This past week I had the pleasure of traveling to Dallas, TX for work to visit with my team. I am pretty sure that it is true that everything is bigger in Texas.

As usual, I very dedicated to US Air and I took US Air out and back from Dallas. I am beginning to wonder why I maintain loyalty to US Airways due to the miss rate for customer service issues. That said, I am bit stubborn and wont give up on them. What I will do is start making these issues more publics for everyone to read. Hopefully US Air will read it and address this for everyone else and my future trips.

My US Air story starts last year. In years past I flew much more and likely had similar stories but now that I fly less it is easier for good and bad experiences to stand out. My tracking of experiences starts 3 flights ago when I was flying from Minnesota to Charlotte. If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you will remember this as the “Thanks, Wendy” Experience. See pictures or my Facebook page for details. The picture to the far left is her at work for the flight after the flight I was supposed to take. This particular flight was headed to Philadelphia. I wonder to this day if I could have flown to Philadelphia and then caught a flight to Charlotte. If I was “Wendy”, I would have at least offered this to the aggravated flier – in this case, me. The second picture is her doing something with the flight I was supposed to take. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but nonetheless she was working on the flight I was supposed to take. Did I mention yet that alot of this story occured while the plane was still just sitting there? If I didnt, here is picture of it just sitting there. It sure looks nice, doesn’t it?

My Dallas to Charlotte experience was minor compared to being instructed by Wendy incorrectly as to when / where to be for my flight. Nonetheless, it was annoying and should have never happened.

The experience starts with the boarding process. As many of my family and readers know, I have very bad leg and back issues. We experienced multiple delays in beginning the boarding process and we were never told why. As we sat on the plane, there were four people who were double booked for their seats and that made for some interesting sub-experiences. A couple of people were borderline hostile. I can’t say that I blame them after waiting a bit to get on the place only to find that I didn’t have a seat would have made me upset too. While we were waiting for the boarding mess to be sorted out, we were greeted with an extreme heat which made many people sweat and complain about it. I was able to will myself through it but I can tell you that I wasn’t particularly happy when the individual next to me dripped sweat on me. Eventually, the air came on but it was after a good 20-30 minutes of not fun heat.

The funnest event of Dallas to Charlotte Flight 1015 was with the drinks. While it is minor, it was annoying and just showed me that the attendant didn’t really care about her customers. She came by and asked me what I wanted. My reply was clear, “A cup of ice please.” If you know me, you know that it was loud, clear and in no uncertain terms but polite. The waitress came back with a cup of water. I asked politely for a cup of ice to which she responded, “Oh yes, my apologies…I will be right back with that.” She took the water back and I was hopeful for a cup of ice. What occurred next was a bit bizarre, she brought drinks for everyone else all around me and never came back to ask me about anything. After we began experiencing turbulence, I realized that it would never come. Oh well. Like always, here are my pictures…first one is my neighbor’s glass which is used and empty and the next two are pics of the offending attendant.

I know I know … some of you might be saying that it is minor and I should ignore it. I think the important part is that 2 of 3 flights for which I expected a reasonable value exchange – money for service – didn’t go so well.

I’d love to hear your comments and stories. I fly to Jacksonville, FL on Tuesday the 20th and I will update the post accordingly or perhaps start a whole new one.

- Dana