Federal Aviation Administration Southwest Airlines responds to family (who was discriminated against during a recent flight) by stating: That fact, combined with your decision to take these issues the “Social Media” route, leave me no alternative but to wonder with regard to the reasons for your correspondence and to conclude that attempting to refute what I believe to be baseless, bordering on irresponsible allegations would be less than productive for either of us. states Mr. Jim Ruppel, Vice President Consumer Relations. Mind you, this was one of our concerns: Hi Verity! I wanted to thank you for taking the time to call me today. I am sorry I missed your call. I appreciate the fact that you seem concerned about the issues that arose during our trip, and appreciate the quick response from you and Mr. Ruppel. I want you to know that I have absolutely no problem with Southwests customer service. You folks have been fast to respond. As I stated earlier, I have a concern regarding whoever is doing the actual investigating of these issues. I would think the first stop to an investigation would be to get further details from the person who had the issues. While my email outlined most of the occurrences, I would think it would be important to get full details regarding what happened. While I am not going to relive or revisit the Denver flight at this point, I wanted to mention a bit more in detail regarding the service issue regarding my youngest as an example of why it might be important to gather further information for comparison to your staffs response. While we were on the flight to Oakland, we ran into a slight issue aboard the flight. I am unclear if the person sitting in front of my son simply did not like kids, or what her issue actually was. As soon as we reached cruising altitude, the lady in front of my son stood up and shook her fist at my son. She said you better stop kicking my seat. Now mind you, he is five years old and she has a closed fist. I explained to her very calmly that First off, these are just kids, and secondly, he was not kicking her seat. I asked her not to threaten my son, and told her she should just sit down. While I know kids can be rambunctious, my kids were actually on their best behavior. I raise them to respect others, and they were doing an amazing job. While I do not blame Southwest for this customers actions, I do fault the actions of the flight attendant. When the flight attendant came around to take drink orders, this lady passed her a note. The flight attendant read the note and nodded to the customer. Now when the flight attendant came over to take our drink order, she was giving us the dirtiest of looks. While she was very polite to my wife and other two kids (because she did not know we were together) if mean looks could kill, me and my other two would be dead. My guess was after reading the note, your flight attendant had already made up her mind about the entire situation. Let me remind you, my kids were being very respectful of their surroundings and was not effecting this person in any way. So I mentioned to my wife across the aisle at that point, how amazing the situation was. About fifteen minutes later, and not hearing a word from the flight attendant, I went to use the restroom. It was at that point that the flight attendant went over to my kids, leaned over my oldest son, so she could yell at my five year old. When I got back to my seat, my son was not crying, but he had tears in his eyes. He was trying to be a big boy about the situation. He asked me why everyone was picking on him when he was being really good. I had to explain to him that sometimes we deal with people who are not friendly, but we just have to be kind and hope it rubs off on them. At that point, my wife explained to me that the flight attendant came out as soon as I went into the bathroom the flight attendant yelled at Landon. At that point, I went to the back of the plane and explained to this flight attendant that the person in front of us threatened my son, said he was kicking her seat, which in fact he was not, and I did not appreciate her yelling at him when I was not present. I explained the interaction with this customer in detail. The flight attendant then told me that he should not use the tray table, as maybe that was what was causing this sick passenger grief. I explained that after this person threatened him, he had been sitting cross legged and very uncomfortable himself. The fact that he could not use the tray to color in his coloring book was absurd yet he complied because he though he was doing something wrong. Lets put it this way, the other flight attendant was so amazing, when she walked by she saw that he was bummed out, and she took the time to stop and chat with the kiddos even though it was not even her section. She gave high fives all around, and really made a cruddy day look a little better. As I stated, I do not fault Southwest for the actions of this irate person in front of us, but the flight attendant handled the situation about as inappropriately as a person could in that situation. It was inappropriate to make up her mind on a situation based on one persons view. Even more so, it is inappropriate to wait until a parent is not present to confront a young child. It is inappropriate to not inform the parent of a child if there is any perceived problems. It is inappropriate to raise your voice to any paying customer, child or not. It is inappropriate to disipline a paying customers child and refuse usage of the basic items (tray table) provided to all paying customers, especially without the parent being present. Now I would urge you to talk to the flight attendants on all of our flights. Our kids were extremely well behaved, and respected their surroundings. Landon sat right behind the relief pilot on the way from Oakland to Spokane. I would urge you to contact him and ask for his opinion on how my kids were acting, and more importantly, if my five year old disturbed him in any way. This man took the time to chat with my kids, which I am thankful for, so he should remember my family. I know he overheard me talking to my wife about the concerns we both have, so I think this pilot took the extra time to interact with us and make the last leg of our trip an enjoyable one. I am glad because my youngest was feeling real beat up at that point. I was stressed to the max as I was still dealing and struggling with the anxiety of even being on a plane again after Denver, and running into the service issues we faced right out of the gate on the return flights had me frazzled. This pilot really made our day, and as I said, should be able to attest to how my kids were acting in his presence. Now like I said, I have no issues with customer service, however I would think specifics like this would be needed to do a proper investigation of the issues I reported. While I know it takes time to review issues, I do not understand why someone wasnt on the phone getting specifics of the issues I reported. I think that having all of the information would be needed to make informed decisions on what needs to happen in the future. I dont think that is an unreasonable expectation to expect that these concerns get properly investigated. I tried to pick and choose my concerns. As I am sure you could tell, we were delayed both ways, but I understand things happen. One of the wheels on our suitcase was broken during baggage handling, but I did not complain. My luggage is as old as my oldest child (Almost 16 years old), so something was bound to break sometime. Now the safety and service concerns I have explained in previous correspondence is another story, as there is absolutely no excuse for it in my humble opinion. Now just because I am more then frustrated over the situation, and not in my opinion being properly looked into (based on not contacting me for further info), I have spent a lot of time preparing a campaign to go over Facebook, Twitter, and numerous blogs, online newspapers, Craigslist (nationwide) and dedicated websites, your genuine concern about what happened to us has me stumped. I can tell from our correspondence and your voicemail message that you seem to have a genuine concern for the situation, and I appreciate that. It is because of that fact that I have deleted as many of the posts as I could find that posted regarding this issue, and have taken down all links to the icryswa website on all major airlines facebook pages. If you have a concern for the issues we faced and are truly looking into it, then I might have gone a little overboard for no reason at this point. While I am not saying I wont continue down that path if I do not like the response from SWA after the investigation, I want to give you the respect you deserve and take down our story while you are looking into it further. Thanks again for the call! -CoryI also wanted to point out the fact that when it comes to the service issue with my youngest, I planned on reporting the passengers threatening behavior to the Airport Police in Oakland, but we had mere seconds to board the continuing flight to Spokane. I would think it would be illegal to threaten a person with a closed fist, especially when they are five years old. I could not believe how the flight attendant handled the situation, as the passenger was extremely aggressive towards a young child. If you need any further info regarding the safety concerns I witnessed, or the service issues I have brought up, please do not hesitate to ask. -Cory #TBT social.southwest/SiU
Posted on: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 17:10:06 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015