Here is my experience in dealing with Asiana Airlines --

I set out to return home to Chicago on August 19 after spending eleven days with my wife and her family on our honeymoon in Cebu, Philippines. I was flying all the way from Cebu, Philippines to Chicago, Illinois. My flight from Cebu to Manila was with another airline, and my flight from Manila to Chicago was with Asiana Airlines. Unfortunately, my 9:30 AM flight from Cebu to Manila was delayed by one hour and thirty minutes.

After landing in Manila, I hurried as fast as I could to catch my 1:00 PM Asiana flight to Chicago via Seoul, South Korea.. Just as I was approaching the Asiana check-in area, the Asiana workers were in the physical process of putting up the cordon to close the registration line. If I had arrived just forty seconds earlier, I would have been there before they closed the line. The time on the wall clock read 12:22. A worker there told me that the line closed at 12:20, and that they would not let me take the flight.

I started to beg and to plead with the Asiana employees to just help me out. I tried to reason with them that it was not my fault that the flight from Cebu to Manila was delayed by ninety minutes. I also reminded them that the plane was not scheduled to depart for nearly another forty minutes. When it became clear that the Asiana employees were not going help me out, I became visibly flustered and distraught. I was literally shaking with frustration. The greatest insult with this whole incident occurred when the very Asiana employee who spoke with me at the gate started to smile at me in a self-satisfied manner and began to actually LAUGH at me -- both to my face and to her fellow employees. It seemed clear to me that this person was actually deriving pleasure in seeing an adult traveler reduced to such a powerless state.

I then went to the Asiana offices at the Manila airport. I spoke with a representative from that office, and she told me that the next available flight to Chicago was on September 12 (a day a full three weeks in the future), and that I could take either take that flight or try another airline to get back to Chicago. She told me to try another airline.

So I find myself on the other side of the world from my home without a ticket. Fortunately, another airline had one ticket left on that same day (August 19), a 10PM flight to Los Angeles. Because I needed to get back home to work, I really had no choice but to buy that ticket, so I bought it. The cost of that one-way ticket was over eleven hundred US dollars.

But my trip was far from over. I still had to get my luggage in Los Angeles, and find a flight to Chicago which was still another 2500 miles away. I managed to buy a ticket to Chicago O'Hare departing at 11:40 PM that very night (August 19). The purchase price for that ticket was over three hundred dollars.

I am still very upset with my experience with the Asiana employees at Manila airport. They could have made my life a whole lot easier by being a little more flexible and a whole lot kinder to me. They way I was treated in Manila airport by Asiana employees was not only unprofessional, but downright cold-hearted and cruel. As a result of that experience with Asiana Airlines, all I received from them was the paltry partial refund amount of around two hundred dollars. Ultimately, this entire travel episode cost me the net sum total of an extra $1,200 US dollars.

As they remind us over the intercom at the end of flights nowadays, we do indeed have many airlines to choose from. With that knowledge in mind, I choose not not to give Asiana Airlines my business. My experience with Asiana Airlines was by far the worst airline experience in over four decades of extensive world and domestic travel. In the future, I plan to avoid giving my hard-earned dollars to Asiana Airlines. I encourage you to do the same.