On Saturday, an airline crew and two passengers had to use duck tape to keep Maria Castillo, a woman from NY, on her seat during a United Airline flight from Puerto Rico to Chicago . According to the police report, Ms. Castillo began fighting with the flight crew and other passengers in the middle of a flight. Initially they were able to restrain her using ankle cuffs, but after she was able to get out of them twice, they had to use duck tape to keep her in her seat.

The flight had to be diverted to North Carolina where FBI agents boarded the airplane and took Ms. Castillo into custody. She is now facing several federal charges

Some witness said they saw Ms. Castillo having drinks at the Airport bar and she also ordered a drink on the plane.

Spirit Airlines seems to forget that they exist thanks to their customer, and they have also forgotten the most basic strategy for the survival of any company not matter who big or small: good customer service. But then again when not even its CEO cares about the customer, what can you expect from the rest of the employees.

Yesterday one of my cousins came over my house to help him find a good deal on airline tickets from South Florida to Las Vegas. Since I got a good deal before on  Spirit, I went to their site and got them a decent price on a round trip Fort Lauderdale – Las Vegas.

During the booking I entered his information, along with his wife and son. Spirit Air gave me the quote and I proceeded to the check out. Immediately after the payment was completed, I noticed that they had charged him for only two passengers instead of three. I soon realized that because my cousin’s name and his son’s name are the same, Spirit booking system rejected the third passenger thinking that I had entered the same person twice (even thought I had put his son’s middle name to distinguish it from his)

I quickly called Spirit Air to clarify the error and include the third passenger in the reservation. To my surprise, Spirit Air wanted to charge an extra $10.00 fee to change the reservation! No matter how much I argued with the customer service person and even her supervisor, they wouldn’t budge. My cousin was left with only two options: either pay the $10.00 fee or pay a $90.00 per person and cancel the reservation and re do it again. Just when I was about to scale my complain to the next person in command, my cousin gave up and agreed to pay the $10.00.

Obviously this is not about the $10.00. This is about a company who wouldn’t even acknowledge their own mistake and do something to remedy the situation. I have heard plenty of complains about absurd fees and bad customer services that plagues the travel industry, but I think this one tops the charts.

As far as I am concern, if you find a competitive rate, fly with a company that really cares about its customer.

If you ever thought that being a flight attendant is the coolest job in the world, I invite you to read this great article of Michelle Higgins, a travel columnist for the New York Times.

Michele spent two days as a flight attendant with American Airlines to write her article titled “Flying the unfriendly skies”

She reported that unruly passengers, crying children, long working hours, and relative low salaries make flight attendant jobs very hard. Gone are the days where stewards would fly for 4 hours, then hit the beach on an exotic destination to wait for her fly home the following morning.

Among the most interesting facts she found about flight attendant jobs are::

• Flight attendants make an average of $35,000 a year.
• They only get pay for the actual flight time (if the flight is delayed or if they have to spend the night over they only get $1.50 an hour flat rate)
• Flight attendants earn between 7 and 20 percent less today than before 9/11
• Though the benefits, like free flights for your entire family, still exist on paper, they are hard to claim as airlines continue to pack planes full of paying

The article was an eye opening for me, and I really recommend you read it if you are thinking on changing careers.





Bald Head ad

Bald people now have a reason to celebrate their lack of cranial hair. New Zealand’s national airline is looking for 50 bald people to use them as walking billboards by temporarily tattooing an ad on their head advertising a new speedy check in service the airline will begin offering.

For allowing the airline to use their bald head, each person will receive $666.00 (any resemblance to the “mark of the beast” is just pure coincidence as this is the equivalence of $1,000 NA dollars each person will receive)

The idea is that people standing in line at the check in line can learn about the service by reading the ad on the head of the person in front of them.

Would you shave your head and temporarily tattoo it for $666.00? With the economy the way it is, I would at least consider it!

In an effort to increase revenues in a slow economy, Jet Blue has decided to put to auction several round trip tickets and vacation packages on eBay, the most popular internet auction site.

Bidding started around $0.10 per ticket; however a quick look at the Jet Blue auction site, showed that a lot of people had bid on the tickets, and the prices continue to rise, so at the end, I really don’t think they would make too much difference compared to regular ticket prices.

The site also has “mystery vacation packages” where you would bid for a hotel and air fare package to one of the several Caribbean destinations where Jet Blue flies.

The round trip tickets originate from Boston and more than 20 other cities, and all of the flights will depart on a Thursday or Friday and return on a Sunday or Monday, with the last one landing on Oct. 6.

The auctions can be found at www.jetblue.com/ebay. Taxes and fees are additional and will vary according to the route. Bidders will need a PayPal account.

There was a time, when the flight attendants’ job was to take care of passenger’s needs and make your flight as pleasant as possible. As soon as you would push that call button, one of them would rush to your seat and asked you how they could be helpful. They would greed you when you came in, and say good bay when you left the airplane. They used to help you with your carry on luggage, guide you to your seat and a be nice in general. That is the case no more. To my horror, I discovered that flight attendants have become sales people, trying to sell you every thing, from overprices sodas and peanuts to credit card enrollments.

I have flown at least 6 times in the last 3 months with two different airlines. Delta and Spirit Air. It had been a while since my last flight (more than 3 years) so I was in shock to see how much the job of a flight attendant had changed.

Delta:

I flew Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta, GA on Delta Airlines. The seatbelt sign was still on when one of the flight attendant announced over the PA system that they would begin distributing Master Card applications to all the passengers who wanted to apply for the credit card. She went on to give a long list of “benefits” if you were to apply: from bonus frequent flyers miles to cash rebates. She went on for several minutes, really trying to convince the passengers to complete the application. For a moment I felt like I was attending one of those time share sales presentation.
Several minutes later, all three flight attendants starting walking the aisles asking every single passengers if they wanted to apply for the credit card. During the whole flight they repeated the same sales pitch over the PA at least 3 other times.
Later on, they collected all the applications from those passengers who felt compelled to apply for a credit card 30,000 feet in the air.
During the flight they also announced several times that they had all kind of drinks and other items from the Sky Mall catalog for sale.





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