On Hold Forever on AirTran
 

I have been on hold for 40 minutes and 30 minutes respectively with Air Tran trying to get my son on a different flight because his flight left late and he will miss his connection. I'm still on hold. Avoid this airline if you can.

I actually like AirTran. They like other low cost airlines don't have a lot of phone reservation staff, and when bad things conspire against them there can be problems. Sunday after thanksgiving and bad weather all across the Northeast certainly can't be helping.

I'm willing to bet your son will be automatically rebooked on the next avail flight, but it's definitely frustrating not being able to get someone on the phone.

Follow up: because the operator changed my son's flight (not at my request) he's been roaming around Atlanta's airport for the last 5 hours. The flight that she said he would miss was waiting when he landed in Atlanta but he had already been taken off the flight.
Thanks Air Tran.

Busiest travel day of the year. Bad weather throughout the East.

I know it's frustrating, but does anyone really expect that travelling will be easy on a day like this?

As one who has college kids who fly over this weekend, advice for the future. Obviously, non-stop flights, even if cost is much higher. Second, double or triple the connection times you would normally allow for - I know this shortens an already brief visit. Make contingency plans ahead - if your son does not have access to internet at airport, send him equipped with list of alternate flight numbers and even alternate airlines in the even he misses his flight.

Another thing you can do is, using various flight tracker, airline and airport sites figure out where the equipment is for a particular flight - for example, AA was telling us that our dtr's flight today was going to be on-time, but we knew that the equipment was stuck in NY and would be at least 90 minutes late. If you had known about his delay and likely missed connection, at least you would have had more time to try to make back-up plans.

Not sure why he was wandering around Hartsfield for 5 hours - in that amount of time he could have stood in the Air Tran ticket counter line and worked things out.

You did the right thing by trying to handle it from home as well - sometimes it is faster to deal with problems at the airport, sometimes on the phone.

But I also avoid AirTran after a few years ago they messed up a connection for us and we found 8 people for 4 seats - all with boarding passes indicating rights to those seats. They were good about resolving the issue, however.

Let us all hope for better weather on the east coast for Christmas travel.

When you've been taken off a flight and the next one leaves in 5 hours you have no choice but to wander around the airport.
My biggest complaint is that on a day like yesterday there needs to be more people to answer phones. It took me more time on hold than for my son to get to Atlanta. And still he got screwed.

Meanwhile, there are travellers who have been stuck in Bangkok for days.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...VZyFQD94PQNO00

Is your son 12? Why couldn't he handle this on his own?

Why do you care?

In your defense - my husband is not 12 (he is actually 57 and quite competent travelling), and I sometimes am the one on his business trips rerouting/rescheduling him - as I said, it is sometimes more efficient to fix the problem from a home phone.

That is precisely why I got involved.

It happens to all of us at one time or another on one airline or another--just more likely on heavy travel days in the winter. Hard to distance ourselves for perspective while it is happening.

Discount airlines like Airtran (who I do fly) try to keep everything bare bones (like number of live agents) to keep down costs. They compete on price, not service. So, I too have had long waits on the phone (especially on the weekend, but even in good weather) when needing to talk to a person.

But it happens with all airlines. I was in the airport on a bad travel day and was so happy to get myself quickly rebooked on a Delta flight at the gate but delayed so I wouldn't have to wait for the next scheduled flight 1-2 hours later. Turns out the flight I jumped on was delayed even further due to mechanical problem and I would have gotten to my destination faster if I had waited for the later scheduled flight that wasn't delayed. Upset at the time that we missed an appointment, yes, but I don't avoid Delta. Just combination of bad weather, mechanical problem, and bad luck that day.

I was in Germany when BA cancelled my first leg of a flight to Hong Kong and sent me an email, but did not rebook me on any flight. I was 2 hours by train from the airport. I wasn't allowed to rebook online. I tried phoning BA from a pay phone, but their German customer service number is only for daytime. I ended up calling my husband in the US who called the website support people via a US number who were able to rebook me. So it took a total of about 2 hours and several international phone calls to handle. I don't say avoid BA, but beware of its well known low customer service level if you want their low prices.