Originally Posted by deelmakur
Forgot. While US may be the Philly distributer of this kind of airline attitude, it should be fairly easy to get a status match from someone else, who, while probably being just as user unfriendly, would at least have a few backup flights (or a daylight one in the AM) to overseas destinations. CO comes to mind. Personally, if it's the UK you are going to, I'd take a flight to JFK, buy a Business Class ticket on Maxjet (they are cheaper than full Y on most carriers, and they quietly sell standby seats at day of departure for a real low fare...they are rarely full, have 108 reclining biz seats on a 767, built to carry over 200...serve quality meals unknown to Envoy travelers, have private lounges, and use London Stansted, where overseas handling is quicker, and there is a fast train to London that takes 40 minutes).
I have had at least a dozen Maxjet passengers turning up at the US Airways desk in LGW over the past few days because their flights are cancelled. Maxjet sent multiple passengers to LGW from Stansted and told them to simply go to the US Airways desk. They did not contact US Airways to make any kind of arrangements. Maxjet made no attempt to pre-arrange travel for their cancelled flight, and did not give their passengers any form of documentation allowing them to travel on US, and we were only able to offer them the option of buying a new ticket in Envoy Class at over £2,000. Many of their passengers were very vocal in saying it was the worst service they had ever received when supposedly travelling as business class passengers.
This is not how a professional, scheduled airline operates, and this situation left many people stranded. Perhaps this scenario has given me an unfair opinion of Maxjet.. I'm sure they have may satisfied passengers.. however their pax should be aware that although they are a 'business class' airline, when things go wrong they have no agreements with scheduled carriers (they are like a business-class EasyJet) and if their flights are delayed/cancelled, no-one else can help them out.