| pgary |
Oct 19, 2004 4:25 pm |
Grupo Taca, once you get to Central or South America. I think they have a simply outstanding customer service center inside the San Jose, Costa Rica, airport. They took wonderful care of me when I was stranded there on 9/11/01 on my way home from Peru. Hotel, meals, transportation, first flight out. At the same time, Continental (the airline my traveling partner was using) said they could not get her home for three weeks, would not wait list her for anything, would not agree to contact her at her hotel if something should open up, would not contact other airlines for her, and would not help her with hotel, meals, or anything else.
Another time we volunteered to be bumped. The plane was obviously crowded, but they didn't ask for volunteers. But they bumped us anyway. We had been routed to leave in the morning to Miami,then connect to San Francisco on American. They routed us to leave on their planes in the afternoon via San Salvador, arriving 15 minutes later than we had been originally scheduled, and gave us a $600 credit for our trouble (which got me to the above mentioned Peru trip). We asked what they suggested we could do during the day wait for our afternoon plane. They suggested Zoo Ave (wonderful!), and provided taxi transit both ways to it! They they walked us through immigration, since we had already passed through it when entering the airport.
Oh, yes. Free wine on the plane. A few weeks ago I flew Continental to Peru (forced to by my tour company). They wanted $5 for a glass of wine.
But...anything I am told by any of there employees in the U.S. is often incorrect. And I once stood in line for 3 hours to get on a plane from San Francisco, during which time I watched a ticket agent stand and watch a couple for 20 minutes plastic wrap their luggage. It never occured to him that he could be serving other customers while this was happening. Once I finally got to an agent, I was told that I was late. It took major self control to not explode.
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