there had also oversold the seats! By the generosity of a couple of passengers who felt very bad for us, we managed to catch our flight and make our cruise. Our thousands of dollars that we had paid for our vacation would have been thrown away for nothing. $3,000.00 just gone, "poof" because an airline has over sold it's seats is unforgivable! This was the second time this has happened to me.

  As to you poor airline employees. I happen to be well aware of the "perks" that you get just because you work for the airlines. You have it made! My best friend has been a flight attendant for an airline for many years and I know what her "perks" are. The rest of us who work other jobs still have to put up with rude customers, nasty situations, and everything else that you have to deal with but we don't quite get the kind of benefits that you do. It would have been great if the bank that I worked for gave me free money just because I was an employee.

  So sorry, anyone who is in the customer service business is an abused employee, so don't expect any sympathy here. Especially since I'm an abused passenger! Trust me, Dr. Phil didn't have to say anything to fuel the fires. Anyone who has ever flown already knows how bad the airline industry is. It's kind of hard to put any blame on this man. If you feel that you are abused, you have the airlines to blame!

P.S. Let's not forget, the airlines have also raised the cost of tickets to where it's getting way too expensive to fly, charge for everything all the way down to a soda, and now they want to charge if you have any luggage. It should be one way or the other, not charge us in every way that you can.  Either raise the price of tickets and allow us a a piece of luggage or two, or keep the cost at a normal rate and then charge us for absolutely everything. I believe this is called "Double Dipping"!