I'm renaming my blog from "Rare Thoughts: One Every Few Months" to "Keeping one foot always in the air".
Speaking of feet in the air, my wife and I flew home from Lincoln, NE through Detroit on Saturday. The parts while we were in the air were fine, but the parts while we were on the ground were less so. We were delayed for two hours as we waited for our plane to arrive in Lincoln, and since most of us were going to miss our connections in Detroit anyway, the NWA folks offered hotel vouchers to anybody who wanted to wait for a later flight. Since they promised hotel accomodations in Detroit, most of the 30-40 passengers elected to get to Detroit instead of waiting...but after we got to Detroit (and sat on the tarmac for 30+ minutes while additional people missed connecting flights), the word from the woman at the gate was "Sorry, this is weather-related, so NO HOTEL FOR YOU!". This was 9:15 pm local time.
Approximately 30-40 passengers were quite irate.
According to this keeper of the gate there were no available cusomter service representatives or managers, and there was nothing she could do beyond printing 10% discount coupons for area hotels. No apology, no empathy, not even any detectable sympathy. She didn't care a whit that we'd all been promised Detroit hotel vouchers by NWA in Lincoln, or even that we could all have stayed in free hotels in Lincoln if we'd so chosen.
The five most stubborn of us sat waiting by the gate until the next flight went out in hopes that something more could be done, and then we had the idea of calling the Lincoln airport. A fine gentleman named Jason answered at the NWA desk there, and he promised to get his manager to call the Detroit NWA folks right away to straighten things out. In the meantime, the gatekeeper put on her hat and coat, and without a word to the five of us sitting there in hopes of hotel vouchers, she took off down the concourse toward her own warm bed. The time was 11:45 pm.
We chased her down and told her about the expected phone call, and only then did she have the brain-wave to mention that we could go to the NWA ticketing counter, where the phone call would come in. We found the ticket counter closed, but the NWA luggage claim and customer service desk had a line with 40 people and at least five polite, apologetic, empathizing, sympathizing NWA customer service people. We got to the front of the line and explained that our plane was two hours late in arriving in Lincoln, and a very nice woman named Karen immediately printed hotel vouchers and meal vouchers and provided each of us with a small toiletries kit for the night.
I'm not sure whether to chalk the gate-keeper's behavior up to ignorance or malice...but surely anybody would think of the customer service desk before telling 40 people there were no customer service representatives available. That eliminates ignorance and leaves malice, which I hope this gate-keeper left behind in 2006.
