Airtran Airways SUCKS!!!

[Anonymous]

Hear my rant...

I was supposed to have flown out of BWI yesterday evening to visit family. Flight was to have left at 7:50pm to ATL with an 11:15pm connection to LAS. Flight gets delayed to 8:58pm. I ask about the connection since it is 2 hours to ATL and I am worried that I might miss the connection. Airtran rep says all connections are safe at this point, don't worry. Flight is delayed further and I am assured all the while that my connection is safe. Airtran announces a gate change after 9pm. I ask at the desk one more time if the connection is still OK and am told it is still a viable connection, but to check at the next gate to be sure.

Next gate is D5 for Airtran Airways at BWI. I ask the gate agent at D5 if the LAS connection is still viable. She waves her hands at me and says, "Everyone's connection is fine. You have been re-protected." I take 2 steps backwards as she is picking up the microphone and announcing the names of cities whose connections are no longer viable, LAS being one of them. I don't know what happened in the less than 1 second between my question and her announcement, but evidently I was not as "re-protected" as she claimed.

Now, the fun begins. There are maybe 10 or 15 people who are affected. The gate agent tells everyone their choices are 1) to fly to ATL and stay there until Airtran can get them on the next available flight to their connecting city; 2) to stay the night at BWI and try to fly out tomorrow morning; 3) cancel their trip. In respone to the question, will Airtran put us up in a hotel, the customer service star from Airtran said, "-Snort- This is a WEATHER delay. We do NOT pay for hotel rooms because of a WEATHER delay." Please note, the unspoken words in her response were "...you moron..." She did allow that Airtran would give a "distress voucher" for a hotel room in ATL if we asked. And after we asked, this employee of the month, grudgingly allowed that Airtran would refund our money for the airline tickets if we requested it. One man asked if Airtran would pay for the conference that he would now miss. Airtran's best hospitality host then replied, "This is a WEATHER delay. I can't control the weather. If I could control the weather, I would be a millionaire." Nice.

I had bought my ticket with airline points and had one more question about a refund. So I told her I had one more question. To which she replied, "Well, I have to get this plane off." I was fairly certain that she was not the captain, so I said, "Do what you need to. I can wait a minute." My hand to God, she came back to the little computer podium where I was standing an arms length away and ignored me for a full 2 minutes. So I asked if my airline miles would be refunded to me. The winner of the customer service provider of the year award then said, "Oh I have NOOOOOOOO idea about refunds. You will have to deal with refunds at the front desk." As I was leaving she told another Airtran customer service award recipient, "Evidently, we are worried about our airline miles..." and then continued on talking about me.

I went to the ticket counter and was told they could not deal with airline points refunds, call 1-800-AIRTRAN. My bags? Call 1-800-AIRTRAN.

I have to say, none of the passengers who were affected were rude or nasty. 2 people were definitely irritated, but they were not behaving badly. None of us did anything to deserve the ridiculing, derisive behavior of the customer service star who was working gate D5 with no name tag on last night. I live here and the only thing that was going to happen to me was I would have to drive home and see my new nephew some other time -- so I was not missing a vacation or being stranded away from home. I was floored by Airtran's representatives. Every person I came in contact with had the attitude that they did not care what happened to any of us and certainly did not care if I decided not to fly on Airtran anymore. I am a business owner myself and if I did not care whether my clients used my business, eventually they would all stop.

Also, I was flying by myself, no kids, no husband. I sat in the airport, read magazines, ate pretzels, and vegged. I did not have a child telling me how boring this all was. I did not have to take anyone, but me to the potty. I did not have to tell my husband to stop taking out all of the electronic crap and spreading it all over the seats. Seriously, I was in heaven, so I was not in a bad mood, mad, or anything more than disappointed during any of this process. I have flown with a toddler and been treated better than this by several other airlines and TSA personnel. If that is not saying something about how poorly Airtran handled this situation yesterday afternoon/evening/night, I don't know what is.

[Anonymous]

I had my flight canceled or delayed five times once before I made it back to DC. The folks at the counter were nice enough, but the reps on the phone worthless. I now have a voucher for a free ticket that I haven't been able to use because of 'capacity control', i.e. when I wanted to fly I was told I couldn't use the voucher (middle of the week, non-holiday weekend). I was told I can extend it. Called to extend it, the lady was an ass, I'm 8 months pregnant and she's going to extend it for 30 days. Lovely, so I'm supposed to fly in my last trimester or with a tiny infant - I think not. Oh forget the inconvenience of having your flight canceled on you five times, as far as she was concerned I got a 'free' ticket so she didn't need to be more accommodating.

[Anonymous]

Air Tran is a no frills airline- you get inexperienced people and it's hit or miss on your expereince.. in your case, it was major miss. I was on an Air tran flight where we had major turbulance- the flight attendant who looked like he was out of high school screamed into the intercom to stay seated- he was yelling 'ahhh- stay seating- ahhh- we have a major situation---"- obviously pissing in his pants..

[Anonymous]

That was a good rant. Air travel sucks. I think some of these carriers need to go out of business.

[Anonymous]

I'm surprised ATA is still in business. In 1996, there were mechanical problems with the plane I was scheduled to fly out of on from BWI and all the passengers had to sleep on the floor or available seats over night before the plane took off the next day. ATA did not put passengers up at the hotel because the hotels were supposedly booked due to some convention or other.

[Anonymous]

1. Weather effects your travel. If you see bad weather coming and you need to get some where fly out earlier and realize you're going to be delayed.

2. Most agents know what's going on in their terminal, not one 500+ miles away. When there are a lot of delays due to weather they are trying to get everyone out where they need to go to no one has to stay the night or be delayed any longer.

3. You knew when your connection left Atl, so you should've realized if you could've made the connection or not.

4. If you're traveling almost all airlines will tell you not to book the last flight of the day incase there are delays you will have another option later that day instead of needing to stay overnight.



Really that complaint was towards mother nature, which no one can obvoiusly control. If you can't take the delays then don't fly.

[Anonymous]

Actually I think the rant was about the very rude ATA staff. The OP sounded like she was fine with the delay and weather cancellation, but was peeved by the ill treatment she received.