The Spectrum of Airline Intelligence

Personally, I find the varying levels of intelligence found in airports to be truly amazing. Think about how intelligent aircraft pilots have to be, then think about the dudes that clean the airport bathrooms. I mean, sure, you’d find this intelligence spectrum in pretty much any company, but my recent airline debacle “inspired” the rantings you're about to read.

I actually think that getting several tons of humanity and machinery to remain airborne for any length of time is just short of miraculous. I only wish that some of the intelligence needed to make the magic happen could trickle down to some of the other hosers I had to deal with last month. I don’t know if I can use the name of the airline that pissed me off so much, so let’s just say it rhymes with Famerican Meirlines (or F-Me for short).

Now, this is a story that I could easily drag on for ages, so I’ll try and just give you the highlights.

I had tickets to fly from Boston to JFK Airport in New York, then from New York to São Paulo, Brazil. The sole purpose of this particular trip was to attend a visa interview with my parents-in-law to try to smooth the way so that the interviewer wouldn’t hesitate in granting them their visas. Now, based on my previous experience with F-Me, I decided to have the flight booked two days earlier than the interview just in case somebody f**ked something up.

Strong winds and the late arrival of the flight crew in New York caused the first delay, but the F-Me rep with whom I spoke assured me that I’d still be able to make my connection flight. Fair enough. We finally boarded the plane, but couldn’t get clearance to takeoff for about a half an hour. Now the clock’s ticking, so I just hope against hope that when I get to JFK, the transition to my next flight will be a smooth one.

Upon arrival at JFK, the F-Me employee at the end of the ramp told me where I needed to go. Now, it’d be one thing if I didn’t speak the English language and couldn’t figure out which end was up, but my English is better than okay and I still wound up missing my flight.

How?

Well, one person told me to go to Baggage Claim A, yet there was nobody there. A woman working nearby Baggage Claim A directed me to a floor where F-Me agents would supposedly be standing by, ready to help. Naturally, this meant that, when I got there, I saw plenty of EMPTY F-Me booths, yet not a soul ready to help anybody do jack sh*t about anything.

It's amazing how, even though flights seem to arrive at all hours of every day and every night at this airport, the F-Me employees have a funny way of disappearing when people like myself need them the most. And I love how nobody has a clue about anything in these airports. Unlike F-Me clerks, the janitorial staffers seem to be everywhere, which is great if I ever have a question about the best cleaning agents to use for my bathroom or if I want to brush up on my Spanish. However, when answering basic airline-related questions, they’re (not surprisingly) sorely inept.

In a now desperate panic, I literally ran from floor to floor and, though every floor came equipped with F-Me stations, nobody was working in any of them and all of the lights were turned off. After a good cardio workout which involved me running like a decapitated chicken all over JFK, I finally managed to find an F-Me agent who, after having to wait several minutes, shook her head in disbelief.

Apparently, several of us from this ill-fated flight had been misdirected to the wrong section of the airport (no sh*t).

“Fine, just tell the flight to hold on, direct me to where I need to go and I’ll run to get there… again!”

Stupid me, I figured that the head shake that this F-Me agent gave me (complete with exasperated sigh and eye roll) meant that, though an incompetent fool was responsible for starting my journey to futility, Miss Head-Shaker was 100% competent and fully up to the task of righting the wrongs and getting my tired ass on the right plane.

What she actually did was direct me to take an AirTrain to a particular section of the airport, speak to one of the F-Me agents on the other side and get a boarding pass. I went there as directed, caught the AirTrain (which took forever to show up), then eventually encountered another F-Me clerk who not only didn’t know what flight I was trying to connect to, but told me that any flights they might have had going to São Paulo have long since left and if I wanted to get to Brazil before Christmas, I’d need to go to a Chilean airline, fly first to Santiago f**king Chile, and then catch a connection flight to Brazil.

The funny thing was that, as weird as that seemed, I didn’t even give a sh*t. She could have told me that I needed to take a shuttle bus to the center of the earth, hop on a flying unicorn and soar just over a rainbow near the crescent moon and I’d have done it if it meant getting me on the correct damn plane.

So, off I went, again running like a frickin’ idiot, until I arrived at the "correct" gate for this Lan Chile airline or whatever the hell it was called. Between pants of exhaustion and exasperation, I summarized my reason for being there and awaited nods of assurance and maybe even a “right this way, sir.” What I actually GOT were blank stares by two ass-clowns who looked like they wouldn’t be able to walk ten feet without either falling down or getting tarred and feathered along the way.

Naturally, I’m desperate for somebody who knows something about anything at this point. So, Clown #1 speaks into his walkie-talkie with his all-too-evident look of bewilderment and, after several more minutes of tense waiting, I get directed back to the same damn F-Me clerk who told me to go to this ass-backwards Chilean airline desk in the first place!

I sh*t you not - it was well past one in the morning by the time I finally found somebody who could sort this huge mess out. And of course, the F-Me agent who “helped” me was snippy and sarcastic as all hell because she had to deal with about twelve other people who were given the same bullsh*t instructions that did nothing but cause us grief and allow us to miss the flight to Brazil.

The best she could do was to book me on another flight from JFK to Miami which was literally gonna be leaving in a few hours. From there, I’d have to take one more flight from Miami to Brazil using a Brazil-based airline called Tam. Well, when you're out of options, you take what you can get... and that was the best I was gonna get out of these brain surgeons, so I took it.

In a final stroke of pure genius, I was given a hotel voucher for the Ramada Inn, along with breakfast and dinner vouchers. Okay folks, it’s past one o’clock in the morning, my flight to Miami leaves in fewer than five hours... and you got me a hotel room with breakfast and dinner? Well, that’s just terrific… IF I WERE STAYING IN NEW YORK!

The truly funny part was that the F-Me lady saw no flaws in her logic at all. She thought that giving me a free breakfast and dinner (…in a situation where I’d be airborne two hours before I would have even qualified for the breakfast) was just a golden stroke of brilliance. All I could think at this point was, "Somebody needs to tell this lady that when she uses a Q-Tip, she's supposed to STOP pushing when she feels resistance."

I did take advantage of the hotel, though - partly because it was like five minutes away, partly because I figured a shower would loosen me up a bit, and partly because I didn't feel like sitting on the floor and staring at all of the closed food kiosks for four and a half hours.

If not for my foresight in booking two days before the interview, I’d have surely missed it. Instead, I got to São Paulo the night before and managed to get a fairly decent night’s sleep before that next morning’s interview.

I’m just thankful that these clueless F-Me clerks aren’t the ones building or flying the aircraft, otherwise I’d be paying a LOT more attention to the pre-flight “in case of emergency” instructions that most everybody ritualistically ignores.