Paul Kedrosky discovered yesterday that Alaska Airlines defines ‘On Time’ a bit differently than the rest of us. They announced that his flight would leave “on time” at 10:28, which was an hour after the departure time on his eticket. The gate agent said that 10:28 was still “on time” because it would leave “right at” 10:28.
I have noticed a couple of other terms that the airlines appear to have recently redefined:
1) On a couple of recent flights, a flight attendant announced that it was a “very full flight” so would we all please put our smaller bag under the seat in front of us blah blah. The first time this happened, there were only a handful of middle seats taken on the plane. The second time it happened, the flight had entire rows that were empty.
2) Due to extensive rebooking, I’ve had to call up American twice recently (never a pleasant experience) to change flight reservations. Both times the agent has told me that on at least one leg, there were no more seats that she could assign, the rest of the seats could only be assigned at the airport. The second time it happened I asked what this meant and then cut off her long and meaningless explanation to ask if this was code for “we only have middle seats left.” She gave a curt “Yes” in reply. Hey, at least she was honest.
Posted by Stephen Bronstein at April 12, 2006 02:42 PM