Airplane delays and cancellations????

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MStrain

MStrain

Service Attendant
Joined
Feb 13, 2008
Messages
152
Location
JAN
I wish I ran the advertisement department for Amtrak. This is a PERFECT opportunity to help solve a problem.

"Flight cancelled? Stranded with no help? No worries....Chances are Amtrak runs a train to your destination everyday or close enough for a connecting flight. Give us a try. It certainly beats sleeping in concourse seats.

So sit back, relax. you can even leave the driving to us. Leave the troubles of flying to the birds.........."

Now if only Amtrak had its own dedicated rails............. :lol:

I can dream huh????

MStrain
 
You don't follow me. They are reaching system-capability capacity. That is, they don't have the cars to add.
 
In regards to the dedicated rails, Amtrak would be able to run faster and tighter schedules without competing with freight.
 
Reminds me of a bad night this summer in JFK. I always carry my laptop, and there was free wireless in the terminal. The flight I was trying to get back on was canceled, as were many other flights (thunderstorms), so I pulled out my laptop, sat down at a table, and starting rebooking people on Amtrak and drawing maps of how to get from JFK to Penn on mass transit. There weren't many trains running at that hour, but I managed to get a few people to buy tickets on that overnight regional that runs.

Another time I was at work in Burlington, and a sobbing woman came up to the counter. "US Airways canceled my daughter's flight in Washington DC!" she wailed, " And she is scared and trapped in the airport! (For reference, the girl was 19) She needs to get to New York, we have family there! Do you have any flights?" I explained that not did we not have any flights departing at such a late hour, and besides, US Airways flies from Washington Reagan, and we fly from Washington Dulles. However, I mentioned that there was a train to New York, which she had plenty of time to make, and the train station isn't that far from Regan. Considering that her mother was willing to pay "anything" to get her to New York, she wouldn't have a problem paying for the cab. "Oh, but my daughter is too scared to take a train!" she cried, "She can't do that!" I explained again it wouldn't be hard, and it was basically between the train and spending the night at Reagan. "Look," I told her, "The train is the best - and only - option. It's safe, comfortable and close. She'd have to go even farther away if she was going to get a flight on us!" "No, no," her mother sobbed, "She can't do that. She's just too scared!" and she walked away and sat down in the baggage claim area, softly crying. Finally a guy from the airport's operations crew came around and asked if I knew what the woman was crying about. I explained the situation, and he declared, "She should just take the train! What's the problem with that?" and went over to try and convince her to take the train. She could not be convinced, which was rather frustrating, mostly because there was a very simple solution to her problem, she just wouldn't listen!
 
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I think some people think the train is a low-class option containing low-class people. I'd have reccomended the upgrade to business class, since that probably would have helped her apparent fears.
 
I had the same thought last night when they interviewed people at the St. Louis Airport trying to get to chicago.. the metrolink runs from the terminal doors to the rail station without any transfers. But people were complaining they were stuck in there second day in the terminal. They could have been home in five hours if they would have hopped a train...

It reminds me of a wonderful full page ad the Southern ran in the early 60's when I was in college. Had a big snow storm and the Southern ran an ad that had a big headline, "To our Foul Weather Friends". Pointing out that although now that the snow had effected the airports and passengers were up, that if they didn't support the trains they wouldn't be there come good weather.. Needless to say they didn't support them, but its a neat ad which I still have.

I also agree that Amtrak could make hey with a few ads in the right places. But as mentioned they also need new equipment and a professional crew and service. (not that the airlines have that any longer either, but drawing rail passengers may take to lure riders back).
 
Larry H. said:
I had the same thought last night when they interviewed people at the St. Louis Airport trying to get to chicago.. the metrolink runs from the terminal doors to the rail station without any transfers. But people were complaining they were stuck in there second day in the terminal. They could have been home in five hours if they would have hopped a train...
It reminds me of a wonderful full page ad the Southern ran in the early 60's when I was in college. Had a big snow storm and the Southern ran an ad that had a big headline, "To our Foul Weather Friends". Pointing out that although now that the snow had effected the airports and passengers were up, that if they didn't support the trains they wouldn't be there come good weather.. Needless to say they didn't support them, but its a neat ad which I still have.

I also agree that Amtrak could make hey with a few ads in the right places. But as mentioned they also need new equipment and a professional crew and service. (not that the airlines have that any longer either, but drawing rail passengers may take to lure riders back).
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people who fly don't think. they could care less about the trains. even if they new about it they won't take it. they rather live for days at a airport so they can fly home when they can take a train and get there. boy are people who fly stupid
 
KISS_ALIVE said:
people who fly don't think. they could care less about the trains. even if they new about it they won't take it. they rather live for days at a airport so they can fly home when they can take a train and get there. boy are people who fly stupid
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Recall an article in the Washington Post in the mid 70's about all the hasles a woman went through trying to get a flight from Washington DC to Philadelphia with something oversize. I was reading it thinking, Won't somebody say, "Go - to - Union - Station - and - take - a - train !" ?
 
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You know I had the same idea about train travel before we took our first one. I thought "yuck". The slime people. (LOL) Anyway, once we boarded, I couldn't believe all the people on the train. Yes there may have been some slime people but you can get that anywhere.

I wonder who is more dependable in winter - airplanes or trains?
 
Ummm. Thunderstorms? Well at least the planes can go through the clouds and get away from them. Of course I don't like that that much.

I just checked prices going on Airtran and it would cost us $1300. Amtrak $610. Of course you are there quicker but I am not wild about the schedule though.
 
Gingee said:
Ummm. Thunderstorms? Well at least the planes can go through the clouds and get away from them. Of course I don't like that that much.
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True, if they're already moving. But I've been at O'Hare, Atlanta or Dallas too often where a T-storm in the area prevented any flight from leaving or landing! And I've been on a plane that was sitting on the taxiway at O'Hare (on a sunny day) for 3 hours because of a line of T-storms between Chicago and Providence! I've yet to hear of a train that doesn't leave Chicago due to T-storms in Cleveland! :rolleyes:
 
I'm in the midwest & I have to worry about bad weather almost any time I fly. Like previous posters have mentioned, it's not just the flight you're on, it's where the plane was coming from. I had an LAX-CHI flight delayed for several hours while we waited for a plane that was late arriving from Asia.

Of course, some of the biggest problems I've had have been mechanical rather than meteorological. One time, we all got on the plane, & the pilot informed us that during his pre-flight walk through he found that the brake pads on the landing gear were in a state of good repair (for those non-Amtrak people reading this, a "state of good repair" for Amtrak means a "state of disrepair" in real life). We then had to wait several hours while they got the brakes fixed. Another time, the flight crew & passengers were at the airport in Santa Ana, CA, but there was no plane. It turns out that the pilot was supposed to have driven to LAX & flown the plane to SNA, but he forgot! So we had to sit there while he went back to his car & drove from SNA to LAX. On the I-5, in rush-hour L.A. traffic.

My personal favorite, however, was my last flight on the now-defunct Skybus. Our plane was late arriving in California. When it finally arrived, we asked the disembarking passengers what had happened (because Skybus didn't have customer service, & there was no one there to explain it to us). For those of you unfamiliar with Skybus, they didn't use jetways - they used the old-fashioned, wheel-up ramps. When the plane was leaving its previous city, the rear-door ramp was positioned right below the door, as usual. However, as people got on the plane, the weight of all the people & luggage made the plane settle lower on the ground - impaling the door onto the ramp! In order to fix the problem, they then asked everyone to move to the front of the plane, hoping that having the weight toward the front would tilt the nose of the plane forward & raise the tail off the ramp! It didn't work. So, they had everyone get off the plane, made some frantic calls to Airbus HQ in Europe, & were able to free the ramp several hours later.

So, the recent spate of wiring inspections & cancellations comes to no surprise to me. And I don't even fly that often- maybe once a year. So, when I hear about people hesitant to make the switch from a "free market" airline to a "government run" train system, it just makes me laugh.
 
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KISS_ALIVE said:
people who fly don't think. they could care less about the trains. even if they new about it they won't take it. they rather live for days at a airport so they can fly home when they can take a train and get there. boy are people who fly stupid
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I, sir, am offended by those comments. I am a college educated, business degreed professional, certainly not 'stupid', and I fly frequently for business. It may be your opinion, but, please, think before you make such a general statement. Sure, some people may not have the common sense necessary to think of alternative modes of transportation, but, you need to put yourself in their place, and understand that, at the moment they are stuck at the airport, the first thing on their minds is getting a resolution to their situation. And, as 'stupid' as they may be, there may simply be no other options available for them. Perhaps they are 100s of miles away from a train station and don't have the available funds to rent a car or hire a cab to the nearest rail station. For example.....Des Moines IA has no Amtrak service. The closest train station is Osceola, which is approximately 60 miles away. There are no buses that travel there, no rental car drop off available there, and a cab fare to there would run probably close to $70. What are these 'stupid' people supposed to do if they are stuck in Des Moines? They have no choice except to, as you say, "live for days at a airport so they can fly home".
 
guest said:
KISS_ALIVE said:
people who fly don't think. they could care less about the trains. even if they new about it they won't take it. they rather live for days at a airport so they can fly home when they can take a train and get there. boy are people who fly stupid
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I, sir, am offended by those comments. I am a college educated, business degreed professional, certainly not 'stupid', and I fly frequently for business. It may be your opinion, but, please, think before you make such a general statement. Sure, some people may not have the common sense necessary to think of alternative modes of transportation, but, you need to put yourself in their place, and understand that, at the moment they are stuck at the airport, the first thing on their minds is getting a resolution to their situation. And, as 'stupid' as they may be, there may simply be no other options available for them. Perhaps they are 100s of miles away from a train station and don't have the available funds to rent a car or hire a cab to the nearest rail station. For example.....Des Moines IA has no Amtrak service. The closest train station is Osceola, which is approximately 60 miles away. There are no buses that travel there, no rental car drop off available there, and a cab fare to there would run probably close to $70. What are these 'stupid' people supposed to do if they are stuck in Des Moines? They have no choice except to, as you say, "live for days at a airport so they can fly home".
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I don't think people that fly are stupid, either. Some of them are pretty stubborn in their belief in flying's superiority, however.
 
It's not that people who fly are stupid, it's that a lot of stupid people fly. But that's really not a function of flying as an experience, that's just a function of dealing with people from the general public. I have endless such stories of dealing with people who have boarded the wrong aircraft or who don't know what airline they're flying on or what time they're flying, or sometimes even where they're going (at least as far as a connecting city, people usually have a good idea of their final destination). But that's just a fraction of the traveling public. I have countless stories about dealing with the public in other jobs I've worked in the past, it's the same stuff, different setting.

That being said, people generally don't consider the train as an option outside of the NEC and a few other select corridors as much as they should in some cases, especially when they are doing short to medium haul flying. But I wouldn't put down people who fly, after all, I work for an airline! I actually appreciate the beauty of flight to a great degree, and have spent some time working towards my private pilot's license. I love flying, but getting around using commercial air travel isn't always the most enjoyable experience in the world. There's plenty of room for both planes and trains in this world.
 
rnizlek said:
It's not that people who fly are stupid, it's that a lot of stupid people fly. But that's really not a function of flying as an experience, that's just a function of dealing with people from the general public. I have endless such stories of dealing with people who have boarded the wrong aircraft or who don't know what airline they're flying on or what time they're flying, or sometimes even where they're going (at least as far as a connecting city, people usually have a good idea of their final destination). But that's just a fraction of the traveling public. I have countless stories about dealing with the public in other jobs I've worked in the past, it's the same stuff, different setting.
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Indeed. I am a manager at a company in the travel industry right now, and I can affirm that the average intelligence of the general traveling public is very low. (Or they all leave their brains at home!)

I did have a question for rnizlek, though: How in the world do people board the wrong plane? When the gate agent scans the ticket, won't it beep and display an error? In the old days when tickets were checked manually, I can understand things slipping through the cracks, but unless your airline still does things manually, I've always wondered how it could happen...
 
jackal said:
I did have a question for rnizlek, though: How in the world do people board the wrong plane? When the gate agent scans the ticket, won't it beep and display an error? In the old days when tickets were checked manually, I can understand things slipping through the cracks, but unless your airline still does things manually, I've always wondered how it could happen...
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It's only happened twice since I've worked here, both on flights coming from JFK. The way our system works is that when the boarding pass is scanned, the system beeps to indicate that the scan was successful and will display the pax's seat number and name on the screen, with a "++" to indicate they've boarded (one + is checked in, the second is for boarded). When the wrong pass was scanned, the system pauses for about two to three seconds, then it spits out an error like "wrong flight number." However, the error is just on the same screen with all the boarding entries, and occasionally a careless agent may not see it. There are also times that boarding is done manually, but entering the sequence number on the ticket into the computer (for instance, in BTV, we have once scanner, so if we board through both the front and rear, the agent collecting passes for the rear section of the plane (which goes out a separate door) will then manually enter the sequence numbers. However, even if this is done and there is an overlapping sequence number, when you actually board the person with the correct number it will say "sequence number already boarded" and you should be able to figure out what's going on.

That being said, the two instances that I have dealt with, the passenger did not speak English, or spoke very little. In the first case, he actually found someone sitting in his seat on the plane, and went to a flight attendant. The FA took his boarding pass from him, then, without looking at the pass, told him to sit in an empty seat. He didn't realize he wasn't in the right place until he came to me, asking why his bag hadn't arrived. He was understandably surprised when I told him he wasn't even in the right state! The second time I witnessed this I was working the gate, and the passenger came off the plane and only spoke Spanish. I sent her down to the ticket counter with a bilingual agent to sort things out, and am not sure the circumstances of the incident. My understanding is that in 7.5 years of operation in BTV, we've only had one other such incident.

That being said, all such incidents are our fault, and I believe such misboards are reported to the FAA, who tracks them very closely. I believe that if one misboards a passenger, they are suspended for three days without pay following the incident. Thankfully, we've never had the issue here in BTV, so I can't say that for certain, but there definitely is some sort of reprimand, because it only occurs as a result of the gate agent's carelessness.
 
Many years ago I had a connection in DTW to SDF (Louisville) and was really late getting to DTW (don't remember where I was coming from) and they rushed me on an electric cart to the plane as they were ready to shut the door. Got on without them even looking at my ticket/boarding pass and sat me in a seat. We took off and landed in Lansing! Needles to say I was unhappy, but NWA admitted it was their fault and eventually got me there.

I found out the Lansing plane knew they were waiting for one more passenger and thought I was him since the cart driver took me to that gate. I think they had even taken Lansing off the announcement board so I didn't see where the plane was going.

While we're telling airline stories - best one was a friend who was ticketed on a red-eye from IND to ORD at 1:30AM. He boarded and found he was the only passenger on the plane. They would have canceled the flight but needed the equipment at ORD in the AM. They wouldn't let him sit in 1st class even though no one else was on the plane!
 
Would you expect Amtrak to board someone into sleeper if they were the only coach pax and there was room?
 
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