• Passengers told new captain is making his way through the terminal, when he’s really coming in from Newark.
• Delta tells his wife that the plane is in the air. This is right after she spoke with him by cellphone and they were still on the ground.
• Renaissance music used to depict his waiting wife and child.
The ubiquity, ease, and low cost of consumer recording, editing and sharing software is quickly making it less feasible for big companies to get away with stuff like this.
(Video: Uberzine) (Thanks to Grant!)
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@etops777: “6.) These people could have gotten off at anytime. The door would have to open to allow in new crew members, to allow maintance personal to work on the aircraft and fill out the proper paperwork. All they would have to do is ask. This plane did not leave the gate, you ask they will let you off.”
-Unless I heard something wrong, I think they were actually NOT at the gate and merely sitting on the tarmac, and plus they couldn’t get to a gate because other planes had “priority”. Surely in a span of 7 hours at least one person (and I suspect many) had asked to get off the plane and go back to the terminal. They didn’t get dinner! Speaking just for myself, if I had no way of getting dinner I would have said something very early on. Me and food deprivation are not a pretty sight!
p.s. @etops777: other than #6, I appreciate the insider’s perspective!
A big scoop, somehow connected to Geek Squad, promised “next week,” and it’s been, what, two weeks now. If you can’t deliver, don’t promise. Ben, love your work otherwise, but promise-breaking is pure bullshit. It dilutes the impact of your work. You decry scamming and promise-breaking and dishonesty, and then do it yourself. Lesson to learn: Rarely make any promises of any kind, because plans can always be ruined by unforeseen circumstances.
About the Delta thing: If Delta licenses their brand, Delta is accountable for the quality of the licensee.
The whiny ineffectual captain would have pissed me off so much. All he talked about was how he couldn’t do anything to help and his hands were tied and crycrycry. Fucking grow a pair.
Just wondering when can a plane passenger sue based on “false imprisonment?” As I recall with Northwest Airlines fiasco several years back passengers in a similar situation did sue the airline for false imprisonment and NW settled out of court before it went to trial for fear of setting a precedent if they lost. Might be worth a shot for these poor passengers.
This is crazy! I landed in San Diego on a Delta flight and we were told it would take 3 hours to get to the gate because of backlog. My wife started to have a migraine, we told the flight attendants… lo and behold, “Medical Emergency!” They got us to the gate in 5 minutes, my wife and I got off first (to meet the paramedics), and we were the heroes of everyone on the flight.
@MandM813: That’s another reason why little by little things have gotten to where they are today. A good time to put a halt to things were when they were heading to where they are now, but there wasn’t this shoot first ask questions later mentality.
@bohemian: I’ve flown in and out of Toronto and people don’t look nearly as tired or harassed. The most time is spent because it’s an international flight and they have to comply with things the U.S. wants them to go through before they let people on the plane bound for the U.S. Otherwise, I don’t get the feeling you have to go through so much crap. That’s just my impression, though.
When it comes to flying, I always find myself in the position of comparing myself with 100 years ago. “Well, at least we aren’t crawling along in wagons!” Suck it up, you whiners.
on the other hand, this is 2007, and airlines have been flying people for nearly 50 years. they oughta be able to get their shit straight.
i wonder if anyone contemplated just saying they had a bomb in their luggage just so they could get off of the plane and get something to eat.
Doesn’t
Ever
Leave
The
Airport
Sorry, had to say it. They all suck, but… this was bad, really bad.
I put plenty of blame on airlines generally, because time and time again they’ve been proven to lie to their customers, hold them in disregard, not deliver their product in a timely manner, etc. — the things that drive other businesses out of business entirely.
One thing that bears mentionaing is that airlines largely created this gridlock by offering more flights with smaller planes and thus putting more pieces on the finite squares of the chessboard.
On the other hand, there needs to be more capacity, but even adding a runway at O’Hare has become a major battleground of NIMBYs versus commerce. One can only imagaine the the hullabaloo if Atlanta decided to build a new airport to supplement/replace Hartsfield.
Further, the air traffic control system needs to be upgraded to handle the capacity. Taxpayers and or airline passengers are going to have to pay for this system one way or the other, but neither group seems very interested in doing that at the present time.
07/19/2009 – Delta flight 1834 took off leaving 15 customers behind knowingly that they are late because of an airport error. One lady was so close to the gate that they shut the door on her while the plan is still connected to the walkway. My wife and my toddler is now stuck at Atlanta and possibility overnight. It is sad that employees at Delta is so unfriendly to a mother and child traveling. The airport error was noted 40 minutes before take off of the connecting flight but Delta decided to take off early on that very flight. I wish there is someone I can speak to but as any of us frequent travelers who understand that this is the facts of life. Maybe a tweet or two by some popular accounts might do the trick?