U.S. Airways Gives Away Passenger's Seat, Lies About Her Being Late
It sounds like someone at Ronald Reagan National Airport decided to solve an overbooking problem by cheating Frankie's girlfriend out of her flight, and then someone else there decided to blame her for it. Despite arriving at the airport before 7pm for a 7:35pm flight, they insisted to her that she'd missed the 30-minute cutoff and lost her seat.
On May 18, 2009 I drove my girlfriend to Ronald Regan National Airport (DCA) to drop her off for her 7:35pm flight to Tampa, FL. I live about 10 miles from the airport and we were not anticipating any traffic, but a car accident held us up a bit. We arrived at the airport and parked at 6:48pm. We were in no hurry because it is typically very quick to check in and get to your gate at DCA. We got out, got her bags, and walked to the check-in counter.
By the time we arrived there it was nearing 7PM. My girlfriend tried to check-in using the computer, but it kept telling her that no seats were available. After two tries I assumed that she must have been doing something wrong, I fly U.S. Airways regularly for both business and pleasure and have never had any issues checking in. I attempted to check her in and got the same result.
It said to notify one of the staff members there. There were two staff members standing right next to us chatting, one male and one female. I politely disrupted their conversation to inform them of the issue. I explained the error and the female staff member said to "just press continue". I informed her that there was no option to continue, only an option to start over. She argued that there was a continue button and I stated that there was not. She then, seemingly annoyed, came over to do it herself. She got the same error and then said that my girlfriend had missed her flight.
I argued that was impossible because the plane was still there. She then stated that it was U.S. Airways policy that they give your seats away to other passengers if you are not 30 minutes early. I argued that we were certainly more than thirty minutes early. After wasting several minutes of valuable time arguing with me she stated that "as of right now, you are three minutes late of thirty minutes". I was furious.
She said that she would get my girlfriend onto the next flight to Tampa which wasn't until the following morning. We cooled off and realized that there was little we could do, this woman obviously doing everything she could to be as little to us as possible. She told us the flight time, 8:40am, and then in a condescending tone told us to "make sure that you are here thirty minutes early this time, which will be at 8:10am".
There was no mention of any additional money or fees, but the following day my girlfriend found that she had been charged $120 additional on her credit card for the new flight.
I know that she was a victim of overbooking and the airline profitted more that twice from her. They sold too many tickets, making more money than the plane was able to carry passengers. Essentially, selling her seat twice. Then, when she arrived late they charged her for another seat on the new flight.
Is there even anything that we can do to fight back?
You can contact US Airways and ask them to at the very least credit your girlfriend the $120 additional fee that they should have never charged in the first place. If you have any sort of documentation that proves your case, like a parking ticket with a timestamp on it, send a scan of that too. You may also want to emphasize that you're a repeat customer who uses this airline frequently, and that you'd hate to have your opinion of them diminished because they ripped off your girlfriend and lied to her.
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Isn't there someone you can report to? This seems just too perfect for the Airlines.
I had the same exact thing happen at Reagan last September. My wife was flying to Denver (United) and her departure was 5:45. She got in at 5:00 and couldn't use the self check-in kiosk. At 5:05, the attendant said that they stop checking passengers in 30 minutes before departure. After I told the woman that it was 40 minutes before departure, she did us a "favor" and let my wife board. They refused to check her luggage though and I ended up shipping it to her via UPS.
She was through security and aboard the plane by 5:15. I like Reagan because of the short security lines, but the airlines have been horrible there lately. When we flew Reagan->JFK->Rome and Reagan->Vegas in 2006, it was actually very good.
But, why would you cut it THAT close? It just seems like asking for trouble,,,, or check in online next time...
if you read the entire post they were not cutting it close... Because of a traffic accident they were delayed. They were there before the cut off and with the short security lines they had more than enough time to get through security. As someone who travels via air quite a bit, the airport i use has very predictable wait times for flights. 40 minutes is more than enough time to check in and get through security with time to wander around the airport checking out the shops....
I sympathize with the passenger here, but it is correct that there is a 30 minute cutoff for check-in (and with most airlines, not just USAir): [www.usairways.com] , [southwest.com] , [www.united.com] , [www.aa.com] , [www.delta.com] .
An easy way to save yourself this trouble the next time, everyone, is simply to use the online check-in function at your home computer, even if you can't/don't want to print out the boarding pass. It holds your place so you count as having checked in. You can generally reprint it at the airport within the 30 minute cutoff then. So no more worries about time pressure at the airport. There is no more reason to miss the check-in cutoff these days, unless you have some sort of unusual/intl ticket that requires airport checkin.
On your other point, that the airline purposely denied her seat to sell another seat, that is probably quite false. It is possible that the plane was overbooked, but I doubt the airlines have policies to "cheat" customers by programming the automated machines to deny boarding passes within the valid check-in time in order to achieve this. It *is* possible (you would have to find out somehow) that the gate agent took over control of checkin early, seeing that no one else had checked in, thus denying further checkins at the counter. But that would require quite detailed information which you don't have.
The ticket counter agent was also very unhelpful, and could have tried to do more, but also I doubt was part of any conspiracy to deny you a seat purposely in order to sell another ticket. The agent probably had the discretion to ask the gate to check you in at that point, or have you added to the standby list, but you had gotten on her bad side, which is a reflection of how a bad agent can taint an airline's image, and your travel experience. Your best bet at that point would have been to ask for all possible sympathy and throw yourself on her mercy with friendliness and humility, unfortunately.
Remember these words: "flat-tire rule". If you arrive within some number of reasonable hours at the airport, having missed your flight, most airlines will, without charge, put you on the next one. It is a litlte known rule. So the $120 charge is definitely bogus, and you should protest that.
I guess my point is that regardless of the airline sucking or the pasesnger being right, or not -- this was definitely a situation in which the passenger could have saved herself the trouble, by either arriving earlier, or checking in online. I'm not saying she was asking for it, but the circumstances converged to make everything against her in this case (combined with it being USAirways)...
This is why you print your boarding pass at home. A couple of years ago Delta tried to pull that crap with me at LAX. I was than an hour before but they pulled the "You missed the cutoff" nonsense and charged me $50 to get on the next flight. I paid it (I had to get home), went through security and hey look! There is my original flight and they had not even started boarding. Delta would have let me on that flight....if I paid another $50!
Living in Atlanta I have few choices on who I fly most of the time, but that day taught me to print the boarding pass at home. Especially now with the crazy checked bag fees I always carry on anyway.
Part of me wants to say "this is what you get for cutting it so close." Maybe the clock in the car was running slower than the clock in the airport or on the kiosk. Plus, I have a tendency to be hesitant to believe people when they claim that they walked in at 6:48 exactly, when there's no real reason for them to have made note of the time. Further, the time they pulled into the parking lot is irrelevant. How long did it take to get the luggage out and get into the terminal?
That said, if they truly were there when the airport/kiosk time was more than 30 minutes before the departure time, it's pretty absurd that they were denied entry. Of course, this is par for the course with most airlines.
This is exactly why you don't show up at the airport so close to the check-in cutoff. If ANYTHING goes wrong, you're screwed. Once the 30 minute barrier is crossed, the gate agents will start to ticket standby customers. So if you show up 34 minutes before the flight and have a problem that takes 5 minutes to fix, your seat may be given away and the ticketing agent probably can't do anything about it, since the Gate agent is the one that re-booked the seat. It's unfortunate that it's come to this; that passengers have to be so defensive to ensure that they get their seat (showing up extra early, etc.). But, it's well known that the airlines are staffed by low-paid screw-ups; that their service is awful; and that you'll get screwed if you're not careful. It's the game and you have to play it if you want to "win."
I think if you're extra surly as a US Air CSR you get promoted to the desk at Reagan.
I too have missed the magic 30-minute window and been left at the gate, I'm usually pretty civil with any CS reps but US Air seems to make their own job harder while inconveniencing you. I live in DC and use Reagan airport often, but I do everything I can to stay away from the US Air lines.
Also, on a side note, I think the headline of this story is a bit misleading. Nothing in the story supports the notion that the airline "lied" to her.
Yes, the machine may have denied her a boarding pass before the valid cutoff time. But the fact is that after talking to the agent for many minutes, it was less than 30 minutes before the flight time, and she was not checked in. She probably arrived before the 30 minute cutoff, but as we all know, when you arrived at the airport doesn't count in the airline's books -- it's when you received a boarding pass.
@s25843: He said there was a traffic accident that held them up, but the fact is that they made it within the airline's time limit. That's all they had to do.
There is no way this is not ridiculous.
@Tzepish: It doesn't matter that she arrived more than 30 minutes early. The defining act is the act of checking in, not arriving. The airlines say to *arrive* hours early, even.
Now, there certainly shouldn't be ridiculous barriers put up to prevent you from checking in on time after you've arrived at the airport, but this was cutting it close regardless. Suppose there had been a line of 20 people in front of her that had prevented her from checking in? That would've been the same outcome, and no recourse there.
Check in online, or get there earlier. USAir has some blame here, for not helping her more, but it could've been avoided too, very easily.
@kepler11: Thank you!
While it certainly is a horrible system that we have, anyone with any sort of travel experience should know that you either get in early, or if you can't, flag someone down as soon as you can and get them to print you a pass ASAP! You sometimes have to be pushy, but if its the only way you gotta do what you gotta do.
Same thing happened to me with Southwest, only it was lines out the door at Detroit Metro after Xmas. They let me check-in for the flight with ~20 min to spare and told me to "run". Got through security and on the plane with 10 minutes to spare. It looked like everyone in Detroit was flying on Southwest that day. The desk was fully staffed and they kept going through the line to pull out people whose flights were leaving soon. Yay Southwest!
The response you got on the kiosk (No seats available) is what is programmed to show on the kiosk when customers have missed the checkin time limit (30 minutes in DCA). So, if you got this response the first time you and your girlfriend tried to check inat the kiosk yourself, you had already missed the checkin requirement. It had nothing to do with the flight possibly being full, oversold or giving your seat away, you were late. No sinister airline plot there, sorry to disappoint. Also, for those who check in at home and print out a boarding pass, if you are checking bags, you still must present yourself before the check in time limit to check bags, even if you have a boarding pass. The checkin time limit applies to baggage also so TSA has time to screen the bags and they have time to make it to your flight. On the $120, did your girlfriend give the agent her credit card? If not, did you call reservations to rebook? Agents at the airport DO NOT have access to your credit card information so unless she physically handed her card to the agent to use to reissue a ticket, this is either incorrect or something else happened to cause the card to be charged. I'd be interested to hear exactly what happened to have the card charged and what it says the fee was for. If the agent had charged a change fee and/or additional collection for the reissued ticket, it would have been at least $150, not the $120 mentioned here. Something doesnt sound right.
To add a bit of background information on why gate agents may (improperly) take over the checkin early (before the official cutoff), it is because they are under great pressure to get the flight out on time. That is their overarching goal with every flight, drilled into them. So if it's a warm summer afternoon, delays are piling up, there is a long list of standbys, and the flight is pretty full and will take a while to board, and they have a thousand other things to do before they work the next flight that's in just as bad shape, they will take over that checkin function to lock it out, and begin processing things at the gate. So that they can get passengers boarded, baggage loaded (locking out checkin also prevents any more baggage, which could delay the flight), the door closed, and the plane pushed.
The only thing you have to do to prevent yourself from being on the receiving end of this, is to check yourself in within the proper time limit. It's not that they're trying to screw you -- it's that they want to get the flight closed and pushed, and if you happen to have not followed the simple instructions to be an orderly, well-behaving passenger, you lose. All you have to do is check in 5 minutes earlier. This principle applies to many of the airline stories you see here every day. Why did this or that passenger's story go so wrong? Because in the high stress, get-them-in-get-them-out, lowest-fare-wins environment of today's airlines, you don't want to be the passenger that causes trouble in the system. While you may get friendly help occasionally, often, you will be shafted, especially if you have no status.
So please, just check in online and save yourself the trouble.
Or you could simply arrive at the airport at the time the airline suggests generally from one hour to two hours before the flight.
If you are only seconds before their cutoff you are simply pushing your luck. I have done it and I have missed flights. I try not to book the last flight of the day because of this, but sometimes I have had to hoof it to the Hyatt because I dawdled. It is what grown ups do.
5 minutes to check in.... I don't think I've ever checked in in less then 20 before I started flying SouthWest... I think that's cutting it close....
Sorry, but I don't have any sympathy for people who cut it so close, whether or not there was actually a car accident that slowed you up (I've heard that excuse plenty of times while working for the TSA, and I've yet to believe it).
The fact is that air travel sucks. The carriers suck, period. They're often staffed by surly, underpaid people who don't care whether or not you make your flight. Security sucks for the same reason. I don't care whether or not you make your flight. My job is to ensure that the flight itself makes it there safely with or without you. The flights themselves often suck as well. That's how it is, and it's probably not going to change.
With that all being said, why would you make it harder on yourself by not giving yourself enough time? Maybe you were held up in traffic, and maybe that added 10 minutes to your trip. Without that delay, you're still only giving yourself 35 minutes to get checked in, through security, and onto the plane (doors close 10 minutes before the flight). The recommended time to be at the airport before a domestic flight is 75 minutes, and 2 hours for international. Sitting around for 20-30 minutes waiting for boarding beats the situation you ended up in here.
I have a tendency to be hesitant to believe people when they claim that they walked in at 6:48 exactly
That's exactly what I was thinking, but as I was typing up a comment, I realized that the parking stub probably had a time stamp on it.
Still, who in their right mind consciously aims to arrive at the airport exactly at the boarding time of the flight...especially if they live right down the street?
Is there even anything that we can do to fight back?
Arriving at the airport well before the boarding time of your flight (and not right at the boarding time) is a good place to start. Especially given that there was no excuse whatsoever for cutting it so close (from someone who "flies regularly" nonetheless).
Heck, for many major airports, US Air requires you to check in 45 minutes before the flight time. Things like a fast/slow watch, traffic, check-in issues, and countless other potential problems are good reason to err on the side of caution.
@supercereal:
I thought of that too, but generally it still applies so I threw it in there. If he based it off the time stamp, great. Still, arriving in the garage != being checked-in.
@kepler11: How did he get on the angent's bad side? She was the one who didn't seem too nice. All he did was interrupt the conversation she was having with a coworker.
@kepler11: They said they tried when they got there, before they had to ask the agent. The agent got the same error they did when they first tried. I don't get why everyone is siding with the airline here. Sure, a half hour is cutting it close (I hate rushing like that), but the airline should stick to their policies.
Especially with all the other bogus ways airlines are using to get our money, you'd think fewer people would blame the customer.
@75Sasha: I LOVE Southwest. And Detroit Metro is always pretty fast. The one time I almost missed a flight there was with 3 other people, one of whom was late meeting us (we got a ride from a friend's wife) and it was with Delta/Northwest, like the day after they merged. They were such idiots. We waited in line for like 40 minutes where everyone else was waiting, where the signs on the wall said Delta/KLM, and when we got to the front they told us we needed to go to the other line, down about 20 computers, that had the SAME sign. Like we were supposed to know. Then they charged me for one of my friend's checked bags. It was a mess. I won't fly with them again if I can help it.
But DTW is a great airport, especially if you're flying Southwest, because that's in the North terminal, the newest one.
@Esquire99: "I live about 10 miles from the airport and we were not anticipating any traffic, but a car accident held us up a bit."
@supercereal: My thought was that they were nervous about being late - having been held up by a traffic accident - and thus were more attentive to the time than they would normally have been. You know, sort of a, "Oh geez, are we gonna make it? Phew, it's only 6:48! Plenty of time!" kind of thing.
Also, about checking in online: I always did that, until I changed my name a few years ago. Apparently I changed it to the same name as someone who's on the TSA's no-no-bad-puppy list, and now I'm not able to use the online boarding pass. No one yet has been able to get me off of it, and honestly I don't fly enough that it's that much of a problem, but it is an annoyance since I almost never fly with checked baggage and could theoretically skip the lines altogether.
Frankie it seems as if there is no love for you on here today. Hope it all works out because I beleive companyies conspire to screw people to make more money all the time. However I think in this case the rude ass employees took over the kiosk functions early to make it eaiser on themselves and then treated you like shit for catching them at it.
@Shivved: I agree that you should leave extra time, but I'm surprised that you don't believe that there are car accidents that cause traffic delays. I have to drive a lot for work, pretty far and at different times of the day, and there is car accident on of the roads I use almost every day (I'd say 4 out of 5 days).
Unfortunately, someone who doesn't drive that road every day probably isn't going to realize it, and the 30 minute trip for which they've allotted 45 minutes (50% extra time) will actually take 65 minutes - whoops, now you're late, and you have to try to convince the TSA guy who doesn't believe you...
So to sum up most of the comments you should get there earlier. I didnt notice if everyone decided on how much earlier than the official check in time you would have to be for it to "count" as not you fault though.
If you had gotten there 1 hour before the check-in cutoff time and were unable to process your ticket due to the computer not letting you, and then insulted by the ticket agents, maybe that would be enough.
I can't be the only person who purposely starts the trip to the airport hours and hours in advance, just to sit around the terminal for an hour or more, right? I'm not insane, right? Other people do that too?
I see the defining line in the OP's story being, "we were in no hurry" despite getting there at 6:48 for a flight that leaves little over half an hour later.
If I was them, I'd be booking it. It doesn't matter what airport it is...I'd be running like hell as soon as I got through security. If you plan for traffic or accidents, you have to plan for delays in getting to the terminal. What if it was a terminal far away? What if they had changed the terminal?
I had that happen once, and it was really confusing. We were at one terminal waiting for our flight, and we saw on the announcement board that our flight was moved to a terminal almost halfway to the other side of the airport.
We had a lot of time left (about an hour and a half) but we made our way over there, and the flight attendants knew nothing about the announcement. We were absolutely bewildered, and there was nothing on the announcement board about it either. We went back to our original terminal, and any sign of the announcement was gone, and the people at the counter didn't know anything about it either.
They called around and nothing said the terminal had changed. But when we looked up, there it was - our flight number (we even checked our boarding passes to compare) and the SFO to IAD flight at the exact time of our scheduled flight, and it said it was at a terminal really far away...
And we were lucky we had so much time left, but if you had arrived with even one hour to spare...and it was going to take you 10 to 15 minutes just to get to the other counter to discover you were wrong...and another 10 to 15 to get back to the right one? You probably would've missed your flight.
So you never know. Plan for delays everywhere.
@hedonia: That's the deceptive part of living close to somewhere, which is why OCD people like me actually leave earlier than they normally would when they're going somewhere unusually close by.
@supercereal: Either the parking stub, or perhaps the OP did something at 6:48. ;) As in, perhaps the OP had gotten a phone call at 6:48 and that's when they arrived. I use that "method" of associating a time/date to an event too. :)
@yesteraeon: Please, please, PLEASE read the article. The OP clearly states that the first attempt to check in was more than 30 minutes before the plane's departure. Are you saying he was lying?
Can the OP's girlfriend not chargeback the extra $120?
@yesteraeon: Yeah, but if they won't let you check in there's not much you can do. What if you arrived hours in advanced but no one would let you check in and chasing people down demanding help put you past the check in time since they don't want to assist you. Would you get the same thing, extra fees and get told to suck it up because you need to arrive days in advance of your flight instead of hours?
While I think they may have been cutting it close, there should be no reason they can deny check in if they were before that cutoff time. I mean it's one thing to arrive late and it be your fault for missing the deadline, it's another when the airline employees kill time by arguing with you until you are past the deadline at which point they can just tell you to suck it up.
The window isn't magic, as you have have apparently heard of it before.
1 Hour early flying in the country
2 Hours at least for international
That leaves you at least 30 minutes if a problem comes up....common sense
@Wombatish: @pecan 3.14159265: Agreed. I arrive at the airport 2 hours early for domestic flights! One, traffic never participates in situations like this, plus, security is always slow! or someone holds up the line, or people don't check in fast enough.
The fact that they arrived at the CHECK-IN counter 'nearing 7pm' means they had minutes.... or SECONDS... to check in. What if the OP's watch was 2 minutes off? Well he's going to miss the check in deadline.
I can't believe they got inside the airport 30 minutes before the flight, that's not enough time at all.
@Wombatish: They made it the airport according to him.
If his watch was only 2 minutes off, then they would miss the check-in time.
This is why they ask you to arrive at the airport early. Not minutes before the flight leaves.
The key word there is parked at 6:48, maybe 5-10 minutes to get into the terminal... I know at JFK it can take over 15.
The computer doesn't lie with these things, at 7:01 it isn't going to happen, try another few times 7:05, get a rep over there 7:10.. they are probably boarding by this point.
Any time I am running late I pay the couple bucks to use the sky-cap its right outside and there is almost never a line.
@katstermonster: He said... "By the time we arrived there it was nearing 7PM. My girlfriend tried to check-in..."
Meaning... it could have been 6:59 when they got to the check-in. What if his watch was off by 1 minute? Then he misses the check-in deadline.
He may not be lying. But he definitely could still be at fault for not arriving earlier. Since he didn't specify the exact minute he arrived (presumably because it was so late) we have to figure out if he was early or not.
Unfortunately, since AFTER he entered in all the information it is reasonably safe to assume he WAS late, because ... well.. as you enter information time passes.
It would be a completely different story, and he might actually have a case, if he arrived 1.5 hours earlier. OR even if he had arrived at 6.30pm (1 hr before the flight).
But he didn't. AND he is saying they intentionally overbooked. Well that happens, and if you are checked in on time they will rebook you at no cost, but she didn't. Since it was her/his fault they were late, they charged them to rebook rather then charging them the full price of a new ticket. Which is reasonable because she missed her flight.
Agreed. I'm usually at the airport two hours early. Waiting sucks, but I can get some reading or work done on my laptop.
@italianscallion33: I think people have been told so many times that they need to arrive EARLY, that they have no sympathy. Which is fine. They arrived 'just in the nick of time' only to find out that they were actually late.
"By the time we arrived there it was nearing 7PM. ..."
That sounds entirely plausible that they were late... which i'd be more likely to believe as they were running late.
@Cocoa Vanilla:
@bibliophibian:
They said they arrived in the garage at 6:48... but they actually arrived at the check-in counter around 7pm.
"By the time we arrived there it was nearing 7PM..."
So even though they were in the garage at 6:48... they didn't get to the counter til approx 10-12 minutes late. They simply didn't make the cut off time. and due to it being their fault, the airlines charged to rebook. They should be lucky they didn't get charged for a completely new ticket.
@Johnyq1982: He also said he arrived at the counter "nearing 7pm" meaning, if his watch was off by minutes... or seconds, then he missed the cut off.
Y'know, this is why I show up more than an hour early for flights.
@feckingmorons: but nothing is absolutely worse than sitting in the airport ALONE for 1 hr 45 minutes because there was no line at the security...or even longer because the morons at the airport your plane was coming from didn't tell your airport that the plane left late. Yes I spent more time than I care to remember at Dulles airport because I was freakishly early for my flight which was still listed as on time. Waited at the gate FOREVER, saw the flight crew arrive, saw the gate extend out as if it was expecting an airplane....and then it came back in and they announced the delay. Would have been nice if Logan had told Dulles the plane was running 2 hours late.
In short, no, there's nothing you can do because that's just how they do business and they're not dumb enough to kick a senator off of a flight.