Road Warriors - Will You be Asked to Get Off the Plane?

Have you ever been in a bad mood?  

I rarely change my mood - it's usually quite steady with few, if any, highs or lows.  But certain situations can put me - and probably you - in a bad mood.  What would you say if I told you that a bad mood could get you kicked off a commercial flight?

That's right.  I was told that that they might have to remove me from the plane because of my mood.  

I'll spare you the long story but here is the short version.

When I checked in online and printed boarding passes, it said "seat assignments at the gate" and I was unable to print a boarding pass for the connecting flight.  The next morning, when we dropped our luggage at the ticket counter, the ticket agent reiterated that seats would be assigned at the gate where we could get our boarding passes for the connecting flight.

I waited in line at the gate for nearly an hour, well beyond the departure time and well after everyone had boarded. There were several other passengers in line with me and we were all treated like a standby passengers despite having confirmed reservations on this flight.  Why?  They oversold the flight.  

When the gate agent was finally ready to board my family we not only didn't have seats together, we didn't have assigned seats or boarding passes for our connecting flight.  This flight was already 10 minutes late leaving, and we had only a 45-minute layover in Detroit - a formula for a missed flight.  We had an event outside of Boston that we needed to get to so missing a flight was not an option.

I wasn't in a good mood - I was stressed - but a mood is personal.  It's my mood and I owned it.  There were four seats left on the plane and the flight attendant wanted us to wait and see where they put the remaining passengers.  I suggested that since there were only four seats and there were three of us, my wife and son could sit in the two side-by-side seats and I could take the seat 4 rows down.

Once seated she approached me and said I would have to change my mood.  I told her that it probably wasn't going to happen and then she pointed out that I was in an exit row and asked if I was prepared to assume the exit row duties in the event of an emergency.  Apparently, my "yes" answer was too fast for her and she became angry that she wasn't able to finish her question before I responded.  So she asked me a second and third time.  Notice that she was the one getting angry, talking louder and repeating her questions.  She asked what she could do to put me in a better mood and I simply told her that I wished to be left alone.  That did it.  Next thing I knew another gate agent was telling me I would have to leave the plane (and I later learned that security was being called to assist).  

In the end, I was able to remain on the plane.  We arrived at the gate in Detroit as they were about to close the gate door.  We were on the list of passengers that didn't fly (of course) and they had given our seats away (of course).  We did get on the flight and did arrive in Boston on time.  But none of this should have happened!

I sent a letter to the CEO Delta and his assistant replied with a  totally unacceptable response.  They offered me 10,000 miles when I clearly stated that I didn't want anything from them.  They said that they rely on employees to use their judgment.  The funny thing is that my letter was all about their judgment - and how bad it was!  I didn't yell at anyone.  I didn't threaten anyone.  The people seated around me weren't even aware that anything was going on.  I was simply in a bad mood (as in quiet and not wanting to talk with anyone). When an airline has crappy systems and untrained people who keep passengers waiting because they demonstrate that they don't really care, it can easily put you in a bad mood.

Shame on you Delta.  When did a bad mood become reason to remove someone from a plane?

I have written about large companies selling people on not doing business with them as a result of how badly they treat their good, existing customers.  You can read some of those stories here.  United. Verizon and links to several others including US Airways, United a 2nd time, and two from National.

I see this over and over again.  The cost to acquire a new customer is huge.  The cost to lose an existing customer that may spend thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars over their life cycle dwarfs the cost of new customer acquisition, not to mention the negative buzz from the word of mouth of an unhappy former customer.

And who knows, the company might just piss off an award-winning Blogger...