Catch the first half of this lost luggage drama here!

To recap: Last Sunday, US Airways shuffled us through 16 hours, 4 flights, and 2 different airlines to get from LA to DC. The trip was a comedy of incompetence, capped off by the airline losing our holiday-gift-filled luggage. That was extra obnoxious insofar as we specifically asked for the simplest itinerary when we were getting rerouted up and down the East Coast, explicitly because we couldn't afford to lose that bag. But that's not what this post is about.

Instead this story is about how US Airways has seemingly gone out of its way to design the world's worst baggage recovery customer service system. Some of the post is necessarily speculative, since the airline's press office declined to respond to our questions about the location and scope of US Airways' baggage recovery call center. But given how we've personally spent over 100 hours on the phone now with these tools trying to recover our one lost bag, we're pretty confident we've got the basics down.

Here we go...]]> Omri 2011-01-14T18:08:49-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/1/12/141413/507
Some old school US Airways planes

Who doesn't love a good travel rant? Well we're here to make you day with a sweet little rant from Jaunted writer Omri, who had the pleasure of checking a bag and having it lost in transit. It sucks, sure, but then it became a nightmare. Now let's get to the ranting...

Welcome to Part I of our two-part series on the borderline comedic but mindblowingly frustrating experience we're having with US Airways. Last Sunday they were supposed to get us from Washington DC to Los Angeles on a couple of morning flights, with everything being wrapped up by about 10am. Fast forward to 7:30pm Sunday night and we've gone through four flights at three airports on two airlines, all over 14 hours...and the airline lost our luggage. The emphasis is on lost because—had they merely delayed our luggage—we wouldn't need two different posts to peel back the many layers of airline incompetence on display.

But we do need two posts, because this has been such a learning experience and—if we here at Jaunted are about anything—we're all about learning. So today we'll go over what happened and the things we learned about the airports we "visited." And on Friday we'll dive into our in-depth investigation of their baggage recovery policy, complete with stonewalling by US Airway's press people. Preview: outsourcing baggage recovery services to India is fun for everyone, except anyone who loses baggage.]]> Omri 2011-01-12T15:31:07-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2010/12/20/81043/818

Buckle up—we are officially in the swing of the holiday travel high time. If you're traveling at all this week, it's time to be extra-early, extra-vigilant about your belongings, and extra hydrated (just in case). If you're booked on the lowest of all low-cost carriers, Spirit Airlines, however, all your preparation could be for naught, as they royally screwed over a family and many others this week when they simply couldn't handle the influx of travelers.

An irate would-be Spirit flyer sent Gothamist the story, and we've hardly heard a better argument for why not to fly Spirit: ]]> JetSetCD 2010-12-20T08:30:55-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2010/10/11/5537/2633

Airline travel is one step closer to the dreaded "buses with wings" status that we all dread, after Russia's Tatarstan Airlines had six passengers stand up for a 5 hour flight a few weeks ago. A 148-person tour group had reserved a plane from Turkey to Russia, but at the last moment, the airline substituted an airplane with a maximum capacity of 142. The six tourists who drew the short straws were told they could either stand during the flight home or wait for another flight later in the day. They chose to stand.

We're actually surprised we haven't heard Ryanair crowing about this, given their enthusiasm for the idea. The customers-last LCC has long been pushing for stand-up seating, but has been stymied by European regulators concerned about trivial things like "passenger safety." The obvious argument in the aftermath of the Tatarstan flight is that none of the worst-case scenarios about stand-up actually happened. That's an awful argument since there were also no safety emergencies on the flight, but that doesn't mean that we don't expect Ryanair to make it. In fact we're almost a little disappointed they haven't put this at the top of a press release yet. ]]> Omri 2010-10-14T11:35:03-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2010/6/1/155528/4764

We're now in the third day of the second wave of the second round of 2010 British Airways cabin crew airline strikes. The airline and the Unite union are in the midst of talks but—no surprise here—no one expects them to go anywhere.

The union wants the airline to restore travel perks and withdraw employee punishment proceedings as prerequisites to negotiations. The airline says that concessions will come the way they normally do, as part of a broader agreement. So the odds of this current strike getting resolved before it runs its course are quite slim.

The conventional wisdom on the negotiations is that they long ago became a personal spat between BA CEO Willie Walsh and Unite joint General Secretary Tony Woodley. That's true as far as it goes, but it's not the whole story. As much as these two just really hate each other, each side is also dealing with fundamental life-and-death issues. The union needs to show that it can protect its members, which is why this seemingly random travel perks thing has become such a big deal. For its part, BA just posted a second straight year of record losses and is still reeling from volcanic ash problems. In the most basic terms, they simply won't survive unless they cut costs.]]> Omri 2010-06-01T16:45:45-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2010/5/24/84457/9860

British Airways is running at 60% today, with London-Gatwick and London-City airports at normal but London-Heathrow in total disarray. That's because day 1 of 5 of BA summer airline strike 1 of 3 is now underway.

@British_Airways keeps repeating that travelers should continuously monitor their flight and be aware of their options, so consider those links duly passed on.

Just to give you a sense of the level of public discourse surrounding this debacle, UK media outlets are already running photos linking striking cabin crews to enraged Trotskyist mobs. Even more disturbingly, that's actually kind of fair given how a union leader kind of live-tweeted the secret negotiations which kind of incited a Socialist Workers Party melee which kind of invaded the talks and shut them down.]]> Omri 2010-05-24T10:30:42-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2010/5/20/141312/845

Remember that second injunction that British Airways recently won, where its unionized employees were banned by a UK judge from striking? Just overturned. A London court instead sided with the Unite union, allowing BA flight cabin crews to walk off their jobs - something they now intend to do as early as Monday. The result should fall somewhere between travel chaos and cancellation apocalypse, with BA set to cancel up to 50% of LHR flights:

The airline said it expected to cancel about one third of its flights during the walkouts, with services to and from its hub at London Heathrow Airport expected to be reduced by as much as 50 percent... “B.A. must now accept that negotiation not litigation is the only way to secure the settlement we all want,” said Tony Woodley, Unite joint general secretary. “However, further strikes will be unavoidable if the company does not immediately work with us to address the outstanding issues.”

]]> Omri 2010-05-20T14:35:36-05:00 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/