Not your mother's airline

In the good old days when you called an airline, you got a person who actually cared if you made your flight (or if they didn't give a hoot, they were at least accomplished in pretending they did). You might stay on hold waiting for a human at peak problem times, but when you got that human he or she was dedicated to one thing - getting you to where you wanted to go. They were nice. They were apologetic. They would book you on another airline without any hassle. Molly's problems began the day before her flight when Delta Airlines cancelled her flight. This was long before the bad weather hit but there was no explanation for the cancellation. She called the appropriate number and was booked on a Northwest Airlines flight. So far so good, right? Tired from finals, she took a nap and awoke at midnight and, for some reason, checked her flight. It was not snowing yet. She just idly checked and found it was cancelled.

If she had gone to bed at the normal time she would have never known this until morning - and it would have been too late to do anything about it. She called the airline, stayed on hold for about 50 minutes and finally got a woman who repeatedly told her, "There's nothing I can do to help you."

Lesson to the world: Don't mess with Molly when she's on a mission. After much anguish, not to mention real tears, the unhelpful soul booked her on US Airlines, charging her an additional $200. She got to the airport on time, waited on the runway for far longer than the new federal guideline of three hours (which went into effect immediately after her trip) and made her way to Portland via Phoenix, arriving almost seven hours after her original flight.

Such a delay would normally mean free beverages and food for passengers back in the day when stewards and stewardesses cosseted the passengers. Apparently in addition to training its customer service representatives to say "I can't help you" instead of "how can I help you," the airline has decided it doesn't owe you anything if you have to sit on an unmoving plane for more than five hours. The charge for everything including a glass of water remained in effect. And as for the calm and unflappable servers of said food and drinks - "mad" was the word she used to describe them.

"Not mad at us, just mad in general," she said.

When I had her next to me, we were talking about her flight and I found myself wishing it could have been more normal. Then, looking back at her story, I realized maybe I was the problem. The "normal" I was wishing for her simply isn't normal anymore. Major airlines have changed the way they do business and if we know that, then we can lower our expectations and save ourselves a great deal of stress and anxiety. Wonder what will happen when the first customer "service" representative picks up a call from a human who's figured this out and gets a one word response when she reads off her cue card:

"Hello, thank you for calling Bigger Than You Airlines, how may I help you?"

"Mooo."

Home Front by Terry Murry is published every other Sunday. She can be reached at tmmurry@hotmail.com.