We often hear about the best airlines in the world. But which of us have had their worst flying experiences with the world's best airlines.

I'm looking for something that was directly down to the airlines, so rules out turbulence and baggage handling.

Here's my story - Singapore Airlines.
Was flying back from Singapore to Manchester. Rang the airline on the day of departure to get a good seat on the plane, they said they had never heard of me - I said that was strange as they had issued my ticket. They told me the plane was full and I wouldn't be flying with them. I rang another office (in london) who said that they did have my reservation and that they had made a mistake, I had now been upgraded to business class by way of an appology. (yippee a bit of aggrevation and worry but a nice pay off....i thought)

Turned up at the airport, went to check in at the business class counter. Had they heard of me? Had they buffalo! I was sent away to plead my case to customer services. By this stage I was somewhat angry, but not abusive! The woman on customer services said she would not deal with me until I had calmed down, I was calm! I was told to go away and come back when I had composed myself, presumably after my flight had gone. I refused and eventually she decided she would deal with me.

She tried to ring London. She couldn't get through. She addmitted that I did appear to have a ticket for the flight, but no reservation (should add that Singapore airlines does not require you to reconfirm your flights). I was told to wait to see if there were any no-shows. Fortunately 1 person didn't show and with 30 minutes to spare I was allowed onto the plane, not before being told that I might be billed the full fare the flight on my return home, if it was found that I was at fault "somehow"!!

I boarded the flight to find that I had been positioned in amongst a very noisy party of school kids at the very back of the plane. No wonder that chap didn't show up for his flight. I endured a flight of having my seat kicked for 16 hours.

On my return I complained and I complained and after 2 months the airline admitted they had made a mistake. They gave me a £100 and a fancy food hamper.

Am I the only person to have ever been downgraded?

Spirit Airlines

Few years back, a friend and I decided to do a weekend run to Atlantic City to try our luck with the slots and on the tables. The idea came up after we saw an ad in the local paper announcing the new service from Tampa to Atlantic City by a new upstart, Spirit Airlines. They had some special introductory fares. This was literally a day or 2 before the actual trip. We made reservations and we found a nice hotel, Trump Taj Mahal, so everything was set. Atlantic City here we come. After check-in at TPA everything seemed VERY normal. The plane was waiting for us so it looked like we will arrive in the Sin City Jr. on time. We boarded, got our seats and that's when the fun began. After few minutes of delay, there is an announcememnt that their other plane in Fort Myers is broken down, so we will make a little diversion to Ft.Myers to pick-up the passengers there. This was suppose to be a non-stop TPA-ACY. Ok, fine, let's go. We take off, fly over my house on Siesta Key and few moments later land in Ft.Myers. At first we are told not to move, few minutes later, yes we have to deplane, since the plane needs re-fueling, but to leave everything on the plane as we will have the same seats. My friend and I and about 10 others decide to start our weekend early and head for the airport bar, which is about 5 gates away. After couple of drinks we hear an announcement to start boarding our flight. We finish the drink, pay the tab and walk over to the plane. We seem to be the last 2 to board, but there are still pople standing inside the jetway, so we were not late. Finally we follow the line inside the plane and make our way to the back of the plane where our seats were. To our surprise there were people sitting in "our" seats. Since there were couple of others still looking for a seat, it became like musical chairs. My friend saw a middle seat open few rows down, he grabed it, the other 2 saw a seat here and there and they grabed it. And there I was, without a seat. As this was going on, they already closed the door and the plane was pushing back! I just grabed something so I wouldn't fall and jokingly said "I guess it's standing room only" The people around got a good laugh out of this, and I guess it caught the attention of the FA. She came running and ordered me to sit. I told her I would gladly do so, except I don't have a place to sit. She looked and also talked to the FA up front, as the plane was still moving. I offered to sit in the toilet. She finally came back and asked me if I wouldn't mind sharing the FA jumpseat with her in the back. So for the 2 hour plus flight I got to sit in the jumpseat, but I have to say, treated very well by the FAs. Now we are about 2 hours late and as this was an evening flight to begin with, our arrival is scheduled for around 11pm instead for the scheduled 8 or 9. We do land and everybody seems to have some kind of a plan, except us and few others. First time at this regional airport, so we tried to find out what's what. We looked around for any shuttles to Boardwalk area, none. So we walk outside to grab a cab. By now most of the people from our flight had left. We walk outside and as soon as we did that, the doors behind us shut and the lights go off inside. There was an actual sign on the door that the airport closes at 10pm. The only reason they kpt it open later was due to our flight. So it's us, a young Spirit pilot that for whatever reason did not join the crew van and another family. No cabs, no telephones, no nothing in the middle of the cornfields or whatever is growing there. I pull out my cell and start dialing around for some info. I didn't even know what the area code was. After some frustrating time, we finally get a taxi company and about 1/2 hour later we get our ride to Taj Mahal. That's were the day finally improved for us. Arriving so late on a guaranteed reservation, we were upgraded to a beautiful suite. We figured that they must have run out of regular rooms, that's why we got lucky. Three room suite, wet bar, jacuzzi, beautiful view.
On the way back we were the LAST plane to land in TPA that day as there was a hurricane hanging out in the Gulf about 100 miles away. It was one hell of a landing, something I never want to exerience ever again, but we made it. The hurricane kept on going north where the poor folks in Mississippi got hit a day or so later. My little paradise, Siesta Key, had some major street flooding and trees were knocked down all over town, but nothing more serious.
A long weekend in Atlantic City that will not be forgoten soon, thanks to Spirit Airlines and the hurricane.

Sorry, I missed the "top" in the heading. Spirit Airline is definitely not a memeber of that club.

Even though I continue to fly them and buy the cereals that give me more miles, I'm rather a captive of American because of geography; and although I've had some good experiences thanks to a couple of AA angels, the worst was also with them.

Route: CDG to LGW to RDU. A baggage-handlers' strike delayed departure from Paris so a 4 hr. connection in Gatwick was shrunk to about an hour. When we breathlessly sped from one terminal to the other and up to the American desk, the agents chastised us for being the last to check in. We said it was because of the strike (which you'd think they would have known), but they ignored that and proceeded to grill us with security questions that were far more detailed than any we've had before or since. We were respectful but finally asked for help getting through the now-very-long line through the metal detectors and baggage inspection - we had less than 15 minutes to get to a very distant gate. "You were late; there are no guarantees," was the repeated and hostile answer, and nothing was done or even suggested by way of booking us on another flight.

If it hadn't been for a very kind Continental agent helping "fast-pass" one of their passengers similarly delayed from Paris, who motioned to us to come along with her, we never would have made our flight.

We did complain to American, especially since DH had spent most of our flight from RDU to Gatwick on the floor tending a passenger who had fallen ill. We eventually received a grudging "we'll look into it" and 15K extra miles on my husband's account. We were grateful for that, but gee whiz.

Cassandra,

With all due respect, it sounds like you were on 2 seperate tickets? If that's the case, you were lucky AA checked you in at all. 1 hour for international check-in at LHR or for that matter anywhere else is a no-no.

I'm glad it all worked out, and I do remember the story about your husband. In that respect I do feel AA should have done better.

AAFF, nope, we were traveling on single ticket via AA's nonstop RDU-LGW and BA as their partner for the connecting leg. We were checked in through to RDU at CDG, where they kept assuring us we would be fine once we got to Gatwick.

The only "irregularity" was that his ticket was coach fare and mine was a FF award ticket from his miles, but they had been linked in the record from the beginning.

Oddly, part of the "security" interrogation was whose FF miles had been used for my ticket and what kind of travel my husband had had to rack up the miles (by that time he had well over 100K miles remaining). As I said, such detailed questioning was puzzling, as well as -- it seemed to me -- unnecessarily delaying. BTW, it was 2 years before 9/11.

Ok, so why did you have to check-in at LHR? with AA?

If you were checked in, all the way through, you should have gone straight to security, or am I missing something? And I very well could be

Umm, I'm not sure why you keep mentioning LHR -- we never went through there. I've gone back over my post, don't think I mentioned it. We had to change terminals within LGW because BA intra-Europe comes in at one place and AA international goes out at the other (north vs. south, but I forget which is which). So we were instructed to check in at the AA desk before proceding to the gate, which we did. (It had worked the same way coming from the US, check in at the BA desk in the other terminal before going to gate for flight to, as it happened in that direction, Madrid.)

I don't know why LHR either. For some reason it stuck in my mind.
No big deal, but I still don't understand. If you were checked in all the way through and you had BPs for the connecting flight, all you had to do is go through security. At least that's my understaning and experience. Just recently I had to connect from AA to CX and on the return from CX to AA, both times in LAX while traveling to Hong Kong. AA issued all the necessary BPs in Tampa for the outbound and CX issued all the necessary BPs in Hong Kong for the inbound. There was no need for me to actally go to the respective desks when changing the terminals and airlines. All I had to do is go through security again as I did have to change Terminals in LAX.

Still can't answer your "why" question other than to say, "because we were told to." You couldn't get to security from where you left the terminal shuttle bus without going through the American desk area, where there were signs everywhere saying all passengers were required to check in before proceding to security. Remember, this was about 4 years ago, and a lot of procedures have changed since then. I'm trying to remember if we had to do this connecting to Maersk Air last year, and it may be that we didn't -- doesn't stand out in my mind the way that flight did since nothing went wrong. ;-)

Ah, one thing sticks in my mind -- you mention having a BP for all flights. At least at that time, you couldn't know your seats for intra-European flights before you checked in at the gate ( or the relevant desk). I remember this because we had to request a particular location, and BA had informed us they would note the request, but we would not know 'til we got our boarding passes at LGW where our seats would be. Perhaps that's somehow relevant to why they made people connecting to/from transatlantic flights re-check in. We may have been given our BP for the AA flight at that time, rather than at CDG. -- Maybe? Can't remember, although they had not given our seats away when we finally boarded, for what that's worth.

Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic along with several other airlines helped build Terminal 1 at JFK with very short walks to gates and a brand new efficient terminal.

For some reason which I cannot understand, Virgin Atlantic moved out of Terminal 1 to the decrepit pitiful piece of slime International building (Terminal 4) at JFK on 12 February.

It was my misfortune to have to fly Virgin Atlantic on 12 February, their first day in this piece of garbage terminal.

Queues were a mile long to check in. You had to carry your luggage from the check in agent to where they were collecting luggage to be x rayed (unlike Terminal 1 where they took your luggage). The walk was a mile long to the gate unlike terminal 1. Why the hell they moved their operation at JFK is totally incomprehensible to me.

But the best was still to come. Our plane was at the gate, ready to leave at 9:15 PM. We boarded fine and were all on the plane when the captain came on the speaker to tell us there was a problem with the baggage. Periodically he would come on telling us we would be leaving in a few minutes as soon as they loaded the baggage. Well, okay, perhaps there was a no show and in this era of heightened security better be safe than sorry.

Took off 2 hours late and of course were 2 hours late getting into LHR.

It was only then that we found out what the problem was. The imbeciles at Terminal 4 had loaded all the baggage for the 7:30 flight to London on our plane and all of our luggage on the plane destined to leave at 7:30. So they had to off load all the baggage from our plane, ride it over to the other flight, offload all of our luggage, wait to load the other flight's luggage and only then re load our luggage.

One could not believe what a group of incompetent illiterates we were dealing with at Terminal 4.

And this on Virgin Atlantic which we thought was the best.

What a bunch of clowns.

Not a horror story, just a bad service experience...

Singapore gets such raves for good service...but it's hard to see how. Worst service I've ever had, and this was in business class. I was flying with my SO... they told us there were not two seats together. When I went to my seat I found the whole upper deck was completely empty! I asked the flight attendant is they expected to be full upstairs. "No." So I explained the situation, and asked if I could get him moved upstairs. " You should stay in your assigned seats." I explained: we requested seats together for this very long flight...we were told it was full and none were together, but we could check on the plane. Why couldn't he move? (given that he had paid the full bus class fare!) to a bus class seat next to me? The flight attendant was still resistant...finally I insisted. After he moved upstairs, all the flight attendants acted quite irritated for the whole flight. (As if we had done something really outrageous by moving seats when the plane was 3/4 empty. When we asked them to bring his special meal to the new seat, they once again said he should have stayed in his "assigned" seat! Given the price of this flight, I think this inflexibility and pettiness was the height of bad service.

Same type of problem in Singapore, when he had to change his itinerary (which should not be a problem on a full fare bus class ticket). He dropped one of his flight legs... they changed the ticket. He asked them to credit his credit card (he was owed a refund of $500 or so). They got all huffy again, and told him to do it back in the US! (Hah, hah...like he'd fall for that! We figure the ticket agent at the airport was just being lazy, and didn't want to do the refund.) When he insisted (I'm quite sure if he had waited until after his return, obtaining the refund would have been near impossible) they complied, but were very surly.

We concluded that service on Singapore is great...until a "problem" comes up. Ask for anything "special" and you are labelled a problem and treated as such!

I've thought about this thread for 2 days. There are lots I want to talk about, but in general my travel experiences are pretty positive, and second, I don't really fly the "top airlines" of the world too often. So, I'm just going to mention three things briefly.

1. Virgin Atlantic. Flew it BOS-LGW in 2000. VS is considered one of the best in the business, with innovative service on its planes. But back in 2000, they were using 20-year old 747-200s which had served I don't know how many airlines, on this route. The outbound flight was especially horrendous, as the interior looks really "used", seat cushions had no support, and the seat in front of me reclined all the way to my knees. And while each seat had personal video, the screens were 2-inches smaller than any other such screens I'd seen. The 742 on the return seems newer, fortunately. Plus, besides the nice plastic "backpack" with all the goodies, I didn't find its service much better than others - at least in coach.

2. Singapore. Have they let people picked their seats in coach (online or otherwise) yet? Or do people still need to go to the airport 3 hours early and BEG REPEATEDLY to get a good seat, like what I had to do last time to get one of those 2-by-2 seats near the rear of their 744s?

3. Cathay Pacific. I used to live in Hong Kong, but really didn't fly them too often. But in the late 80's and early 90's, I used to fly them to NRT to connect to AA 60/61 to DFW (747SP at that time). Well, by this time CX was already getting all these international awards for this and that, but there was one problem. Most of their intra-Asian routes were still utilizing the L1011. Fine plane, but CX had 10-abreast sitting in coach, while most airlines in the world put 9. Let's put it this way - there's no way I can eat without bumping my elbow into my seatmates. Seat width was criminal.

I think all my experience point to one thing. All those international acclaims often only apply to those sitting in First or Business. Coach service are often dismal, even with the "top" airlines. Best thing to do is to lower the expectation. That way, you won't be too disappointed.

Here's my story.

Late Feb. my friends setup a golf outing at Myrtle Beach. We are from the DC area. A few of us opted to fly while the remainder decided to drive the 8 hours. We booked our flights on Delta.

We check in at 4pm for our 5pm flight. Flight is delayed at 2 hours due to weather delays in Atlanta. We get off the ground at appx. 645pm and land in Atlanta at 810, our connecting flight to myrtle beach takes off at 815pm so of course we had to run off the plane and head down 10 gates to our flight. We get to the gate at 815 and find out that our flight was delayed..due to weather in atlanta.

We board our connecting flight at 1030 and find out that the plane needs to be de-iced and that they expect the plane to take off an hour later. We are finally in the air at 1130 p.m (keep in mind that we were scheduled to land in Myrtle at 915pm.) Stewardess were making their standard beverage run when due to turbulence, they were advised by the pilot to put it away. (right before our row of course). Finally, we are on our approach into Myrtile Beach when the plane suddenly jerks up and heads for the sky. Of course, we were told very little til the plane was up to cruising altitude. The pilot finally gets on the intercom and advised that the plane was rerouted to Charleston SC due to unsafe landing conditions in the Myrtle area. We land in Charleston Airport and are stuck in the plane for an hour while they determine if they want to take another shot at the airport or if they are going to get some buses to take everyone to Myrtle Beach. The pilot acknowleded that this has been a hellish flight and told us that the reason that we couldn't land was because the tail wind was too strong for a Northern Approach so the only option was the Southern Approach but they found that Airplane Control operators for the Southern Approach closed their post down at 1100p.m.

Delta finally made a decision to get us some buses but that would take at least another hour so we decided to rent a car and drive the 2 hours to Myrtle ourselves.

After this whole incident, we made it to our hotel at 0430 am.... 12 1/2 hours from when we arrived at DC's airport. It is safe to say that our friends that drove down had fun with this story for the remainder of our golf outing.

ttn7311's story is a perfect example of a bad experience that is not the fault of the airline--but in this case, the weather. The airline really was doing the best they could. Believe me, I have been in a similar situation myself, stuck on the runway for 6 hrs due to thunderstorms, and it is very uncomfortable and inconvenient, but not the airline's fault.

Yes, I was after examples of terrible service by the great airlines (Is Delta one of them?), particularly wjere they can't blame the weather or the baggage handlers - i.e. its all down to them!

Agree w/OP . . . Honestly think SQ is overrated. Are they better than the U.S. carriers? Of course, but that's not really saying much, is it?

Took SQ a couple of years ago LAX - NRT. Outbound flight was OK . . . nothing spectactular. But the return flight was a different story . . . FAs threw down dinner/drinks, then fled to the galley for the rest of the trip. Had to ask 3 times if they were going to bring out the duty-free cart . . . They did . . . while we were flying over San Francisco, with less than an hour before arrival!

Overall, it was not an impressive experience, especially after hearing all of the buildup of what a "great" airline they are! Also was disappointed w/no advance seat selection.

Have also heard from several people about the problems w/SQ @ Heathrow . . .

Northwest

We were flying Detroit to Paris non-stop. The plane has mechanical problems in Detroit. Our flight is cancelled.

We are then booked Detroit to London Gatwick with a connecting flight in london Heatthrow to Paris.

We do not have alot of time to catch our flight to Paris from Heathrow so we decide to take the Gatwick express to Victoria and then cab to Paddington then take the heathrow express to heathrow.
We arrive at the gate 1 hour prior to our plane leaving to Paris.
We give the agent our boarding passes and our denied boarding. The ticket agent at Northwest in Detroit in her haste of rerouting us made a mistake on the boarding passes!
We are asked to pay for our plane fare. We refused, we then tried to contact Nortwest no answer. [we were flying Air France to Paris, Northwest skyteam partner]
We were then told to take another train in Heathrow to KLM and speak to an representative there.
we did this got the boarding ticket fixed, got on the train then to our gates and the plane has left!
we then our scheduled 2 hour later on a different flight, and we are on stand by.
we finally make our flight, arrive in Paris. File a missing claim on our luggage since they would not release our luggage in Detroit.
Long story shorter, we never did receive our luggage to use for our vacation in Paris. The day we were leaving for home, the luggage showed up for us to lug with us!!
The bottom line is we are not getting any help from Northwest, my luggage was severly damaged. I had to buy new clothes etc. I am still working on compensation for train travel and my lost luggage situation. But I am not impressed with Nortwest at all!!!!!!!!

<But I am not impressed with Nortwest at all!!!!!!!!>

Few people are. My sympathies.