Confessions of an Airline Ticket Agent
By TERRY WARD

Air travel these days can be as chaotic and draining as a four year old’s birthday party -- without the goody bags, er, in-flight meals, no less.

But before you lose your cool with a ticket agent in the heat of a cancelled connection moment, think twice.

Those arrangers of seating assignments and labelers of luggage hold more than just your boarding pass in the palms of their quickly typing hands. Depending on your attitude, a ticket agent can turn out to be your best friend.

Or your worst travel nightmare.

We recently dished with a ticket agent with nearly two decades of experience working for a major U.S. airline. In between putting out customer service fires at a Midwestern hub, here's what he had to say:

Payback For Rude Passengers

If someone has really been irate and almost to the point where they're vulgar and mean, agents -- myself, included -- will sometimes take it upon themselves to place that passenger in a position where we can ensure that they're uncomfortable for the next several hours.
Perhaps there are two large people seated on the aisle and window, we can seat the disagreeable passenger right between them. Or if there's a family with children of active ages on the flight, we can ensure that the rude passenger is seated in the middle seat in front of them. Payback situations like that happen frequently.

Most customers are pretty pleasant, but there are passengers who are pretty demanding. They think the world revolves around them -- those type A personalities -- and there's nothing you can say or do to satisfy them.

In the check in process, if someone's being rude or mean, or just not cooperating with the necessary procedures, we can send them through an additional screening process which will require them to open every piece of luggage and have it inspected, thoroughly.

And I can recall situations where bags have ended up in different destinations on purpose when a passenger has been difficult -- they might be going to South Bend, but their bag will get tagged to Singapore because they were really rude. Or Manchester, England, instead of Madison, Wisconsin. Yes, it happens.

I remember this one guy I was checking in, he was just really, really vile. He was up in arms because we couldn't get him an aisle seat or something, and he said, "I'm never going to fly this airline again." I think he was going to Bangkok. I cancelled his return reservations so I'm sure he had some hassle when he got to the airport in Thailand to come home.

It takes a lot to get to me -- years ago it only took a little, but now it takes a lot. But this guy was really awful, and I wanted to make sure I made his life as miserable as possible when it came time for him to get back to this country.

Unusual Passenger Demands

One particular incidence I remember involved a visually impaired passenger. She was connecting through my city, and her flight was delayed. We were at the departure gate, and she told me that her service dog had to go out and use the bathroom, and would I take it outside so it could go. I said okay, not a problem. And I took the dog out, but it wouldn't go.

So I came back inside and told her, "Your dog just kind of walked around." And she said, "Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you that it requires a password to go to the bathroom, but I was told by the handlers not to tell anyone the password."

It was odd, but I guess she figured if I got hold of the password I could make the dog go to the bathroom on demand. It was bitterly cold outside, but I headed back out onto the tarmac with the dog -- believe it or not, you can find some secluded places out there with grass. And I guess it had to go pretty badly, because eventually it went. That was definitely an odd customer service moment.

Lost-in-Translation Occasions

Once there was a lady, a foreigner, and when she was told to place all items into the overhead bin, she took it a little too literally. I got a call from a flight attendant onboard the aircraft that they needed my help because this woman had placed a child's car seat -- with the baby still strapped inside it -- into an overhead bin. So I took the infant out of the overhead bin and strapped it into the seat. It was a problem with the language barrier -- when the passenger was told that everything goes into the overhead bin or under the seat in front of her, she really thought that meant everything.

Another cultural issue that you can sometimes see happens on flights to Hong Kong, Tokyo and Beijing. On flights to spots in Asia for some reason, it's a lot more common for those passengers to cram and push as soon as we open the gate for boarding. We might consider it rudeness in America, but it's just what they all do -- they just rush toward the door.

In general, however, foreigners don't get confused any more than anyone else. Most of them are business people who are familiar with what you can and cannot do anyway.

Inexperienced fliers, however, are another story. You get people who might be flying for the first time, and I've found them sitting in the gate area and the plane is gone, and they're like, "Can I get on the plane?" They'll say, "Why didn't you call me? I didn't hear my name." I had a few instances where people were actually waiting for their names to be called individually to get on the plane.