When ‘caring’ is just lip service

In emergency, airline heartless

It never ceases to amaze me when large companies, which claim to put customers first, demonstrate their complete heartlessness.

The behavior of airlines when a passenger faces a family emergency is a continuing source of such insensitivity.

Sue Ogle, 57, and her husband recently paid $1,200 each to fly on American Airlines from Orange County, Calif., to Toledo, Ohio. The Laguna Beach, Calif., resident said she travels there often to see her 93-year-old father, who is in declining health.

The day after she arrived in Toledo, Ogle’s father had a heart attack, which wasn’t fatal but nevertheless worrisome enough for her and her husband to rearrange their return flight.

They had booked a oneday layover in Chicago, but decided instead to spend that extra day in Toledo with Ogle’s dad.

In other words, they wanted to push back the one-hour flight from Toledo to Chicago by a day. Not too much to ask for, you’d think, under the circumstances. They weren’t looking for a refund. Just a little more time with an ailing relative.

The American Airlines rep, Ogle said, was “completely lacking in compassion.” Despite being told of the heart attack, he insisted that the couple each pay a $200 change fee and nearly $150 apiece for newly issued tickets — almost $700 in total.

“We paid it,” Ogle told me. “But I was furious. The fact that my father just had a heart attack wasn’t even a consideration.”

American, like most airlines, offers what it calls a “compassion fare.” This is intended for “customers traveling because of

a medical emergency or death of a family member.”

But there are limits to the carrier’s compassion.

Matt Miller, a spokesman for the airline, said the special fare is applicable only when requested at the outset of a trip — that is, you have to ask for it when booking a round-trip ticket.

Where Ogle erred, apparently, was in not anticipating her father’s heart attack well before it happened and arranging her itinerary accordingly.

“That’s not what we’re trying to imply,” Miller responded. “We understand that this was an extenuating circumstance.”

Yet Ogle received no special consideration from the airline worker at the Toledo airport, nor did she find any flexibility when she later spoke by phone with a supervisor on the reservations desk.

Miller told me that Ogle might have gotten more understanding had she contacted a customerservice rep, rather than a reservations supervisor.

I’m not buying that. Not only should a reservations supervisor have known how to handle a situation like this, he or she at the very least should have had the wherewithal to transfer Ogle to someone who could.

The airline’s ice- cold behavior is all the more astonishing in light of the fact that Ogle is a regular customer, flying to see her dad every other month.

American f i nal l y changed its tune. The airline contacted Ogle after my conversation with Miller and said it would refund the change fees and fare increases.

“Apologies to her for the stress she had to go through,” Miller told me.