tsewei’s blog

I’m finally back home in PJ, after over TWO days of flying. Yes, TWO fucking days. I hear you asking: “Why the heck do you need two days to fly from rural upstate New York to Singapore?” Well, why don’t you sit back and let me begin my rant about US air travel. (long post ahead, so bear with me).

1. Flight delayed.
My travel route was Ithaca-Philadelphia-Chicago-Hong Kong-Singapore. As you can see, that’s pretty much of a pain on its own with FOUR bloody transits (not my fault, but some stupid travel agent. More on that later).

So there I was, sitting on the carpeted floor (hmph, not enough seats) at Gate C10 of Chicago O’Hare Airport, very much resigned to my fate of 30-hour butt-hurting flight, when the people at the gate announced that instead of flying one hour late as scheduled, we will only fly on the NEXT MORNING!! Reason: something was wrong with the plane, it’s still stuck in the hangar, and they *somehow* cannot use the other plane that’s coming in from Tokyo.

Soon, people were forming queues to get their hotel and meal vouchers for the day. I found out that there’s a plane leaving Chicago for Singapore via Tokyo in about half an hour, so obviously I wanted to know if I can get on that. But NOOOOOOOO. No one wanted to help. All those people at the counter did not even want to bother to check and just simply replied to me “it’s a full flight”.

Worse, another told me “It’s gone. Left.” I was pissed at this fella alright. 1. Does he think I’m some Chinese who can’t understand English to have to use that kind of truncated sentence as a reply?!?! 2. The plane obviously hadn’t left ‘coz it left 20 minutes later than scheduled (yes, Au Yong was on the Internet finding out about flight info for me while I tried to get some attention from the United Airlines people to help me.) Sure, you probably can’t put me on the flight since it’s leaving soon, but can’t you at least put some effort to help, or at least have better attitude?? Not even a word of sorry from the lady who was yelling instructions on hotel vouchers etc through the announcement system. Ish.

So that’s how I ended up staying at Chicago’s Hyatt Regency for the night. Well, at least it’s a nice hotel, and I had a nice bath and an even nicer dinner.

But when I reached Hong Kong, there was no other UA flight going to Singapore until 7 hours later. So again, I walked aimlessly around the HKIA, bought another novel, ate more free food “courtesy” of United Airlines, and struggle to fight off sleep while I sat at the gate and rotted my way till 7.45pm. Whee.. what *fun*.

2. Lousy cabin crew.
This is not the first time. But with every UA flight that I have taken, not a single flight attendant will help me with my carry-on luggage.

Let me lay out the facts: I’m vertically challenged. I’m not really strong either, and my laptop bag weighs 3.4kg++. The overhead luggage compartment is high up, for me at least. And imagine, when a little girl of only 1.54m tries to haul a heavy bag over her head, there’s a good chance that she might fall backwards (and hurt other passengers), or the brick-laptop might fall off.

But it seems the flight attendents never ever notice. NEVER. I either have to do that myself, or usually other nice passengers lend me a hand. I didn’t pay through my nose for my air ticket so that other nice people (who paid as much) provide the service that flight attendents should. And this never happens whenever I fly MAS. United Airlines should really think about re-evaluating their service quality, and stop boasting about being the biggest (or something) air line flying international from the US.

3. Stupid travel agent
Stupid travel agent (whose service was procurred by a friend) booked tickets for us on TWO airlines. United Airlines for the international flights and US Airways for the last stretch to/from Ithaca on board a noisy 20-seat propeller plane. Travelling from Singapore to the States early this year was no problem ‘coz they gave us all the ticket at Changi. But flying back was a problem.

Both airlines don’t issue out tickets until the day of my flight at the airport. And Ithaca airport cannot provide me with UA tickets and they can’t check me in internationally either. So they tell me I need to get off the plane, run from Terminal F to Terminal D, get out, go to ticketing counter, get PHIL-SIN tickets, queue up again to check in internationally, go through security check again, run back and wait at the gate. All these to be done in 1 half hour.

Isn’t this stupid? When I am travelling, I want my travel plans to be as smooth as possible. I don’t need more running around unfamiliar airports to entertain myself. I want to get my tickets, get my passport stamped, get my luggage tagged, and sit in the plane and wait for in-flight entertainment. Not this kind of shit.

Which could have been well avoided IF the travel agent had booked me on UA all the way, which was very possible. UA might not have their planes in Ithaca, but they do code-sharing carrier business with US Airways. It’s the same bloody plane that I’ll be on. SO what’s wrong with getting a UA ticket instead of US Airways?

And why didn’t I get that? Well, ‘coz the travel agent is dumb. As a travel agency, it is their job to know about these kind of things, and it is their job to make their clients’ travel experience a smooth and comfortable one. Instead, I get stressed. *Great* job, I’d say.

4. Irritating-as-hell phone helplines.
Those airlines phone HELPlines are totally not helpful. It seems nowadays, not only do they make you listen to long lists of options and press buttons, they also make you TALK to the monotonous machine voice. They use this voice recognition technology shit and make you answer their questions instead of hitting buttons, which in my opinion, is hell lot more irritating. If I wanna use my vocal cords, I’d like to speak to a real human being, not some stupid tape-recorded voice.

So what I do is I purposely screw up the answers, and sure enough, after a few rounds, the machine gave up and transferred me to a human being. Wahaha, and I thought the problems are over.

But it seems, everytime I contact these helplines, everyone gives me different answers to my question. No one knows for sure how/where exactly do I collect my ticket, one says I will have ample time for transit another says I don’t. What the fuck is this?!?! I want my itenary confirmed, and my questions answered, and in return I get more things to worry about ‘coz it seems no one knows anything!

What the hell is wrong with these people? It’s a helpline, so for goodness sake, provide HELP and do your work properly.

In conclusion, this is all I have to say:
Grrrrghh all you dumb idiots!!!!
Thanks for wasting my time and bringing me 39.2 minutes closer to death.

I am only glad my trip back to PJ from Singapore went without a hitch.