Friday, February 01, 2008

Not-so-friendly skies

This is a portion of the letter I wrote to Frontier Airlines after our total crap flights to CanCun. I never, ever bother writing companies, but the people who work for Frontier so totally screwed us that I got angry enough to write:

My husband and I arrived early for a 7:15 a.m. flight to CanCun on Saturday, January 19th. It was our first flight with our 10-month-old and we wanted ample time to get settled. But we were forced to stand at the ticket counter for almost 50 minutes because no one knew how to charge us $12 for an infant tax. Three different employees over 45 minutes couldn’t figure out how to take pocket change from us and check our baggage. By the time they phoned someone with the training required to complete this task, there were only minutes to spare before our flight. We rushed through security and were among the last to board the flight—no ability to pre-board and settle for our first flight with a baby. It was a terrible and stressful way to start our vacation.

But Frontier didn’t disappoint on the return flight, either. Departing at 3:25 on Saturday, January 26th, we arrived with plenty of time to compensate for any ticketing problems. We were first in line for pre-boarding, but right as we were to step onto the plane we were told we would have to stand and wait—the flight attendants had yet to arrive. The entirety of the plane’s passengers stood for 15 minutes, waiting outside the plane’s door. It was insinuated to my husband by one of the ground crew that the flight attendants might have been caught up “shopping” in the duty-free stores. After the flight attendants’ eventual arrival, the plane sat on the tarmac for 40 minutes waiting to take off—providing no shortage of discomfort for the passengers. (One person in our party was almost forced to urinate herself due to the extended time without bathroom access.) After all this, the plane was an hour late arriving home.


The person in our party almost forced to pee herself? Yup, that would be ME. I'd gone to the bathroom right before boarding, but since we didn't depart for an hour after we were supposed to and because I'd drank a large bottle of water in attempts to rehydrate myself, well...it wasn't pretty. While we were waiting on the runway, the pilot announced it'd be another 16 minutes until we departed. I almost burst into tears--at this point I had a 20-pound baby on my lap (on my bladder) who would scream if anyone else held her. The Banker told me I'd better make a quick jump all of three rows to the restroom. The minute I stood up, though, two flight attendants (obviously grumpy because of the crap choices in the duty-free store) screamed like banshees at me. Total humiliation. If I'd had more guts, I would have peed myself to make a point.

And I didn't even mention how the return flight ran out of booze.

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