ENGwear opinionews report
Thu May 18 21:59:13 EDT 2000
Dangerously arrogant, irresponsible,
and unaccountable Air Canada employees:
Air Canada forces passengers to check
carry on luggage, and then, due to
employee incompetence, causes passengers
to miss flight so that their luggage flies
without them.
For passenger safety,
luggage and passengers should always
fly together. However,
Air Canada employees
were arrogant, irresponsible, and
unaccountable, often trying to hide
their name tags, and refusing to tell
passengers their names. Incompetence
combined with unaccountability and
arrogance would be fatal in a free
market economy. Therefore, it appears
that Air Canada is abusing its monopoly
position.
A trip to Washington
Recently I went to a conference with one
of my students to present my
EyeTap
invention at a conference.
This invention, which causes the eye itself
to, in effect, function as if it were
a camera, has attracted considerable
attention and interest. As a result,
I have been travelling extensively,
around the world, often giving up to
three keynote addresses a month at
various conferences and symposia.
Therefore, I have come to know what I
consider to be a reasonable standard of
quality in customer service within the
airline industry.
I carry my luggage onto the aircraft
with me to reduce risks of loss or
damage.
My Air Canada flight AC 346
to Washington, Monday May 15, 2000, was
without incident.
However, on my return, we were delayed
by what I considered to be arrogance
by the Air Canada employee at check-in.
Since we missed the flight, she booked
us on the next flight from Washington
to Toronto, with a stop over in
Montreal.
The flight was a little late getting
into Montreal, and we were informed that
we had been issued "illegal tickets"
in Washington, "illegal ticket" being
one in which there is not enough time
allowed between landing of one plane
and takeoff of the next.
Since this matter was the fault of
Air Canada, the Air Canada employee
at the gate, who refused to give us
her name, told us to go back to the
check-in counter and that we would be
put up for the night in a hotel.
She was to meet us at the check-in
desk, but she never showed up there
to meet with us.
After much confusion and further
waiting, and being unable to locate
the Air Canada employee of no fixed
name, we described
the whole situation
at the check-in desk.
Since I had an important
meeting the following day, I
asked for the first flight out the
next day. Therfore we awoke at 4am,
and got the 5am shuttle back to the
airport, for the 6am flight.
A person alleging to be an Air Canada
employee,
who went by the name of "Gina",
"You're not allowed to take batteries"
-- "Gina" (refused to disclose
full name)
informed us we would need to each
check one of our bags (we each had 2
carry on bags and no luggage to check).
I told her we did not want to risk
any possible loss or damage to our
belongings, but she insisted we each
check one bag, since the flight was
quite full.
We were going to re--arrange the luggage
to put things like clothing and spare
batteries into the luggage to be
checked, but then "Gina" commented that
we were not allowed to take batteries
on board the aircraft. Since I know
that many travelers, like
myself, carry personal computers, and
other personal items that use batteries,
I believed that her comment was
completely nonsensical, so I challenged
her to show me the airline policy that
prohibits carrying batteries aboard
aircraft. She could not present me
with any such policy, so I asked her
to put her statement in writing, e.g.
to write me a note to that effect.
When asked to back her statement up
in writing, she backed down and decided
to allow batteries, but she still
insisted we each check one bag, and
carry on only one bag.
I explained that some of my personal
effects were fragile, and she said
she could put a fragile note on the
luggage, but I was not happy with that
proposal. Accordingly, she took us
off to a quiet corner of the airport
so we would not hold up the line, and
then she called a manager. I knew
by the fact that she took us out of the
line, that we would be waiting a long
time, so after a somewhat long wait,
and no manager appearing, I went back
to the check-in desk while my student
watched our bags. I asked when the
manager would arrive, and I talked to
the Air Canada employee with the two
way radio. She was wearing a name
tag, but the name tag was blank. The
words "Air Canada" were therein
engraved,
but the space below was blank, with
nothing engraved thereupon.
Moreover, a second neckworn name badge
was reversed so that the name
thereupon would also not be visible.
Air Canada employee with blank name
tag. When I tried to take a close
look at the name tag, she quickly
ran away.
Also, why is it that Air Canada employees fiddle around with their
name tags so much? Are they nervous about their names? They should
be proud of their names and proud of their airline.
Eventually two managers came, but one
of them carefully hid his badge when
I tried to look down at it. He
also refused to tell me his name.
The careful art of hiding
your badge
I found that approximately half of the
Air Canada employees I encountered
were of no fixed name. They
either had their name tags obscurred,
removed, or simply without names.
I believe this gives rise to a
dangerously unaccountable situation in
an environment where safety should be
worthy of at least some consideration.
It seems apparent that there are two
kinds of employees, those who are honest
and accountable, and those who are
shifty, and not willing to accept any
degree of responsibility for their
arrogance or deviousness.
Air Canada employees often ask for
identification, so that they have my
name, address, and lots of other
personal information, but they refuse
to give even a minimum of information
about themselves. Simon Davies, in his
writings on democracy and freedom,
defines a totalitarian regime as one
in which the regime would like to know
everything about everyone and yet
reveal nothing about itself. By the
Davies definition, it would appear that
Air Canada functions, at least in part,
as a totalitarian regime, free of
accountability.
The art of avoiding accountability is
a carefully crafted and very subtle art.
Like telling lies as a politician, it
seems seriptitious, at the threshold
of human perception. Suppose we were
to
tap into the left eye of a passenger.
What we might see, if we were able to
recall, in a visual sense, what was
remembered of the signal going into
the left eye, would be quite similar
to what one might have seen with both
eyes, were one present, since the left
and right eye are relatively close
together. Thus we might share the
memory of an Air Canada passenger:
If we could get inside a
passenger's head, and see out
through one of his eyes,
we might better understand Airline
Safety from a passenger's perspective.
An allegedly top-level manager,
allegedly an employee of Air Canada,
quitely and carefully puts his badge
behind his necktie, and closes up his
jacket, as soon as the passenger looks
down to try to read his name. When
asked his name, he of course refuses
to give it. The person who I
believe to be a corrupt official
seems to be trying to hide behind
other people.
While one might argue that the manager
lives in fear of being stalked by
passengers, and therefore should never
give his name, this would be quite a
paranoid viewpoint. Indeed, if Air
Canada is that paranoid, why should
passengers trust Air Canada by
disclosing their names to Air Canada.
Trust is a two-way street. We get
trust through reciprocity of trust.
If Air Canada employees want to act
like untrusting paranoid criminals,
how can passengers trust Air Canada
with their names, addresses, and other
personal information?
Air Canada flys passengers
and their luggage on separate flights
Getting back to the subject I started
with, we were ultimately told that
we would have to each check one of our
bags or would not be allowed to return
home. Since I did now wish to spend
the rest of my life away from home,
and since Air Canada had already made
me late for an important
meeting I wanted to at least attend part
of, we put the luggage into checked
luggage. We were told there was not
enough time to really re--arrange the
luggage, so we put in the luggage.
I would not feel safe on
an airplane in which passengers and
luggage travelled separately.
If a passenger missed a flight, I would
expect, for my own safety, that the
luggage would be removed from the
aircraft.
Air Canada mixups
lead to mis-handled luggage
Inventors and scientists often
experience delays boarding aircraft
due to the need to ensure safety and
security with respect to various
new inventions. Even small items
like floppy disks were of grave concern
due to their unfamiliarity.
Most airlines are reasonable, so that
it is in fact possible for an inventor
to bring his invention to Washington
to show to prospective investors.
But Air Canada seems to me to be just
plain stupid in this regard.
Air Canada delayed us, yet again,
this time
because of their security concerns over
the items we were bringing onto the
plane. The irony of the whole matter
is that because of the delay, they
flew our luggage back to Toronto
without us.
Our luggage went on flight AC 433,
but we went on a much later flight.
Thus half of our
experimental apparatus was sent back
with the other passengers, while the
other half remained with us.
Further delays
Finally we got to the gate to get
the next flight out.
As we were boarding the plane,
the flight was cancelled, for no
reason. The rumour was that the reason
was a mechanical problem with the plane,
but the weather was blamed as the
problem.
Trashing a passenger's bags
When we finally got back to Toronto
this morning,
we found our luggage, set aside from
the luggage area, which we were
told had been sitting there all
morning.
Our personal effects
showed evidence of severe
mishandling, and we were concerned
about damage. Some of our personal
items were physically damaged, but we
were more concerned about actual
functional damage, so we took our
bags to the claims area. I asked
if I could inspect items (e.g.
personal portable computers, personal
monitor, etc.) in the presence of
the Air Canada employee. I asked
him if I could plug my computer into
an outlet there to check to make sure
it was still working, since the battery
was discharged, but I had the power
cord with me.
He refused to allow me
to plug my computer in, and he went into
the back room to allegedly talk to his
manager. He emerged later to tell me
his manager would not allow me to plug
in my computer.
The phone rang, and he (going by the
name "Frank") had to talk to
go to see another person, so while he
was gone, I knocked loudly on the door
to the back room. Another employee
answered so I asked him if he was the
manager or if the manager were present.
He said there was no manager in the
room.
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which will be continually updated at
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in the near future.