Literally decades ago I flew into Chicago with a connection to Oakland via Salt Lake City (actually wanting to get into SFO, but that was the cheapest connection) and it was miserably cold and snow stormed throughout the Midwest.
The plane was delayed for a couple hours and - of course - there went my connection.
Now you had some 150 or so angry passengers also having missed their connections yelling at the three ground staff, hurling abuse and insults and giving them a piece of their mind, just about as if the weather is their damn fault.
When it was my turn they informed me that there's no way I can connect to Salt Lake today and they'd put me up in a hotel in Chicago overnight. I informed her that my final destination is actually San Francisco and being nice, polite and understanding that the weather was really not her damn fault she completely went out of her way to rebook my ticket to a non alliance carrier that took me non-stop to SFO a couple hours later. Oh, and that at no additional cost to me.
Until today I'm convinced that just being nice after all those assholes hurling abuse at the poor employee did the trick.
Literally decades ago I flew into Chicago with a connection to Oakland via Salt Lake City (actually wanting to get into SFO, but that was the cheapest connection) and it was miserably cold and snow stormed throughout the Midwest.
The plane was delayed for a couple hours and - of course - there went my connection.
Now you had some 150 or so angry passengers also having missed their connections yelling at the three ground staff, hurling abuse and insults and giving them a piece of their mind, just about as if the weather is their damn fault.
When it was my turn they informed me that there's no way I can connect to Salt Lake today and they'd put me up in a hotel in Chicago overnight. I informed her that my final destination is actually San Francisco and being nice, polite and understanding that the weather was really not her damn fault she completely went out of her way to rebook my ticket to a non alliance carrier that took me non-stop to SFO a couple hours later. Oh, and that at no additional cost to me.
Until today I'm convinced that just being nice after all those assholes hurling abuse at the poor employee did the trick.