AArseholes

In the wake of my recent piece about the simple pleasures of flying coach class on American Airlines from Brussels to Chicago it occurred to someone to ask what I was doing in coach. After all, am I not an international traveler with an allegedly important job and two million miles on American alone? Well yes, but it's our company's policy that we fly coach on any flight less than ten hours. On one hand I think this is bullshit, but when you look at how the airlines fuck you in the arse for the price of a business class seat I can't say I entirely disagree. The airline is kind enough to provide us frequent travelers with a few "system wide upgrades" that in theory can be used to upgrade a coach ticket to business class for no cost. I say "in theory" because they only allocate about one seat in business for this, as far as I can tell, and it's always gone by the time I book my trip. Sure, you can go on the waiting list, in case they have any unsold business class seats at departure time, but business fills up pretty quickly with the kind of people whose company refuses to inflict nine hours of shit, sleepless travel on them before expecting them to work a ten hour day.

This last trip was booked in November and of course the business class upgrade was not available, so I was put on the waiting list. However when my assistant checked the status about a week before the flight she was informed that I was not on the list. Yes I could be added, now right at the bottom, but what fucking good was that? Here's the fun part - have you ever tried complaining to American Airlines? About anything? They absolutely do not give one single piece of shit about any member of the traveling public, and to demonstrate the point they not only make it difficult for you to complain, but they ensure that any response you receive will be so utterly fucking worthless as to make you wish you hadn't bothered.

When I fly Northwest Airlines I expect to be treated like shit - I hardly ever fly them and so I'm right at the bottom of their priority list (which is not good because, frankly, their staff are the earthly servants of Satan) - but American keep sending me crap in the mail about how important and valued I am because of all the money my company gives them to fly me around the world. If they're treating me like crap then the average infrequent flier can pretty much expect to be sodomized in the departure lounge.

Step one is to call the Executive Platinum line at American. This used to be answered by people who would help you with whatever problem you had. Real people, with a voice, and a personality; OK, admittedly a few were a bit thick but most were extremely kind and helpful. Not any more - now you get a giant, perpetual fucking maze of automated options, not one of which says "If you wish to complain about anything please press the hash key now". I did, however, discover that if you give up and shout "Why don't you fuck off with your fucking useless fucking system you fucking wankers" then you get a message informing you that they will put you through to the next available operator, so apparently they programmed it to recognize the universal verbal sign of frustration.

You could try complaining via the website - they actually have a complaint form, although it asks for your flight details and if your flight hasn't happened yet (i.e. they pissed you off before you even got to the airport) then the form won't let you submit the complaint and redirects you to phone reservations. Even filling in the e-mail form elicited at least five "fucking hells". And it's so utterly pointless. The first thing you get is a standard response informing you that they will look into your complaint; the second thing you receive is a short and completely inadequate reply which fails to propose one single meaningful solution and refuses even to accept the possibility that their staff fucked up. The best bit is that the e-mail address on the crappy response is AmericanAirlines.wecare001@aa.com. I'd like to hereby suggest that in the interests of accuracy they update it to AmericanAirlines.fuckyou001@aa.com.

Now I realize that those of you who don't have system-wide upgrades or executive platinum cards might well regard all this as bollocks. "The flight got in didn't it? Just toughen up and get over it." Which is exactly the way the airlines want you to feel. These days you think yourself lucky if your plane didn't do a 777 and crash short of the runway; you hardly dare to expect efficient, professional, friendly service on top. It's not as though I have many options so long as I live in St.Louis; even the Servants of Satan on Northwest Airlines don't have many flights out of here. So in order to better reflect the relationship American has with its most valued customers I'd propose the following automated complaint response:

Dear Frequent Flier. You appear to be mistaking us for someone who gives a shit about your complaint. Don't waste your time - not only will nothing be done, we are already in the process of dreaming up new ways to annoy you. We give you upgrades that you can never use, frequent flier miles that you can never redeem, check-in queues that you can never get through, customer service that you can never reach and flight attendants that will never retire. If you still labor under the misapprehension that we care about your flying pleasure may I suggest that you clearly haven't been paying attention. Please fuck off and die.

Or, to put it more succinctly, how about a new tagline:

"American Airlines - we can't wait to fuck you in the AArse."


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison