Planes, Trains and Automobiles - part 2

[dreamshark]

Well, thorintatge has moved on to the next stage of his travel adventure. Following the plot of the iconic movie, he has hooked up with a travel buddy (another passenger on the plane). They decided to take the airline's lame offer of flying them to Milwaukee instead of Minneapolis. AirTran offered no compensation for overnight accommodations or even a meal. But the new travel buddy knew somebody in Atlanta so they finally went off to crash for the night someplace and got a few hours of sleep.

Now they're in Milwaukee, and discovering just how much rental car companies want for a "one-way dropoff" rental ($220 as opposed to $85 for a normal one-day rental). Since neither of them really trusts AirTran's promise to pay for their rental car, they are investigating train and bus fares. Thorin called me, I looked on the Internet. It's $110 for the train (exactly the same cost as Thorin's half of the rental car would be). Greyhound can do it for $52 - no wonder nobody takes trains anymore. And then there's this mysterious Megabus outfit, which charges something like $20, but may or may not be available.

Waiting for Thorin to call me back...

Comments

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Megabus is fine. Laura recently took it to Chicago to see us.

Again, why was Thorin's flight canceled? What was the root cause? This is important?

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I responded to you in the original thread, but here it is again. His first flight was delayed, causing him to miss the connection to the 2nd flight. There may have been a minor weather reason for the first flight being delayed, or it may have had nothing to do with weather. Or it may have had nothing to do with weather and the airline claimed that it did, since that apparently gets them off the hook for all responsibility. In any case, there was no big weather emergency in Portland, ME, where that flight originated.

In any case, he's now somewhere between Milwaukee and Minneapolis, so the question of options is pretty much moot now.

It's nice to know that Megabus is for real. According to their website, however, they had no seats available to Minneapolis for at least the next two days, although they apparently have 6 buses a day scheduled. I don't know if that's because they fill up every seat days in advance or because the site doesn't report same-day availability.

[jolest.livejournal.com]

What was his first flight? (Carrier and flight # if you have it.) I want to see if I can find that departure-record online to see what the official excuse is and if other flights leaving at the same time from that airport have similar weather notes....

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I've taken MegaBus to Chicago and back. It was fine, but does work a lot better when scheduled well in advance. Also, I've heard they started service from Madison to Mpls, since they stop there on the way from Chicago. Too late for Thorin now, but something for the future.

As Patrick Smith, Ask the Pilot in salon.com goes on about, when there is "weather delays", that doesn't necessarily mean there's bad weather anywhere along the flight path. Planes and their scheduling could be backed up in many places.

But yeah, airlines are losing it. Their razor-thin profit margins get thinner every increment of fuel prices. Somewhere about now, they're wishing for the Good Ol' Days of regulation.

[mmagidow.livejournal.com]

I've heard good things about Megabus.

[jolest.livejournal.com]

Well, for whatever it's worth. After reading about this little escapade, AirTran is now firmly at the _bottom_ of my personal pick-list of air carriers. I'm not sure I'd accept a ticket on one of their flights if it was given to me.

Inconsiderate customer relations have to have consequences or they never will improve. I'm going to track down their service email address and let them know they %$@!&^'ed up on this one. I encourage everyone to do the same.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I appreciate the empathy, but before sending any correspondence you should probably check with Thorin to confirm the details. Remember, you're just getting it from an agitated Mom who got her information from phone calls that woke her up, so it might be a little jumbled.

I don't know what the original flight time/number was. Carrier was AirTran all the way. It would be interesting to see if other carriers at the same airport delayed their flights at the same time. It was Portland, Maine, sometime on Sunday morning.

Maybe thorintatge will post the whole story in his LJ once he's back. If he does, I'll link to it.

The problem with dropping airlines to the bottom of your personal list every time something like this happens to someone you know is you eventually end up with no airlines that you're willing to fly on. ambertatge had an even worse experience with one of the small airlines last time she came home, and now I don't even remember which one it was.

If AirTran actually comes through on their promise to pay for the rental car I won't be quite so ticked off at them. On the other hand, it wouldn't have hurt the gate agent to be a little more polite than I gather that she was.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

You can see my (locked) report of severe weather in Ohio on Saturday afternoon, and Seth got stranded in NYC. So, I'll bet waether was involved in the screw-up.

K.

I find this to be their norm.

[buttonlass.livejournal.com]

Airtran has been a pain in my side before now.

We got my parents tickets to come see us in Chicago a while back. They were coming down for Nico's birthday. Well my dad's sister passed away a couple hours before they were supposed to leave. We called and explained and they said we could use the credit to a future flight.

They neglected to mention they were discontinuing service to Chicago and there was no way they would be able to use their credit. Nor do they seem to go to Vegas where my sister is getting married this October so that's out too. And because they're such schmucks no one wants to be partnered that goes there.

We really dislike them around here.

[soarhead.livejournal.com]

Our company has a policy that we don't fly on AirTran. This is pretty amazing considering how cheap we are under most circumstances. I remember our controller sitting in the room when I was looking at flights online during a meeting. Airtran popped up as the cheapest. Seeing this, she informed me that "we are not allowed to fly that airline". Our online travel software won't even show their flights any more.

[soarhead.livejournal.com]

Once had a problem like this with a small airline in Nevada. They did eventually cough up the car rental fee after they cancelled one of the twice weekly flights between Las Vegas and Ely. "What? You mean you don't want to wait in Vegas for 5 more days til our next flight?" It did take a bit of nagging though.