I have to respond to this. I had an absolutely horrible experience on ATA that convinced me never to fly with them again, regardless of price. Almost every single leg of the trip had some sort of problem that made it overall a disaster. I wrote to their customer service and HQ after the trip with my concerns, and never received even a letter back.

My flight was Flint to Phoenix, via Chicago.

Flint to Chicago – we arrived in a small plane that parked in some remote corner of the airfield. We were picked up by a shuttle bus to be taken to the main terminal. We get to the main terminal, and the shuttle bus driver cannot figure out how to open the door of the bus. He sits there for 10 minutes, looking at buttons, finally trying to physically force open the door, but he can’t figure it out. He exits from a driver door on his side, leaving the busload full of passengers alone on the tarmac. Finally a passenger goes up to the front and finds a button marked “door”, pushes it and voila. We are out and make our way to the terminal from the tarmac since no one is around to direct us. I had to RUN to make my connection and almost passed out since I was carrying a big backpack.

Chicago to Phoenix – the plane came in for a landing and appeared to be just a few feet off the ground when suddenly it took off again into the sky. We had circled halfway around Phoenix before the captain came on to explain what happened (last minute thing from the control tower.) Meanwhile, some of the passengers were scared to death.

Phoenix to Chicago – I actually don’t remember any problems here.

Chicago to Flint – We get into another shuttle bus to be taken out to that same far corner of the airfield. We drive up to a plane but its empty. The driver is confused and makes some calls. We go to another isolated corner of the airfield without any planes nearby and wait. And wait. For a full hour and a half. Many passengers are standing in this shuttle bus, and after about a half hour people are starting to get sick from the fumes. They beg the driver to open the door since there are no windows. There is an ATA pilot on the shuttle bus (not the pilot for the flight) and he is mortified and apologizing to passengers. Finally the shuttle bus pulls up to a plane. The crew and pilots and scrambling, and tell us that apparently our original flight got “lost” and they are not the usual Flint flight crew, they were just called quickly to man the flight.

Never, ever again. The worst part is this stupid shuttle bus system they have for connecting flights in Chicago. If I was going directly from Chicago to Phoenix, maybe it would not have been a problem. They just seemed incompetent at every level.