Originally Posted by
Totoro
And about one month later you will receive a reply containing very generic platitudes as below:
"We appreciate that you brought these matters to our attention. It is with your input that we can improve our airline.
Although no carrier can guarantee a flight schedule, we truly regret that your planned schedule was adversely affected. Your continued confidence in Continental to provide safe reliable transportation and exemplary customer service is essential to us. We look forward to welcoming you on board another flight in the near future and appreciate your understanding."
And that's about what this complaint deserves, IMO.
Unless the airline knows that they have an earlier wheels-up time and chooses to take a delay to load additional passengers and take the further delay I see no real basis for complaint here. Maybe an extra 15 minutes on the ground would mean that ATC could allow a direct routing, saving 30 minutes in flight time over the originally filed plans.
In this case, unless there is a reason to believe that the 15 minutes on the ground caused a missed slot that further delayed the flight by 2+ hours (and I doubt that based on the storms) there is no reason to complain, IMO.
The only real beef I'd listen to were I CO management is the lack of communication from the cockpit while waiting out the delay. I'd have an "every 30 minutes" policy even if there was no new data, just to make sure the customers know that we know how annoyed they are.