Stupid Airline Stories

I was picking up my girlfriend at the Albuquerque airport Monday evening. She emailed me that the flight left at least 20 minutes late, but that she didn't know when it would arrive. Here's the sequence I went through as I drove to the airport from Santa Fe, more than an hour away. I share this with you just to embarrass the airline, which is so much fun:

8:54pm Automated system reports that the flight is arriving on time at 9:25pm. I don't believe this because Robin sent email time-stamped 20 minutes after flight was supposed to leave.

8:56pm I call back to bypass the automated system. Press 0 four times to get human being. Human being says flight is arriving 2 minutes late, even though the flight left 39 minutes late. "They will make up the time in flight". Right.

I keep driving, knowing that it would be worse to arrive after the girlfriend than to park somewhere and wait.

9:35pm: I'm in Albuquerque, maybe 10 minutes from the airport. Call the automated system again and hear that the flight is due in at 9:25pm, as in 10 minutes before I called.

9:37pm: I bypass the automated system and get another human being who reports that the flight is due to arrive at 9:27. I say, "10 minutes ago?" She says, "Oh, they haven't updated the system." She says that the flight left San Francisco at 7:08pm for sure. I ask what's the normal flying time. She says it takes about 2 hours and 20 minutes That would put the flight in at 10:28, not 9:25 or 9:27pm.

Reality: Flight lands at 10:08pm. I watch it from the airplane viewing area. Aren't they embarrassed to be this incompetent? Apparently not.

Comments

[Dave West]

Not that I've ever tried tracking to that level of precision, but I've found this site to be more reliable than the boards at the airport:

http://www.flytecomm.com/cgi-bin/trackflight

[Jana Eggers]

My husband and I use flytecomm and flightaware.com to track flights. Never the airlines systems. I haven't found any of the airlines to keep as up to date as these systems.

Good luck!
Jana