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In honor of the chubby, noble bird that millions of Americans will chow down on this Thursday – so noble that Benjamin Franklin supposedly wanted it to be our national symbol rather than the bald eagle – these are the First (Potentially) Annual Airline Turkeys awards.
It’s not clear why or when it happened. But somehow the wild turkey (Meleagris gallopava) has become closely associated with humans (Homo sapiens) of a certain sub-type (Homo doofus) known for their tendency to do obviously stupid things or for engaging in massive screw-ups of epic proportions. And since this, the day before Thanksgiving, is one of the busiest days of air travel each year, and the day before the mass consumption of tryptophan-laced Meleagris gallopava we thought it appropriate to debut these awards today.
They go to those airlines (metallicus avis) or airline employees that either screwed up on such a humongous scale that it simply can’t go without comment, or did the most to derail the advancement of humane, comfortable and pleasant air travel experiences over the course of the previous year.
The decisions of the judge, of course, are arbitrary, maybe slightly mean-spirited, and final. But you are encouraged to nominate you own award candidates, or discuss the merits of these winners. So let’s get started.
- The winner of the Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cluelessness in the Delivery of Customer Service goes to – Delta Air Lines for the flight attendants who on Nov. 1 displayed a truly stunning lack of human concern, helpfulness and job-related responsibility when passenger Michael Meehan discovered that the foul odor he’d been smelling was actually poop left behind by a service animal aboard the previous flight. Worse, Meehan had learned, the hard way, that he’d actually sat in some that was smeared on his seat, and that his shoes and pants legs had been fouled as well. Meehan requested help in getting the mess cleaned up but all the flight attendant did was give him two paper towels and a bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin to clean his shoes and suit. Meehan and his seatmates were left with nothing else to do but spread out a blanket to protect their clothes for the remainder of the flight.
- The award for the Best Fare Posting Mistake goes to – Hong Kong Airlines. In August the carrier posted – ever-so-briefly – an amazing set of fares, like $560 for roundtrip business class travel between the carrier’s home base and Los Angeles, and $28 one way from Hong Kong to Paris. Similarly ridiculous prices for travel throughout Asia also were loaded, mistakenly, into travel booking systems and posted online. To its credit, Hong Kong Airlines honored the hundreds of cheap tickets it sold during the short time they were available because of the airline’s own errors (in most cases airlines aren’t legally required to honor such tickets).
- In a related category, the winner of the Worst Fare Posting Mistake is – British Airways. BA did pretty much the same thing as Hong Kong Airlines back in June, with posted prices as low as $213 for a one-way flight from Tel Aviv to London. The correct lowest price on that route at the time was $372, though few seats ever are available at that $372 low price (most coach seats on that BA route sell at more than $1400). That’s a big “oops,” to be sure, but no bigger than Hong Kong Air’s mistaken fare postings above. But unlike Hong Kong Airlines, BA didn’t honor its mistakenly posted prices. Instead, it told those who bought such tickets to pony up an additional $1300 or accept a refund of their $213.
- For the Outstanding Performance in the “Hijack! What Hijack? category, the award goes to Ariana Afghan Airlines. Only two weeks ago pilots of an Ariana flight headed home from Delhi, India, were blocked from taking off by Delhi airport police and fire vehicles, and Indian Army troops arrayed across the runway. It seems the crew of the plane had sent a coded signal to the Delhi tower that the plane was being hijacked. Only there was no hijacking. The plane’s captain eventually explained that he must have accidentally sent that code while showing the co-pilot how such a signal could be sent in the event of a real hijacking.
- For Outstanding Performance in the “Spelling Schmelling” category, the winners are – the aircraft paint shop crew at Cathay Pacific, or Cathay “Paciic” (sans the “F” in Pacific) if you go by the name painted on the fuselage of one of Cathay’s Boeing 777s back in September. The big plane flew all over the globe that way for several days until it could be scheduled for a second, quick run through the paint shop to fix the error.
- After receiving nominations in both the “We Don’t Know Our Own Policies Very Well” category and the “We Really Do Like Dogs. Honest!” category, the awards go to – United Airlines. United won in the first category for the actions in March of a flight attendant who forced a passenger traveling with a French bulldog puppy, to stow the immature canine in the overhead bin, where it died sometime during the flight. The carrier won the second award for its actions in April, two weeks after the dead puppy episode, for transporting not one, but two different dogs to the wrong destinations. In one case a family’s dog got shipped to Tokyo instead of to their home – in Kansas! The other, a United flight from Newark to St. Louis had to be diverted to Akron, Ohio, after airline staff realized they’d loaded a dog bound elsewhere onto the St. Louis-bound flight. After those incidents United put itself in an animal transport time-out.
- Special recognition goes to American Airlines for it’s revealingly honest performance in the “We Don’t Really Care If You’re Comfortable" category. The world’s biggest airline decided after squeezing coach seats down to a minuscule 30 inches apart in some areas of its domestic coach sections last year that 2018 would be a good year to follow that up with the introduction of downsized economy class restrooms on its new Boeing 737 MAX jets. The new lavatories – or “lavs” in airline geek-speak- are so cramped that most grown men, even ones of mere average height and weight, can’t stand erect without bumping their heads, or perpendicular to the toilet without their shoulders or elbows pushing the door open inadvertently (if it’s not locked). Flight attendants report that larger passengers have to open the door, back out into the aisle, turn around, step back inside and close the door once again just to facilitate the move from the toilet to the sink (which, by the way, is only large enough for one hand to be washed at a time). For some unexplained reason, the mini-lavs do have a fold down baby diaper changing table, but it's far from clear that a parent can actually perform that task on a wiggling baby in such tight quarters. Few, no doubt, have even tried.
- There was a three-way tie for the coveted trophy in the “Pointless and Obnoxious Political Lobbying” category between all three of the industry’s heavyweights, American, Delta and United. After whining in Washington and elsewhere for three years in hopes of somehow discrediting and hamstringing the three biggest airlines from the Persian Gulf region (Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways), the U.S. Big 3 declared victory in the spring. Mind you, they didn’t really win anything. Yes, the Persian Gulf carriers signed a document promising not to do any of the supposedly anti-competitive things the U.S. Big 3 alleged. But the Persian Gulf carriers also denied they ever did those anti-competitive things in the first place (and the U.S. Big 3 never produced any convincing evidence of anti-competitive behavior), leaving exasperated U.S. government officials looking for a face-saving way of putting an end to all the whining and posturing. So, essentially, the Persian Gulf 3 (soon to be “2” with the likely merger of Emirates and Etihad) promised to continue not doing what they say they weren’t doing already.
- And, in our last category, the winner of the “Let Them Eat Cake” Award goes to United President Scott Kirby. In September Kirby told a group of analysts and investors that consumers should be happy to pay higher fares. His reasoning? Airline fares have fallen so dramatically on an inflation-adjusted basis that airlines’ share of the Gross Domestic Policy has fallen to 0.6% from 1.2% about 30 years ago. Therefore, airlines, by all rights, should be charging twice as much for their seats these days. Of course, that ignores the fact that no company or industry has the right to expect its share of the GDP to remain the same over time. If that were true, blacksmiths and horse traders’ share of the U.S.’s current GDP would be enormous even though very few Americans ride horses for fun and almost none of us use them as a basic means of transportation.
