I
thought we had it made when the cab was early and we boarded our hometown
airline flight, United, on time at 6:30 am with no issues. Neither the Captain nor I had much sleep the
night before and we were hoping to get some rest on the plane. I was pulling out my Kindle when the flight
attendant announced that there was a “weight issue” and she was looking for
volunteers to give up their seats and take a later flight. A Customer Service agent would be down
shortly to talk to us about it. The CS
agent, Sharon, said she needed 10 volunteers and each would get a $150
voucher. The passengers began asking
reasonable questions such as “When was the next flight?” and “Will we be able
to get our bags?” The answers, “No
direct flights until the next day, I can get you to LaGuardia or Newark” and “I
don’t know the process for the bags”, were not satisfactory. Neither was the $150 satisfactory for all the
inconvenience. Still, she was able to
get 1 volunteer.
Sharon got off plane for a few minutes – we assumed she
consulted with a manager. She got back
on and said “I need 10 people to volunteer – if there are no more volunteers,
people will be put off on an involuntary basis.
People who paid the lowest fares will be the ones pulled.” One more person volunteered. Uh Oh, I knew we had booked at a good price
and were more than likely on “the list”.
Sure enough, our names were called and we trudged off the plane onto the
jet-way.
Captain Randy spoke up and said that the $150 was not enough
for an involuntary bump and that federal rules required them to give us 4 times
the value of our one-way fare up to a maximum of $1300 as compensation. Others then chimed in and demanded more than
the $150. The agent did not raise the
offer, nor did she or anyone else apologize for the inconvenience, empathize
with our situation, or offer an explanation of why there was a “weight problem”. Later, we heard that the plane had “extra
fuel to circle as there was bad weather on the east coast”. Aren’t planes designed to fly with full
loads? These obvious thoughts were
running through our minds as we waited for gate-checked luggage to be
retrieved.
Because of the “passenger rebellion” lead by the Captain,
and two managers later, the decision was finally made to compensate each of us
$500 rather than the measly $150. The
agents at the gate worked hard to get us rebooked and they DID apologize and
offered whatever information they had, which wasn’t much (not their
fault). We were rebooked on a 1:25 pm
flight to Philadelphia and a 9:00 pm flight to Syracuse from there. I have to believe that if United had offered
the $500 from the get-go they would have had their volunteers and we would have
been on our way (in the end, they only needed 8). I also suspect that they took on some extra commercial
cargo that caused the plane to be overweight, but of course did not want to
tell us that.
By now it was 8:30 am and we hurried to another gate hoping
to get on an earlier flight to Philadelphia where US Air had several flights to
Syracuse throughout the day. No room
there, but we did get on a flight about 11:30 am and got to Philly about 2:30 pm
ET. We tried stand-by on the 4:00 pm to
Syracuse (also overweight and had to bump passengers but their initial offer
was $275) and the 7:00 pm (cancelled abruptly 10 minutes before boarding time
with no explanation). Oh and did I
mention we had to take a bus to this terminal and then had to take it back
after the 7;00 pm cancelled? And that
the terminal was freezing! As I vented
to a friend on the phone, Captain Randy had a neck and back massage at one of
those express salons. When I looked in,
he was sitting in a massage chair, feet up, with a blanket over him! Sorry I missed the photo op of that!!!
We sat at our 6th gate of the day to wait for the
9:00 pm flight. We weren’t done yet – a
gate change forced us to walk to yet another gate. That flight was also overbooked and they
asked for volunteers to give up their seats for $225. We declined. Once we were on the plane, it
pulled away from the gate a half an hour late and then sat on the runway for 45
minutes in a line of planes waiting to take off. It was after 11:00 pm when we finally landed
in Syracuse and midnight before we saw the boat. All I could do was fall into bed and be
thankful the day was finally over!
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