Do we really need to know the truth?

I have just returned from a flight to the East Coast aboard one of my least favorite airlines -- Alaska Air. Why they are at the bottom of the list of airlines that I like is that the really don't have great customer service. Since I fly from Seattle, they are THE airline at the airport and as such the competition hasn't got them to really go out their way to make things right, or really to be pleasant. In addition they have had a few crashes in the past that was blamed on spotty maintenance record and their "Incidents and Accidents" list is a little worrying.

With this as a backdrop, I boarded the plane to Boston without a hitch, and although I knew I was going to be fleeced for food (Sandwich $5) and entertainment ($10) I was pretty happy that we boarded on time. The flight attendants told us to buckle our seatbelts, switch off the cell phone etc. etc. and then we just sat there! About 40 minutes later (yes 40 MINUTES) the pilot comes on the intercom and tells us that there are some maintenance issues and the GPS and flight navigation computers are not working.. but don't worry when we take off we will make up the time because the jet stream is really strong. OK, at this stage, I wasn't worrying about the jet stream, I was worrying about the flight computer! After another 15 minutes the pilot informs us that all is well and we will be departing shortly. And he was right, we were all fine!

But, did we really need to know that the flight navigation system wasn't working? And if we needed to know that didn't we at least need to know what was wrong with it and what the maintenance crew did to fix it? Was it just a Ctrl-Alt-Del reboot that solved it, or had they just done a defrag or fdisk to repair the disk, or had they replaced the whole board? My problem is that if you want to tell me what the real problem is, then tell me how it was fixed and why I shouldn't need to worry about it again! (Also, please tell me we are going to be delayed before I sit there for 40 minutes wondering why nothing is happening!)

Whew, I feel better. There must be something therapeutic about blogging!

On my return flight we were delayed another hour (Sitting in the airplane) while the "Maintenance crew wrote some things up in the log book!" Oh dear.. here we go again!

-Mark

btw: Alaska it would be nice if you apologized for being late, even thought I would be he first to agree that safety comes first!

Posted at 02:55PM Nov 01, 2007 by Mark Herring in General  |  Comments[0]  |  | |