In-flight advertising

August 26, 2007

My trip back and forth to Washington, D.C. was a lot better than my aforementioned trip down to Jacksonville, but once again, US Airways found all sorts of ways to provide an awful experience.

First, there are three different lines at the US Airways ticket counter in Providence, and no indication of who or why you should choose to get into a particular line, although they are obviously for different purposes. Should I get into the shorter line if I want to use the kiosks? You’d think so, but no — apparently that was the line for people who wanted to change their tickets. Then one of the US Airways employees comes out and tells people they have to be patient, she’s doing the best she can, and says, “although I know that’s not good enough.” Well, yeah, it’s not good enough. Instead of spewing that rehearsed line to us, how about putting up some damn signs so it’s not so chaotic?

The aircraft we flew on to Washington turned out to be one of the little ones where you walk out onto the tarmac and board the plane via a little staircase. There was one flight attendant on board, and she appeared to be pretty new with the English language. I’ve heard the various flight attendant speeches a thousand times and I still couldn’t understand what she was saying. As soon as the in-flight beverage service was finished, she pulled out her luggage and started fixing her makeup. She continued to fix her makeup for the remainder of the flight, and then followed it up with a couple squirts of stinky perfume, which I had to endure from the front row. It was a 70-minute flight; her makeup and perfume couldn’t wait until afterwards? Or is this one of the things US Airways recommends in its “How to be as unprofessional as possible” manual?

For the flight home from Washington, the plane was scheduled to depart at 4:30 p.m., but it was apparently delayed 15 minutes for whatever reason. So US Airways helpfully changed the departure time to “4:45 p.m.” so they could say “ON TIME” as the status. Isn’t that cheating?

Finally, after we boarded the plane, the little screens come down to tell us the emergency procedures, and then, right after takeoff, the screens launch into 20 minutes of commercials for Hilton Hotels, Avis rental cars, and Las Vegas tourism (all of which I will try to avoid ever using as a result of their being associated with US Airways). Trying to escape the spam by reading, I open up my tray table, and get the eyeful shown above. An advertisement for some HTC phone, AT&T service and Microsoft Windows Mobile. Yet another thing making it less likely that I’ll pick up an iPhone, no matter how much I want one, because it’s only available on the AT&T network and anyone who would want to be associated with the ass-mangling that is a US Airways experience is not a company that I want anything to do with.

Here’s an article from another guy, Darren Barefoot, who had a similar crappy experience with US Airways’ in-flight advertising. I agree completely with him completely; why on earth would anyone want to associate their company with commercial airlines, an industry that quite probably has one of the worst customer experiences there is?