Getting bumped is a grind but it’s a sign of the times
OUT OF MY HEAD
We are unable to issue you a boarding pass,’’ said the check-in console. ‘‘Please see an airline representative.’’ Blimey, I thought the whole point of automation was that you don’t see an airline representative – and good luck finding one. As luck would have it, I found one a few steps away, on her lonesome at the Help desk while colleagues on Check-in battled long queues.
‘‘The flight’s overbooked,’’ she said, straightfaced. ‘‘I’ll give you a boarding pass and put you through to the departure gate but there’s no guarantee you’ll get on if everyone turns up.’’ I was about to be ‘bumped’. We’re all aware of the practice since that notorious video footage last year of a 69-year-old being dragged, bloodied and screaming, off a United Airlines flight by police after he refused to give up his seat.
United needed four seats on the full flight – to relocate staff. All passengers were offered travel vouchers to vacate but none accepted. The airline then selected passengers for ejection. Three of them complied but Dr David Dao, already seated and with patients waiting at his destination, chose to defend his rights. Wrong. After this ugly bumping went viral and featured on news bulletins worldwide, the public were confronted with the murky depths of their tickets’ Terms and Conditions. This wasn’t a solid contract between seller and buyer, as we thought. No, the seller does not agree to a specific time, safeguarding its longstanding habit of hawking the product several times over to make sure every seat on the plane is filled, maximising profit.
Ironically, the footage must have cost United a staggering amount in lost revenue. CEO Oscar Munoz did the company no favours by referring to the drag-off as ‘‘re-accommodating’’ customers (Wikipedia). In a subsequent memo to staff he praised those involved and described Dr Dao as ‘‘disruptive’’ and ‘‘belligerent’’.
Two days of a global fertiliserstorm later, Mr Munoz apologised, called the physician blameless and said such an incident would never happen again. United reached a confidential settlement with Dr Dao.
The airline didn’t mean it would stop overbooking. I doubt that any airline took such a lesson from the stoush. What they learnt was, don’t get caught.
In New Zealand, the process is handled discreetly. A Flight Centre NZ spokesman told Stuff that local airlines offered overflow passengers upgrades to another class, put them on the next flight, or compensated them with accommodation, food vouchers or payments.
Airlines generally asked for volunteers to change their travel plans, rather than randomly choosing them, he said, advising that our best method of protection is to arrive on time and don’t wait until the last minute to check in.
I’d arrived at the airport in plenty of time, and the flight had been booked two-and-a-half months previously. On domestic flights, no ‘‘other class’’ exists, short of sitting on the pilots’ knees, and in my case no public call was broadcast for volunteers.
If I was an airline executive, I wouldn’t go public – why remind passengers of their vulnerability? No, as I sat looking at the gate, my cellphone rang. I could see the woman making the call.
We convened. She was welltrained in polite assertiveness. An alternative flight had been booked through Wellington, she said.
What’s the delay going to be? I was being met in Auckland.
An hour, she said, but the airline would offer me a travel voucher.
I’d hate it to be said I can’t be bought. This payoff would easily cover the coffee and scone to placate my greeter.
My protest was nothing like as staunch as Dr Dao’s – whose name deserves to be remembered. I fired off a text to my daughter in Auckland and, fresh boarding passes in hand, walked over to the Wellington gate. The airline flakcatcher found me and slipped a voucher. I was in the air soon after.
What with transferring to the connecting flight, my ‘wait’ seemed non-existent.
Why was I singled out? At a guess, because I was travelling alone, with just a carry-on bag. Path of least resistance.
I’ve moaned about our national carrier in the past. Service-wise, it’s a shadow of its glory days, and the rapacious way it treats passengers who must travel in a hurry, or change flights, is nothing to be proud of. We could also do without the bolshie add-ons when booking online – copied from the competition. That said, the industry has transformed in the last few decades, from limousine to bus. I can fly to Christchurch or Auckland quickly, safely and dirtcheap. It’s brilliant.
Okay, the cookie/chips snack is witless, but who needs it anyway on an hour-long flight. Take your own food.
Big-picture, we are all much better off in this culture downgrade, at least on domestic routes. And the hostess announced there was even a ‘‘bathroom’’ up the front now. Pack your loofah.
So, this is no complaint. Call it a flag to the travelling public that if you are in for a ‘bump-y’ ride, as Bette Davis might say, relax. It’s a grubby game but Dr Dao has tipped the odds in our favour.
A few months on, when you next take a flight – possibly free – if the passenger across the aisle is sprawled along three seats, draped in a bath-towel and sporting a fat grin, that’ll be my freebie.
The initial shock is brutal, though, and the venality of my deed – a hefty payment (confidential) for a smidgen of my time, doing nothing – hit me in the arrivals hall.
‘‘Lord have mercy,’’ I cried, falling to knees before my daughter. ‘‘I’ve become a lawyer.’’