Mad Beach Bum

So I’m fucking pissed at American Airlines. I don’t know what to think of the company other than it should seriously reconsider what it considers as “good business practices” and shove it up its ass. If anyone has had any question about where a beach bum might live, I live on the beach in Florida. It doesn’t snow here, nor does it really drop into the freezing zone more than a week or two, but American Airlines should be castrated over what they are doing here.

I’m going on a family ski trip for a week, and we’re all departing for Dallas en route to Denver at about 7am give or take; the flight’s basically taking off at the crack of dawn. We arrive, go through security, and wait for the plane to start boarding. Nothing of yet seems to be askew, but as we board and taxi from the terminal we immediately notice something entirely amiss with the whole situation because they’re talking about iced wings. I don’t think much of it because airports have de-icing equipment so no delays right? Oh, I wish it were so. Instead of de-icing and proceeding to the runway, we roll over to the other side of the terminal and spin around and stop. I glance outside the window and the pilot open the flaps fully and we just sit there. We sit there for an hour. We officially departed on time, but are an hour late getting into the air because American Airlines is so fucking cheap that they didn’t sign a contract with the local de-icing equipment guys to de-ice their planes. Instead, we sit on the fucking tarmac letting the fucking sun thaw the ice from the wings. Oh, and you want to know how they determined when the ice was thawed enough for flight? They brought out a ladder and rubbed their hands on the wings to check the meltingness of the whole shit-mess salad.

We sat there listening to the captain, the lone stewardess, and whatever pamphlet garbage they were trying to force-feed us that morning about how the airport didn’t have any de-icing equipment. There was a problem though. Please draw your attention out the starboard windows to view the de-icing equipment de-ice the Delta flight, then the US Airways flight, then another Delta flight, then a Continental flight. The same de-icing team for each and every one of these while we watched like a starving African with a bloated stomach listening to the retelling of Holocaust survivors’ stories about when they were liberated and going to town on the stores of food. These aren’t all the same company, so we know for a fact they were contracted and not owned or operated by any individual airline. We confronted the stewardess about the “there’s no de-icing equipment here” crap and just pointed out the window. Her reply was succinct, “we just don’t have a contract with de-icing equipment here”.

But wait, there’s more!!!

When we finally touch down in Dallas, we find that we missed our connection to Denver by a mere 5 minutes. That’s right people. We missed our connection flight because we had to sit on the plane for over an hour and literally wait for the sun to melt the ice on the wings. This is the epitome of bone-headedness, cheapskatedness, ass-winkerness that I’ve ever witnessed from a company first-hand…or that I can actually remember. To make matters worse, when we went to query the terminal desk about the flight or getting put on standby for a later flight, her reply was, “oh, looks like you didn’t have a long enough layover. You should always have at least a 3 hour layover just to accommodate such delays.” Seriously? Blaming the passengers on this one while you’re being assholes and not signing a contract with a de-icing crew just so you can save a couple copper pennies…classy!

So the bitch at the gate told us, in professional terms, to go fuck ourselves and it wasn’t her problem and all flights were booked. We proceeded to the next Denver flight gate and spoke with them. “Yep, we’re booked, but we’ll put you on standby.” We sat and waited for that flight to come and go, then we went to the next flight, across the damn airport no less, spoke with the gate attendants, same as before, then went back to the gate we were at before, across the fucking airport again and get the same shit different gate story. Well, this was a previous gate, but different personnel by this time. We’re just in no man’s land and we see an out-of-uniform AA employee searching through a terminal because she too was stranded by her employer for some other reason. She managed to finagle a way to get us tickets on a flight that night and still be on standby.

As luck would have it, this flight had some no-shows so standby passengers were let aboard, but by the time they reached my family, only 3 seats were guaranteed and somehow they managed to fuck up standby too and just somehow forgot to keep floating the standby list from flight to flight and some 30 people got pissed when their names didn’t show. I was called as the last standby passenger and was standing to have my ticket scanned and walk down the gangplank, but the family shows and all seats beith taken. How lucky must you be to have your name called twice in a row for standby, only to have the person show with 5 seconds to spare and you get no flight? Yes, twice that happened. So the following flight had some insane empty seating issues and 30 passengers on standby all got on board. We finally made it to Denver some 9 hours late because American Airlines is too fucking cheap to de-ice a plane properly and instead opted to melt the ice in the sunlight. American Airlines, please accept my sincerest and warmest “fuck you”s as you try to avoid bankruptcy like all the other airlines by cutting costs on de-icing contracts saving a couple thousand instead of not bothering to repaint planes saving hundreds of thousands each.

So what about our baggage? Oh, we shipped our baggage via FedEx and had it waiting for us. We learned our lesson about airlines and baggage LONG ago, and we don’t bother with checked bags if we can manage it.

Minified Link: http://madbeachbum.com/c444

Tags: Airlines, American Airlines