If you read my post last week about my husband’s attempt to both fly to and return home from Pennsylvania via Atlanta, you know that his outbound trip was obnoxiously delayed. His return trip wasn’t much better. He flew from State College, PA to Atlanta without a hitch; in fact, he was so early arriving in Atlanta that there were a couple of flights to our home airport in South Carolina departing before the flight he was booked on, so he decided to see if he could get on one of the earlier ones and get home a bit faster. His request was roundly rejected by the Delta agent with whom he spoke. Apparently, since my husband had checked a suitcase, they couldn’t put him on the earlier flight because of new security regulations after 9/11 that disallow a suitcase to be on a flight without its owner. And they just couldn’t spend the time to track down his checked suitcase in order to ensure that it got onto the same plane he did.
My husband accepted this explanation and agreed to wait for his original connecting flight. As lousy airport luck would have it, though, his original connecting flight was canceled, and he ended up on standby for the next flight. He couldn’t get on that one because it was too full, but he did get on the one after that. When he arrived at home, his suitcase was waiting for him at baggage claim: off the carousel, sitting to the side with a bunch of other suitcases that had clearly arrived on an earlier flight.
What the…. ?
Apparently, if it’s convenient for the airline, the “no checked suitcases without their owners on the same plane” rule gets broken right and left. But if a passenger asks to travel on an earlier flight for his or her own convenience, suddenly 9/11 gets invoked and the airline just can’t manage to wrangle the checked suitcase in question to the earlier plane in time.
My husband was furious, because if he had been able to get on one of the earlier flights, he and I would have had a chance to see each other before I had to leave for Kansas City. (I’ll go on record and state that I have not seen my husband since August 13.) Delta wouldn’t even investigate the possibility of putting him on an earlier flight because of the “no suitcase on a plane without its owner” rule, and they didn’t even bother to try to locate his suitcase so that it could be put on the same plane with him.
Lest you think this is a one-off incident, I have firsthand knowledge of at least two other similar happenings. The first was in 2004. My husband and I had spent a couple of weeks out west with our families, and were on our way home to Pennsylvania (our home state at the time) via a stopover in Detroit on our way to Newark (which was just as close to our home in Allentown as the Philadelphia airport.) We arrived in Detroit on time and were looking at a five hour layover before our flight to Newark, so we decided to wander over to the departure gate and see if we might be able to get on an earlier flight. The gate agent cheerfully agreed to see what he could do for us, and not only did he get on his walkie-talkie to radio the baggage handlers to grab our bags and get them to the plane that was currently boarding, he gave us two seats in first class. I was recovering from a bout of the flu (an unexpected Christmas gift from my parents) so the seats in first class were a wonderful thing as I was still feeling utterly crappy. (I’d still been running a fever that morning as we made our way through security at Sea-Tac.)
In that case, the airline (Continental) made an effort to accomodate our request. We didn’t badger the gate agent, made our request politely, and I didn’t even play the “I’m getting over the flu” card. Two weeks ago, my husband made an equally polite request of Delta and they blew him off. What gives?
The other incident was one I witnessed earlier this summer. I had just gotten off a redeye from LAX to Charlotte and was heading down to the E terminal to catch a puddle jumper home to South Carolina. A woman waiting at the same gate was also a frequent traveler, and I overheard her mentioning to the gate agent that her suitcase always seemed to make it home on an earlier flight than she did. She asked if they would put her on the same (earlier) flight that her suitcase would be on, and they refused. Undeterred, she watched the bags being loaded onto the planes like a hawk and returned to the podium when she saw her suitcase being loaded onto the plane that was going to make the earlier trip. They still wouldn’t let her get on the plane, but she insisted. I admired her chutzpah: she openly made calls to USAirways’ management within earshot of the gate agents, and just kept hassling the obnoxious ladies at the podium until they complied with her entirely reasonable request.
I describe these incidents to make a point: it is clear there is a double standard at work here. As I said, it appears that when it is convenient for an airline to throw a checked suitcase on an earlier flight, they will break the 9/11 rule, but when a customer asks to be booked on an earlier flight in a connecting city (even with the understanding that their luggage may not arrive at the same time they do) most airlines will do everything within their power to avoid assisting the passenger. (Continental is a notable exception — yay, Continental!)
I understand the need for this rule: the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 could have been avoided if such a rule had been in effect in 1988. I don’t even care if airlines enforce this rule as long as they enforce it consistently. However, it’s clear that airlines break this rule when it is convenient for them and invoke it when they can’t be bothered to look for a passenger’s bag. How is that keeping us safer? And why is it so flipping difficult for an airline to hunt down a suitcase to ensure that it gets on the same plane as its owner? Baggage tags equipped with RFID chips would solve that problem, but apparently it’s cheaper for airlines to reimburse passengers for lost luggage than it is for them to implement such a system and (gasp!) improve customer service!
Where’s that air traveler bill of rights when you need it?
If anyone who works for Homeland Security, the TSA, or an airline reads this post and would like to email me to shed some more light on this subject, I would be more than happy to post his or her remarks on this blog. Inquiring minds would really like to know!
