Thought I would try to save some money. ATA Midway to Denver $206. United O-hare to Denver $429. I figure for $200 I would drive to Midway and try ATA. The Tuesday 8:50 AM flight to Denver went off fine.

I figure I will catch flight 388 which departs Denver at 6:00 am on Thursday, February 28 so I can get back to the office and still get some work done.

I get on the plane, and the seat I'm in is 16F which is a window seat.
There is a rather large woman in 16D, the aisle seat. I let her know I have
the window, so she gets up to let me in. A few minutes later, her rather
large daughter shows up for the center seat. Since the plane is not full, I
offer to switch to the aisle so I can take another seat in a row that has a
vacancy. She's fine with that as her daughter is really happy because she
wanted the window. So now I have the aisle, the woman is in the center (she
really had to squish to get between the armrests), and her daughter is in
the window.

So, I'm sitting there with my seatbelt unfastened, waiting for
people to get on and figure out which seat I might be able to move to. The
Flight Attendant (Gestapo would be a better description) walks by and tells
me to fasten my seat belt. I tell her I'm waiting for the door to close so
I can take a vacant seat. She informs me I cannot change seats until the
plane is in the air. I ask her since when, as once the door closes, all the
people are on the plane, and you can be guaranteed that whatever seat you
take, someone won't be sitting in it. She replies this is a new FAA or ATA regulation - she isn't sure which one it is. So she continues to work her way
back. I'm thinking this is a really dumb rule, because if you move around
in the air, have to get all your junk out of the overhead, you are asking
for trouble should the plane hit turbulence.

When she comes by again, I ask her how they would even know if I wasn't in
my assigned seat. She tells me there are 5 flight attendants on the plane
and they are watching. I said "and if I change seats, I suppose the flight
attendant police will arrest me." We argue a little longer and finally I
said "listen, I'll just shut up - it isn't worth arguing about." Since I
own my own business, I really don't have a problem with rules, as long as I
have some idea where they came from. And this rule just did not seem to
make any sense.

So we sit there a little longer, people are not loading on the plane as
much, and just before they get ready to leave, they tell me to get off!!
So, what else can I do. To top it off, they wouldn't even let me get on
another one of their flights. They booted me off the entire airline. So I
was in the Denver airport until 4:30, for 10 1/2 hours.

I have since spoken to two people from the FAA - Susan Konrath from the Des Plaines, IL office which handles O'Hare Airport and Bruce Montigney from the Indianapolis, IN office who is the Principal Operations Officer for ATA. Neither is aware of such a regulation!!

I had to buy a $389 one way fare on Frontier. When I got on that plane, I
was seated all the way in the back row, and had it to all to my self. There
was another man seated on the other side at the rear of the plane. The
flight attendant comes out and says "you know those seats don't recline, the
plane isn't full, so if you want to take another empty seat, go ahead." Go
figure, on ATA, that's all I want to do, and they throw me off the plane,
and on Frontier, they offer it to me.

Mr. Montigney suggested I write a letter to Peter Wilander, Vice President of Customers for ATA. I sent the on July 19. A copy is attached in a word document. I called ATA on October 14, and spoke to Janice Bowman, who advised me that Mr. Wilander was no longer with the airline. She suggested I fax her the letter and she would pass it on to the person who took over his duties.

On October 15, I received a telephone call from Mr. Ellis Fawcett. According to Mr. Fawcett, the crew had a different version of the story: The plane left the gate, I stood up and argued with the flight attendant, would not return to my seat, and they had to return to the gate and have me removed from the plane. If that's the case, I wonder why I did not end up in jail. Finally, Mr. Fawcett said he was not aware of any regulation which the flight attendant referred to which would not allow me to change seats. It seems the only way to get the truth is if I would have been wearing a video camera - but I probably could not have passed through security with such a device.

Remember this story the next time you make a flight reservation!
There is a difference in Airlines!!

After receiving my story, Bill Merino from Cerritos, CA related his experience on ATA

Two years ago my wife and I took a trip on unpleasant Hawaiian holidays, which they happen to use a ATA, we were just getting ready to board early Friday morning at 7:00 am at LAX when all of a sudden they announced that the plane was having electrical problems, their back up plane was in the hanger undergoing major repairs. So we sat at LAX for eight hours till they fixed the plane, they were so apologetic that they gave us a whopping 20.00 coupon good for the " next" purchase of a plane ticket at ATA, and the movies were on the house. We finally arrived in Kauai at 10 PM, our luggage had been broken into and gone through, Great start for a vacation I must say.