I want to hear about all the times you've been ripped off, stiched up, fucked over or 'inconvenienced' at the hands of an airline or booking agency.
Aeroflot, the airline that proudly said 'we take your luggage and send it all over the world' once dumped me in Moscow airport for 8 hours in transit - no big deal but it was december and there was no heating...
Oh, and my favouite guitar got smashed by Monarch in tel aviv after they refused to let me take it as hand luggage and put it in the 'fragile' department, ho, ho.
Well apart from STA travels daylight robbery a few years ago there was the time i was stuck waiting in Toronto airport for 8 hours. now thats wouldnt be that bad, however, it was only after i bought myself a pack of ciggies and formulated a plan to chain smoke the hours away that i realised they didnt have a smoking area and i couldnt leave the airport as i was on a connecting flight and wouldnt be allowed back in. That pack was laughing at me all the way to Manchester i tell you!
never been ripped off or anything, but the worst experience I ever had was flying on lufthansa from frankfurt to chennai. i was stuck at the very back of the plane in the very middle of an eleven seat row. the mostly german flight attendants were so obviously racist against the mostly indian fliers--they wouldn't make eye contact, gave them water when they wanted juice and ignored their questions. it was a long flight and once the lights went out the attendants disappeared all together, not to reappear until an hour or so before we landed. they played a bollywood movie on the microscopic televisions stuck to the ceilings in the middle of each aisle but didn't provide headsets. it was like a twilight zone episode where all the world has disappeared and the only people left were us passengers, smashed together in tiny seats, in the dark with only a flicker of a bollywood movie to keep us company. i wish lufthansa would go bankrupt, frickin' germans...
Just wanted to let everyone know about some of STA's shady business practices - next time you book - be sure to ask what the APU is - for those of you not in the know - the APU is the price mark up that gets added to your price. Be careful when asked "What kind of fares have you been finding" - if you tell them you found a fare online for $900 - and they can find it for $300 - they'll sell it to you for $800.00 and mark the ticket up by over 100%. In fact marking fares up by 1000% is encouraged if the booking agent can get away with it. They are without a doubt one of the least principled businesses operating today.
sounds like a good business, then. Gotta look out for getting ripped off. Anyway, if it's the cheapest ticket you can take it, being a travel agent is like being in sales... Maybe no one should take flights anymore anyway. We could take boats and ride bicycles everywhere and cars and flights could be banned world wide! We could create a new world system, based on sustainablity and a recognition that our survival depends on a healthy environment.
I arrived in Mexico city airport for a 32 hour wait with no money, slept outside the mcdonalds bit for the night with no money and taking leftovers from the tables, man got shot dead downstairs at the entrance by gang members or something.
And my flight to brazil was at the same time the air france one went down, coming in the opposite direction, with some ROUGH turbulence that went on for some time and has kept me from flying since.
Turkish Airlines charter flight from Antalya to Helsinki 2004.
I ordered a whiskey besides a beer from stewardess while having a meal. 10 minutes passes and no serving, so I asked again. Seemingly the staff had a paranormal hungover or something coz they were all pissed up. Anyway, she told me rudely that my order will appear in moment. Another 20 minutes passes without serving so I pressed the button above to get my goddamn whiskey, in blink of an eye I got my booze banged on the table, I knew she had done some bitchy tricks for my holy liquid. As I opened my warm beer, it spurted all over me. I took the cotter pin from the can and started to mix my whiskey. Something grabbed between the cotter pin and the ice cubes. SPIT, yellow coloured slime were hanging on between. Godfuckingdamn I pressed the button and the stewardess came over and I asked whatta fuck is this and whatta heck is it doing in my whiskey, she got all red, took my drinks with shaking hands and went away. A minute and she got me a cold unshaken beer and a new whiskey. I didnt complain about to the Airline itself. Nice service.
And tomorrow Turkish Airlines gona fly my ass off to Asia. Lets see.
after 42 hours of no sleep, train rides, lay overs, a strip search that took 3 and a half hours on a connecting flight from Berlin, something about 18 year old boys alone (second time its happened) security ANYWHERE dont feel the need to give me any respect what so ever, ive always been a dick when it comes to airport security.
But anyway.
to top it all off, i got stuck in Newark for 20 something god damn hours because my flight to Anchorage Alaska was canceled, they said that because there was only like 7 people on that plane, 'they couldnt accommodate us' for some reason. So i thought of staying the night, I tried staying in the airports hotel but didnt have nearly enough cash, the last thing i was gunna do was ask my parents for money because they didnt know i was there to begin with ( they thought i was on a school trip to Washington D.C.) .
went outside of security which thinking back was probably a terrible idea, went outside, and saw the chaos that is Newark, tried sneaking on a bus behind a family but i quickly turned around when i saw the bus drivers crazed look.
So tired i gave up quickly and went back in, called home and had my friend look up the soonest flight to Seattle and what company it was, so i was lucky and it was the same company, and a nice guy set it all up for me and got me a flight to seattle connecting to anchorage, relieved, after that i just blanked and slept and became a zombie for the next 16 hours until i got home.
the whole time all i got to eat was something like 12 things of pretzels you get on the plain, the flight attendant was really nice, some trail mix and a orange juice i stole at the airport, and and some really good chicken on the Berlin/Newark plane, and 8 beers on the train in Potsdam with some good company.
( the last moment of freedom there )within the 5 and a half days it took to get home.
But. The thought of my bed and my fridge kept me spirited.
Whilst this may not fall into the realm of a 'worst airline experience' it does nonetheless fall into the category of 'major inconvenience'.
In 1984, I was flying from London to Barbados with a group of journalists from the UK. The airline was Caribbean Airways which leased a wide-bodied DC10 from Ghana Airways, and flew circuitous routes between the Caribbean and the UK, occasionally meandering via Newfoundland and Eire.
We boarded the plane and took a row of 5 central seats and found that the Barbados windsurfing team had the row directly in front of us.
About half way over the Atlantic, one of the Barbados lot lit up an enormous spliff which was passed around and eventually found its way back to our row.
A large stewardess with broad shoulders and shoes that were possibly of mililtary origin, came striding down the aisle towards my friend Emma who was next to me and in an aisle seat, a lazy look on her face and the spliff languishing in her left hand which was drooped over the arm rest. She grabbed Emma's arm, pulled it towards her nose, inhaled, screwed up her face, and went goose-stepping back towards the cockpit.
At this stage, the major inconvenience occurred in that we had no option but to hurl the spliff under the seats in front of us until it ended up on the floor, 5 rows ahead of us, under the seats of an elderly couple wearing straw hats and flowery shirts.
Amazingly, we were not arrested on landing, and no-one else on the aircraft appeared to notice. But to have been deprived over the remaining half of a perfectly good smoke of Vincie finest was both an inconvenience and an infuriation.
I made the profund mistake of using eBookers a few years back for some flights to Canada. They took five seperate attempts to mail me tickets, mailing them twice to LA (I like in the UK) and twice to somewhere in France, I forget where... Eventually the day of the flight came around after frantic phone calls and emails and was told to go to the check in desk and await my tickets there. Lo and behold there where no tickets to be found and only an Air Canada staff member managed to save the day by issuing a copy of the tickets after gaining permission to access eBookers servers. Tossers.