US Airlines Makes Customers Wait For Days

Just a quick one:  I'm in Florida on a Saturday on the weekend ending spring break.  There have been some storms in the North-eastern US and Canada causing the cancellation of a bunch of flights.  I am booked through Philadelphia to Montreal.

My buddy and I get to the Airport and we're told to join a line on the curb.  There is a $2 surcharge to check in at the curb before we get in, but the line inside is about 500 people long, so we stay outside.  We don't move for a while, then we slowly make our way up.  When we are nearly at the front the staff ask for people on a specific flight that was leaving soon and process those people before us.  Once those people are done the staff disappears, then returns.  They fiddle around for a few minutes, then tell us that that are "out of tags" at the curb and we must go to the back of the line with 500 people in it.  Tempers explode as some passengers rip the guy a new verbal butthole.

We get in the back of the mega-line, where I find out that some people have been there for 7 hours and become discouraged.  Passing a monitor I find that my flight was delayed.  No matter; before I get very far the new departure time is coming and I am called to the front to be processed in time for the flight.  Near the front people are crying because they've been there all day and nobody is helping them.  They want to get to Philly after being bumped from other flights from today and prior, but Philly is sold out for the next 3 days.

I get to the front and find out that I can go to Philly if I want, but my connection will be missed.  Since I like Florida better, I elect to stay here and book on a better airline.

All that to say I find it amazing that an airline does not have better communication or caring for the customers.  They make them wait for hours or put people on standby lists that they know damn well will not make it.  All this even after Jet Blue is lambasted all over the news a few weeks earlier because of fiascos with customer inconvenience.  How hard is it to just rebook people instead of making them waste hours only to tell them to come back later or drive to another city where they will only face more hours of waiting and more disappointment?  It would even save money because every US Airlines employee there was working mostly to turn people away one at a time.