Friday, October 27, 2006
Page 15
AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)
The Not-So-Friendly Skies
By J’AMY PACHECO
Last week, I wrote here about how long it’s been since I’d traveled by airplane. I knew things had changed in the airline industry, but until last Sunday, I didn’t realize how much.
Coming home from Baltimore, my mother was supposed to change planes in Los Angeles before flying into the airport near her home. It was, therefore, a huge surprise to me when she called — from a runway in Las Vegas.
Her plane ran low on fuel and had to be diverted. Everybody deplaned, but my mother, a diabetic who uses a wheelchair, was unable to climb down the stairs to the runway and instead cooled her heels on the plane.
When she told me the passengers had been advised to expect to be on the ground for several hours, I considered making the three-hour drive to pick her up. But while we talked, the passengers were told to return to the plane for departure.
The next time she called, she was in Los Angeles. She had missed her connecting flight, and airline officials weren’t sure when they could get her on another.
This was a problem for several reasons. Not wanting to chance missing her early morning flight, my mother stayed up all night and had not had any sleep. Being stuck on the airplane, she had been unable to get anything to eat — a potentially serious situation for a diabetic. And after being made by flight attendants to walk off the plane, she was exhausted and upset.
Stunned that airline employees would make the call that passengers who arrived in wheelchairs could be made to walk off the plane, I got on the phone to the airline. It took several calls to figure out how to reach a human being and regrettably, the one I got not only didn’t have current flight information, but he wasn’t even on this half of the planet.
It took about half an hour for my husband to convince the man’s supervisor that my mother needed assistance — and a seat home. He eventually gave us a confirmation number, and assured us that someone would bring a meal to her at the gate.
Naively, we believed him.
Shortly before her plane was scheduled to depart, I called my mother to make sure she was on board. She sounded groggy and confused. Not only was she not on the plane, but the gate agent insisted her confirmation number was meaningless.
I listened in disbelief as my mother — who was by now crying — asked the gate agent to talk to me. The woman refused to take the cell phone, and told my crying mother that there was “nothing” she could do for her.
While my husband tried to call the agent who had given us the confirmation number, I enlisted a sibling to start the long drive to Los Angeles. When I tried to call my mother back, her cell phone rang unanswered.
The plane’s scheduled departure time came and went, and the airline advised my husband that my mother was not on board.
My husband, who had already advised the agent of our concerns over my mother’s grogginess, reported that she was no longer answering her phone. He requested that someone be dispatched to the gate to check on her well-being. The agent refused.
“It’s not our responsibility,” she told him. I listened to them argue for a while, then picked up the phone to call 9-1-1. I discovered I had two voice mails from my mother. In the first, I heard her crying and telling someone that she hadn’t taken her medication. In the second, she said, “I’m on a plane. I have to get off the phone.”
Only when presented with this information did the agent on the phone with my husband advise him that she was indeed on a plane headed home. She seemed to think gratitude was in order.
My mother later related that an elderly couple had observed the situation and had taken over. One small bag of cookies provided by the woman was all it took to get my mother back to normal. An agent from another gate finally intervened and managed to get her on the flight, in spite of the unexplained protests of the original gate agent. The ordeal took all day, ending when she landed at her home airport at 5 p.m.
It is difficult for me to believe that people entrusted with the lives of thousands could be so callous and uncaring, and so cavalier about the well-being of another human being.
It’s been six years since I set foot in an airport. Am I anxious to shell out big bucks to support an industry where people are treated like so much luggage?
What do you think?
Copyright 2006, Metropolitan News Company