FRIENDLY SKIES MY ASS: plane crash…ish part 2

After my flight from Chicago to LA — flight 1063 on October 14th — shook and whirred and did a ‘heavy’ (i.e. loaded with fuel) emergency landing 30 minutes subsequent to take-off, I have been trying to begin a correspondence with American Airlines.

Herein lies the rub: American Airlines doesn’t want to talk to ME. I give good phone too. I smile lots and laugh and even try to make my customer care representatives laugh with me. For example, I might say something like, “Yes, Punjab Gupta from New Jersey, that flight was incredibly stressful. Because of it, my stomach has declared jihad on my asshole — YOU know what I’m talking about, Punji! Now enough about my body gas, how about a buddy pass?”

(note to reader: those jokes were corny because I refuse to outsource my ‘A’ material.)

In truth, American Airlines does not have an avenue to actually SPEAK to a customer service rep. There is no number. If you DO get to a human and say, ‘I have a complaint!’, it is most likely going to be a nice African-American Airlines lady who is going to say ‘Please hold while I transfer you to customer service!’ while thinking ‘Shoo, I ain’t talking to this annoying cracka!’

After the transfer, you will be on an automated system that will tell you to ‘VISIT THE WEBSITE!’ where you can get a Fax number (uh, people still effin’ FAX!?) or an email address. The automated system will then hang up, which is robot for ‘F*ck you!’

Mind you, AA doesn’t GIVE you their actual email address. You have to do that little boxy thing where you fill out your first name, last name, suffix, phone number, address, flight number, mother’s maiden name, favorite venereal disease, and the strangest place you’ve ever made whoopee!!!

Then, after completing all the myriad and requisite asterisked questions, they give you another, smaller little box where you can type in and register your complaint in 200 words or less. It’s almost the equivalent of texting your grievance: “lmk if i cn gt $ or u suck! “

Before I wrote my email, I was reminded of that southern expression my mother would always say: “Honey will get you much farther than AIDS” or something like that, so I wrote a very sweet, a very let’s-be-a-team-and-figure-this-out-together type of message to them.

Here’s a sample sentence from my email: “In my frequent travels, I’ve always put my faith in American Airlines, and I’m doing so again in sending this email.”

Sweet huh? Poetic too.

After an hour or so, I completed my Walt Whitman sampler and hit send…. ERROR MESSAGE: PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU COMPLETE THE REQUIRED FIELDS.

Okay, I went through it again, made sure things were properly filled in, and hit SEND. Take two. ERROR. What I make my name BILL DAWES Jr.? ERROR. What if I format my address differently? ERROR. What if I change the venereal disease to herpes?

Nothing worked.

Then, my “magnum opus” message disappeared as well. No back arrow could resuscitate it either. I was apoplectic with fury. Still I remembered the Honey/Aids thing so I typed what I remembered from the message onto a Word document on my computer, printed it, drove to MAILBOXES, etc. and FAXED, etc. the letter to them.

Before I go further, I’m sure many of you are thinking ‘Let it gooooo, Bill! You got back safe! Who cares?!!!’ Well, other than the sheer, shart-inducing terror and accompanying PTSD, I lost a callback for ‘MEDIUM’ as well a new pair of fancy rollerblades. Now you’re probably thinking, ‘Well, Bill, both of those things are totally gay, so maybe the flight was God’s way of telling you not to be a faggot.’

First of all, why are you such a homophobe? And second of all, have any of you EVER heard of a gay ghost? They go ‘Booooooooooo!’ not ‘Heeeeyyyyyyy!’ (okay, that was way too corny — I might have to outsource that joke).

At the very least, I was hoping for a refund for my flight ($337) or a round trip anywhere in the United States. To be honest, I’d even been happy with a free one-way flight with a promise of extra peanuts.

Instead, I received a travel voucher of 100 dollars to be used towards my next AA flight.

100 dollars? That might be okay if it was in Euros. It might ALSO be okay if it was a travel voucher for a different airlines. What the hell?

When I wrote back, asking for further satisfaction, I got this condescending response:

“MR. WILLIAM DAWES,

The transportation voucher we provided was a gesture of goodwill given your delayed arrival at your destination. I understand you are disappointed with the voucher, nonetheless, the fact remains that since our schedules are not guaranteed, any compensation we provide in such situations is a voluntary gesture of generosity on our part — not an obligation — and we cannot agree to provide additional compensation.

It is unfortunate that you left your rollerblades aboard the aircraft upon your arrival in Los Angeles. I can appreciate your annoyance if they were not turned in to Lost and Found, however, we cannot assume responsibility for unchecked items carried aboard our aircraft. We’re not exactly sure what you expected but hope this will suffice.

Sincerely,

Susan J. Hendrickson”

She was not sure what I ‘expected?’

How about this letter instead, you smarmy bitch:

“Dear Sir,

We get that your last experience was more horrifying than a John William Lomax sanctioned dance and you probably don’t wanna fly our shitty airlines again. So enclosed with this letter is a hundred bucks. If you want, you can use it to purchase a flight on American again, but we totally get it if you’re like ’screw that!’ Personally, I think you could take a crack at flying American again. Most likely you won’t die.

However, if the idea of flying with us makes you poop your pants uncontrollably — which is understandable — Southwest Airlines is having an awesome sale right now — you might wanna check it out on www.southwest.com. Have you flown Virgin America? It’s dope! You get like a touch screen entertainment system and lots of hot bitches fly that shit! Or, if you want, make a balloon and fly around like that little Falcon Heene fag and use the 100 bucks towards something more fun, like crystal meth.

On the off chance you DO decide to fly American again, let me know when it is and I will personally upgrade you to first class, where I will give you an awesome bj. Welcome to the mile high club!!!

Thanks for flying the friendly skies!

Sincerely,

Susan J. Hendrickson” (and yes, that IS the woman’s real name. sue me!)