Some airline staff could cut your throat and tell you with pixie-faced innocence that they were just giving you a close shave, so practised is their expertise at what Churchill called terminological inexactitude. For the unwary traveller it’s a minefield of deceit and humiliation. Seasoned fliers have learned the hard way to doubt, doubt and doubt again. And not even that always saves you.
I once telephone-booked a last minute flight Houston-London and asked for a non-stop. I was assured I’d booked one. Suspicious from years of bitter experience, I enquired again at check-in. The blonde lady smilingly assured me with all the patent honesty and integrity of Mother Teresa as she tagged my baggage for London that it was. But then I saw my neighbour’s bag being labelled with the same flight number but to Detroit. Houston, we have a problem.
“I thought you said this was a non-stop? Are you sure it doesn’t land and pick up passengers in Detroit?” Without batting a mascara-ed eyelid she told me that yes indeed it did stop at Detroit, and I would have the welcome facility of getting off and walking around, as the lay-over would be just over two hours.
Flabbergasted, I stammered, “But when I booked it, and just now you assured me it was a non-stop.” She gave a dangerous facial twitch of the Official American Irritation variety and called me ‘sir.’ As I’ve said before in this column that’s always a sign of trouble when dealing with someone in authority in the USA. “Sir… it is a non-stop flight. It does not stop before it reaches Detroit.”
In short they lied; on the basis, presumably, that if they hadn’t I might have booked another flight instead. But my planned nine-hour flight had now turned into virtually a 12-hour one.
I once had a company deal with the airline that flew the friendly skies. For the payment of the exorbitant full fare Economy ticket price Los Angeles to London they formally agreed to give a reserved and booked upgrade to Business. However, just one day after being assured I’d been upgraded as per the written agreement, I looked at my seating pass as I approached the boarding gate. From the row number I could see it wasn’t Business. They’d pulled a fast one. And somewhere back at check-in that superannuated walking hive of peroxide was gloating to her colleagues how she’d got one over on the geeky Limey.
I approached the desk at the boarding gate and found myself dealing with Joe Hardball. He considered the very concept of an upgrade an un-American activity. “Hey, what’s your problem buddy? You have a coach (economy) ticket, and you’re sitting in coach.” I showed him the agreement. I pointed out my company spent about £2m a year with this sorry airline. “Sir I am not interested. The flight is due to depart so I request that you please board.” I hate being conned like a wet-behind-the-ears ‘travel sucker,’ so I played my trump card.
I told him I wouldn’t be travelling tonight and they could take my bags off the flight. He damn near had a cardiac infarction. He knew, but more importantly, I knew he knew, that would probably delay the flight by up to half an hour. He would be responsible and I’d make sure his superiors knew it. So he eventually caved, pressed some keys and spewed me out a Business Class boarding pass. If he could then have pulled a .44 Magnum and let me have six rounds of hollow-point in the guts, he would have.
The lies this side of the Atlantic tend to be of the gentler, but nonetheless infuriating kind. I once waited at Grantham for a train to Kings Cross and enquired of a platform British Rail employee if there was a buffet car on the London-bound express. (Because there was still time to get a sandwich). He sucked his pencil and checked his timetable: “The 7:20? Yes, there’s definitely a buffet car on the 7:20.”
Minutes later as the train pulled in, the man cupped his hands and shouted to me down the platform, “It’s not open though!” And he was right. There was a buffet car and it was closed.
