Olive Me

Continental Airlines just sent me a letter containing a $200 travel voucher to be used on future trips.  They say they have God on their side in not sending the 600 Euro cash compensation  that European Union consumer protection laws require when an airline orchestrates a 24-hour mechanical-failure-induced fiasco as ridiculous as the one in question here.  They’ve excused themselves by declaring the snafu “force majeur.”

Unless Continental can do something to improve customer service on this most skimpily-equipped and poorly-staffed route, my advice is don’t fly Continental Newark to Barcelona.  Right now, the Delta flight from JFK is a better choice.

A mechanical problem could happen on any airline, but it creates a mess on a route like this where just one plane is flown back and forth between the two cities.   What’s worse, nobody at Continental in Barcelona is willing to break a sweat on behalf of stranded travelers.

There was only one Continental staff member on hand during our amazing delay.  She was clearly overwhelmed, talking constantly on her cell phone (presumably to some far away authorities), and simply turned her back on questions she couldn’t answer.  By about 8:30 pm, after we’d been standing around at the airport for a full 12 hours, everyone was exhausted and testy and hungry. Someone asked for water.  The Continental response:  “No soy camarero, vale?”  (“hey, I’m not a waiter”).

The crowd, mostly Spaniards, not New Yorkers, was absurdly patient.  Even so, the agent clearly had an inkling her approach wasn’t going over well:  she called the Guardia Civil, who stood around the scene exuding a kind of casual menace.

No coherent announcements were made to the stranded crowd.  Instead, the hapless agent gave us customers a 24 hour-long haphazard runaround — they would have a bigger plane the next day, or not; they would re-book us, or they couldn’t; we could rest in a hotel, but should come back in two hours; did we want our bags?  We’d have to voluntarily renounced our seats first, and so on.  At 3:30 am, 19 hours after I checked in, our flight was cancelled.  That kind of wait is downright un-Godly, if you ask me.

A few hours later, back at the airport in hopes of getting on that day’s flight, more disappointment:  the rebooking scene was inexcusably chaotic.  After being shunted aside by desk agents, the automated kiosk offered me a return flight five days after my original booking.   The kiosk didn’t say where or how I was supposed to sleep, eat, or work for the next four days.

I was lucky.  I got on a flight after waiting just 24 hours, thanks to a gallant fellow passenger who commandeered an agent using a Kung-fu combination of his elite frequent flyer status, his Blackberry, and his balls to get me on board.

I saw a handful of others of us on that flight.  God only knows what happened to the rest we left behind.