American Airlines is Number One!

Guess which finger I'm using to indicate that.

I've had a lovely two weeks of travel, with the exception of the actual travel itself. I will get the bitching out of the way before I get on to what a great experience I had at both the Berks and at the Landmarks of American Democracy workshop at the Fannie Lou Hamer Insititute in Jackson, Mississippi. I will bitch because I think American Airlines fully deserves the negative publicity. I'd say that they deserve to go out of business, but I pity their employees and don't want to wish them into unemployment (except those two patronizing ladies in Chicago O'Hare, but we will get to that).

On Thursday, June 12, I arrived for my 7:30 pm flight from here to Minneapolis, through Chicago. I should have arrived in Minneapolis at 11:30 pm. Should have. Instead, my flight did not leave here until 9:00 pm. Fortunately, the flight from Chicago to Minneapolis was also late. It did not leave until midnight. So, I didn't arrive in my dorm in Minneapolis until 2 am on Friday, so I spent most of the weekend slightly sleep deprived.

On Sunday, June 15, I woke at 5 am and was at the airport by 8 am for a 9:25 am flight. When did that flight actually leave the ground? Noon. When did my connecting flight from Chicago to Jackson leave? 11:30. Yes, I missed my connecting flight because the first flight did not get off the ground until 2 1/2 hours after it was scheduled.

It gets even better from there. The next available seat that would get me to Jackson -- via either Atlanta or Dallas -- was not until 1 pm the next day. That wasn't even on an American Airlines flight, but on Delta. In the entirety of Chicago O'Hare airport, there was not a single seat available headed in the general direction of Jackson until 24 hours later. None would actually get me into Jackson until nearly midnight on Monday night. I could have walked to Jackson faster.

Actually, I could have driven to Jackson faster, which is exactly what I decided to do. So, I went to the ticket agent for a refund on my flight to Jackson. I got in the shortest line. A tiny little bleached blond lady in an American Airlines dress and holding a clip board came up to me. "Can I help you?" she asked.

"I am very angry right now," I said. "My flight was delayed over two hours, I can't get on another flight until tomorrow, but I have to be in Jackson tomorrow, so now I have to rent a car and drive down there all night, and I would just like a refund on my ticket."

Somewhere around "my flight was delayed," she interrupted me in the sort of voice that you use to talk to particularly slow two year olds: "You will have to stand in that line over there." She repeated that several times, in the same tone. She very nearly pushed me into the other line. Then she said, "the companies don't usually rent cars for one-way trips." Thank you for the encouragement, lady.

Except I didn't think "lady," I thought another word; but I was trying very hard not to abuse or be rude to the agents because it isn't their fault that they work for a crappy company. They have to receive the abuse of a thousand other people who, like me, have been screwed over by the airline that leaves no margin for error, yet operates in a state of constant error. This little patronizing "lady" very much tested my resolve not to cuss anyone out.

Did you know that they cannot actually refund you at the counter? No, you have to fill out a form, then send in the form with your ticket, and then your account will be refunded in 2-4 weeks. If they are still in business then. I also asked if there was a number to call to complain. They gave me a scrap of paper containing, on about its 100th generation, a photocopy of an e-mail address and website that I could contact.

"What about my luggage?" I asked. The agent said that he would call to have it pulled and I could pick it up in ten minutes at baggage claim #9. I went down to baggage claim #9. Thirty minutes later, when my luggage hadn't appeared, I went to the luggage agent desk. "Oh," said the agent, "it takes at least 2-3 hours for your luggage to appear." At this point, the time was about 3 pm. I had a 12 hour drive ahead of me and very little sleep behind me, but could do nothing but sit by baggage claim #9 for two more hours.

Then, the belt stopped. No more luggage came out. Back at the desk, I asked, "can I just check to see if it is coming out at all?" This agent told me that, if my luggage hadn't appeared after an hour and a half, then there was no way to know where my luggage was. It might be going on to Jackson. It might be sitting back in the bowels of O'Hare. They just couldn't say. "Well," I asked, "will it get to Jackson eventually, like tomorrow or the next day; or, if you have pulled it, will it just sit here in Chicago until I pick it up myself?" They couldn't say, I would have to speak to a supervisor. There she was, over there. I would have to go chase her down. So, I did. She told me the same thing.

I returned to the ticket counter to speak to another supervisor, or as I put it "someone who can actually get something done." Mostly I wanted to vent on someone and mostly I wanted to get them to pay for my car. I got in the shortest line again. Again, I was approached by a tiny lady -- a different tiny lady -- in a uniform and with a clip board. I honestly have no idea why these ladies carried clipboards, because all they seemed to do was shoo people to the right line. I kept getting in the "preferred customer" line and I belonged in the "everyone else" line.

"May I help you?" she asked.

"I am very very very upset," I said. I was shaking by this time. "I would like to see a supervisor."

She may have been a different lady, but she had the same patronizing tone. "You will have to stand in that line over there."

"No," I said. "I want to see a supervisor. My flight was over two hours late. I missed my connecting flight. You have no flights to where I need to go until tomorrow afternoon and I have to be there tomorrow morning. I now have to drive 12 hours overnight, and you have lost my luggage."

Somewhere around, "I want to see a supervisor" she said, "well all of these other people have problems, too, so you will have to wait in line."

"All of these other people are going to get where they need to go and they have their luggage," I said.

"You will just have to stand in line." Again, she nearly pushed me into the line and turned her back on me. I seriously wanted to hurt someone, or cuss someone out, or just shriek. Instead, I cried. I know, that makes me look so unprofessional and unable to handle stress and girly and I was perfectly aware of the irony that I had just come from a women's history conference full of feminists. But, if I didn't cry, I would have been arrested for assault, battery, and excessive use of the f-word. I would have become a threat to homeland security and perhaps sent to Guantanamo where they would have really given me something to cry about.

When I got to the counter, I asked to see a supervisor. The woman went to go get a supervisor, but was stopped by her co-worker. "Where are you going?" the co-worker asked. "To get the supervisor," replied the agent. "Don't do that," said the co-worker. "She doesn't want to be disturbed." From there they switched into Spanish. I'm not fluent. I only know the bad words, and they didn't use any of those.

Then the co-worker came over to me, gave me another scrap of paper in its 100th photocopy generation, and told me to contact Customer Service via the e-mail address on the scrap. I was so tired and demoralized, so aware that no one was going to do anything except send me to another department, and that all the departments operated independently from one another, and that most of the people in any given department didn't even have any idea what was going on in the department, that I was halfway to the car rental office before I realized that the co-worker had pretended to be a supervisor to get rid of me.

My story doesn't end there. Not by a long shot. I called National car rentals from the kiosk at the information desk in O'Hare. From what I could tell from our very static filled conversation, they had reserved a car for me; but when I arrived at the car rental counter, they told me that "we can't send cars to Mississippi."

"On principle?" I asked.

"No," the agent said. "We just don't have any cars with Mississippi plates. I have one that can go to Scranton, Pennsylvania."

In all my years of renting cars, this was a new one. The fight was all out of me, so I just took the little shuttle back to the terminal and started again. This time, however, I called from my cell phone. Those kiosk phones are crap.

Avis came through for me -- that is until I got the bill. Somehow, between the rental and the return, 28 hours later, the charge went from $200 to $600. Sure, I didn't top off the gas tank, and gas costs a fortune, but I filled the tank twice and put together the cost was not $400. We are still working that one out.

I drove all night, starting out at 6:30 pm, pausing to take a nap in a rest stop at 5 am, and arriving in Jackson at 8 am. You can go almost 100 mph in the middle of the night. You don't want to, but you can. Also, when you've been up and driving for that long, your eyeballs go to sleep. You know, like when you sit on your foot too long and it gets all prickly and numb? Your eyeballs start to have that same sensation. That's when a nap in a rest stop becomes the lesser of two evils.

When I got to Jackson and checked into my dorm (Jackson State, incidentally, has some incredible dorms), I called American. My luggage was still lost. They finally located it around noon when it arrived in Jackson after having had a lovely trip through Dallas. Surprisingly, they also delivered it to me.

That still didn't end my American travails. On my return flights, back here via Dallas-Fort Worth, both planes were delayed. Fortunately, I was able to get on an earlier flight as a stand-by passenger; but it was so late, that I missed being stand-by on the earlier connecting flight. Seven hours in an airport is not fun. The flight back here was supposed to leave at 8:40 pm. Not only did they change the gate three times -- and by "change the gate" I don't mean from A12 to A15, but A12 to D37 to C21, which involved riding a little tram with each change -- but the flight did not get off the ground until 10:30 pm. The gate agent just stopped announcing delays because the passengers were in a state of near rebellion. Between the delays, and the single shuttle to the parking lot that took an hour to arrive, I did not see my apartment until 3 am.

I had predicted, several years ago, that the next violent incident involving the airlines would not be a terrorist, but a disgruntled passenger who just couldn't take it anymore. I was nearly that passenger back there in Chicago. I had also resigned myself to the fact that flying anywhere on a commercial airline, regardless of the number of connections or the time of your flight, or the actually amount of time that you spend in the air, now takes a whole day. I'm beginning to think that it takes a whole week. As a mode of transportation, a means of getting you from Point A to Point B by a specified time, it is becoming useless. Seriously, I will rent a car, take the train, learn to fly and do it myself, walk, anything before I resort to commercial airlines again; and when I do fly a commercial airline, you can be damn sure it won't be American Airlines.

They worked my last nerve.