What is the worst airline...EVER?

Just curious to see which airline DUers had trouble with the most...

Edit: I personally had a bad experience with Northwest Airlines....

Filthy planes, lousy service. The Greyhound of the sky.

Air travel hit rock-bottom with SWA.

And they have a perfect safty record.

A couple of years ago we were stranded at Heathrow on a trip from Paris to Kansas City because the flight was two hours late leaving Paris and we missed the last plane to the U.S. by 15 minutes. Actually, our plane was there, but they wouldn't let us board and gave our seats away. We had to sleep in the airport, and it was scary. There were derelicts in there. One guy was playing with tape and scissors and kept laughing.....we were afraid to close our eyes. This was pre-911 by the way.
The worse thing was, the airline woudn't put us up or even let us stay in a safe place in the airport, like their lounge.
There was nothing available on that plane, either, "in our class." We were flying coach.
I'll never fly Air France again. I hate them and that snooty bitch at Heathrow who worked the desk in terminal 3.

Flying bananas. Rude and ugly stews!

Worst....Airline....Ever. (I'm lucky to have missed my only potential flight I would've taken with them) They had HORRIBLE problems with their plane maintenance, the FAA repeatedly threatened to shut them down if they didn't fix the problem. The CEO and executives didn't give a shit. They were willing to let folks die. There were several USAir crashes in the late-80's to early-90's that occured due to shitty maintenance.

Look, when it comes to categories you look for in a good airline, luggage and delays are friggin' circus peanuts when you compare it to plane maintenance and checkup. USAir failed MISERABLY in that field.

On edit: Yes, I did get my username from the airline, but not in the way you think. The story of the origin of my moniker is too much of a long and boring one to tell at 3am. Well... Basically I was stoned at the time. That's 50 percent of the story right there....

sounds like they went down before my time, though.

BTW, Northwest...when are you moving to Fargo? Or did you already?

My 4th floor dorm room overlooks the minor-league ballpark (which is in the building I wanted), but not on the top floor like I wanted. But considering that NDSU's housing shortage is so bad that they're bunking students (mostly freshmen) up in hotels, and the fact that I'm only transferring as a sophomore, I think I'll be greedily holding on to this room for a while, thank you. The chances of me getting such a CHOICE room this summer after the enrollment increased by over 600 were probably about one in a thousand. I kinda think of it like I won 1,000 bucks at the casino, or something. I got some of my stuff in boxes already anyway.

How big is NDSU? I mean, if they're starting to bunk kids in hotels, it kinda has to be a bit too small for it's current student body. Oh, need any help packing up to go? I have, like, nothing to do in the next week...then I have to get ready to go back to school (after the summer vacation i've had...i'm looking forward to it. My summer was downright shitty.) Oh well, at least i'll get to see my friends again...

There's not enough dorm space for all the students. But they're constructing hundreds of new units right now, and there'll be enough constructed by October. NDSU is almost 12,000 students with around 900 faculty. Thanx for the offer on the packing, but I'm packing relatively light, so I'll be fine. I will definitely catch you (and others) at the next Twin Cities DU meeting (asuming you'll be there, of course), and I'm hopefully gonna plan a Red River Valley DU meeting this winter after my school-related stress takes a break.

I wish you the best of luck on your move. And, if I can, i'll see about making the red river valley one...although i'd prolly have to have my license first...if it's April or later, I might have a chance. But, If I can make it to a gathering here in the Twin Cities, I'll see you there!

Had a couple flights with them a few years back. Dunno about the turbulance, but they sure as hell had problems getting the plane smoothly into the air, to say nothing about how badly they landed, ouch!

who merged ...

Can I help you???.....:P:P:P

Seriously... No first class. No business class.

MOOO! I've had better rides and better service on charter busses. There's nothing quite like being herded like cattle.

-- Allen

heh heh heh

takes the cake.

Puerto Rican International Airlines (now defunct, I think)

On a flight from San Juan to St Thomas my former navy aviation mechanic husband kept noticing the rivets on the wing were disappearing - and he insisted on telling me. This was after the flight attentant pulled the rope to close the door (the kind with the stairs attached) and asked one of the passengers to hold it (the rope).

It was a short flight but a storm had closed the airport in St Thomas and we were circling until they opened the runway. Not the airlines fault but I couldn't wait to get off that plane!

The return flight was canceled and we were helpless to arrange another one back to SJ to meet our connection to Boston. So we waited for the lovely Prinair folks to decide to bring in another plane. One of the worst airline experiences of my life. Now it's funny.

the bargain airlines from the '80s and '90s. People's Distress used to have cheap fares to Florida and used to constantly cancel flights and leave travellers stranded.

People's Express ... my cattle car ride to Gatwick ushering me on my 1st trip to Europe ... it was cheap and wild ... one flight attendant finally had it with one group when she said: will you just shut up and sit down ... wheeeeeeeeeee ...

WORST AIRLINE EVER.

I love the play names.

I usually only fly Delta, and I had my first bad experience with them last week. We had a plane change because of a mechanical problem and I lost my seat assignment. Long story short I got into a shouting match with some asshole stew who was perhaps the rudest Delta employee I have ever met. He implied I didn't pay for my ticket, or something like that.

I dunno, if I was 35, gay, balding, and stuck schlepping drinks to cranky passengers, I guess I'd be moody too.

I hear they are crashtastic.

My Hugarian friend used to tell the folllwing joke about Aeroflot:

Setup: Why is Aeroflot the fastest airline in the world?
Punchline: Because they can go from Budapest to Oslo in 5 seconds.

Why is this funny? In Hunagian "Oslo" means broken into many pieces.

It's GOTTA be ValuJet, people. NO OTHER airline would go out of business after suffering ONE fatal crash.

"Air" by Sparta

Apathy Falls in the ocean
at least we went down fighting
At the bottom of the ocean
this scenery can fail calm
Up till right now we're riding fine, yeah
But the curving walls leave me behind, yeah

Do you remember those days?
Did you forget those days?
And what would the oddsmakers say,
would the oddsmakers say?

We're drinking on jet streams
Through to ideas won't happen

Laid out on benches
Through to sink for this reason

If you see through these motives,
then please report your progress
to the captain, our captain
so he can mark the atlas
Never considered this a prize, yeah
but the curving walls leave me behind, yeah

Do you remember those days?
Did you forget those days?
And what would the oddsmakers say,
would the oddsmakers say?

We're drinking on jet streams
Through to ideas won't happen

Laid out on benches
Through to sink for this reason

Remember those days,
Forget those days
And what would the oddsmakers say,
would the oddsmakers say?

We're drinking on jet streams
Through to ideas won't happen

Laid out on benches
Through to sink for this reason

At some point in time. Every single one of them has lost my luggage, screwed up a trip, treated me rudely, etc. The only airline I EVER had a good experience with was British Air.

A couple of years ago, I had booked a trip to London on Delta using my frequent flyer. My connection to London was in DC, I just needed to hop down there from Philly. They advertised that they had a flight to DC every single hour. My flight was cancelled, no Delta flight left in the next 4 hours between my original flight and my connection, and they refused to put me on another airline to get me to DC because I was using frequent flyer miles. I missed my connection (I could have driven to DC in 2 hours) and missed a whole day of my vacation. Haven't used Delta since.

Last month I was on United from Reno to Philly. There were about 250 people in line to check baggage, and they had no curbside people. They had ONE gate agent checking in the coach class and TWO agents at the First Class window, checking in the five or so people in line there at any given time. Everyone in line was seething mad!! So, no more flights on United.

Philly is a USAir hub (now a "partner" with United, so you have to be careful), so I often have to use them. They take forever to get your luggage out when you land (seriously, over an hour), and they routinely lose my luggage. I'd say 50% of the time it doesn't make on the plane. Then you have to stand in line with a gazillion other people at the lost luggage office, where they usually have one employee, and give all your info about your bag. One time I did this and the bag hadn't arrived 3-4 days later, and then they claimed I had never filled out the paperwork, even though I had a copy. I finally got my bag a week later. Can't really boycott them though, or I could never go anywhere.

Ugh, airline service SUCKS!!

It was a real nail biting experience.

My favorite airline-- All Nippon Airways.

I flew to Japan with them in 2002 after ten years of flying only U.S. airlines. What a pleasure: sufficient leg room, the world's sweetest and most helpful flight attendants, and reasonably good Japanese versions of Western-style food. Supposedly they are upgrading their fleet, and soon all the planes will have seatback TVs with video on demand.

They are so bad that on one trip I actually charged the tickets back to the credit card company. They say that you normally can't do that with plane tickets but in my case, the story was so awful, that they did! About a quarter of the time they sell you a ticket and then they don't even have a plane. Apparently they have labor issues and don't maintain their planes until parts are falling off...literally, that was the excuse we were once given for a delayed flight...a part had fallen off the wing! Sheesh!

Some world traveler.

They are the worst airline ever.
But for a reason that's different than most of the other reasons that people have for hating airlines.
Delta was the main airline behind all the moves by airlines to cut, and then eliminate the commission paid to travel agencies for ticketing. Especially when, at the time, travel agents were responsible for about 80% of the bookings and ticketing on the airlines.
It was a move that put a lot of workers out of work and small businesses out of business.

according to people I know who work for it in Portland.

For example, the flight attendants were told that coach passengers would no longer be able to get twists of lemon or lime in their drinks, so the airline could save $44,000 a year!

As one whose typical airline beverage is tonic and lime, I resent the company taking away even that last minor pleasure of air travel.

True, their parent company Alaska attempts to be a decent airline, but the Horizon planes are ridiculous. Just try sitting on one, let alone attempting to use the bathroom, if you are taller than about 5'10".

Other than that, it's gotta be America West. Which sucks just as bad now as it did when Howard Hughes owned the company.

Maybe he owned more, I don't know.

Why? Because they routinely passed out (and perhaps still do -- I stopped flying them) these little religious flyer things with the peanuts. Some Bible crap about Oh almighy lord, blah, blah, blah. Just get me to my destination, okay, you f*&@in' annoying evangelical Alaska airline executives and stop your stupid proselytizing.

Continental sucks too.

When I was a travel consultant I wasted MORE time helping people try to track lost luggage:grr:

Besides, they were the ones that wanted to pilot the color-coded boarding passes. I think they are pretty fascist.

I did have a really bad experience on US Airways once. The plance was so noisy and vibrated so badly, I got a nosebleed. They are the 2nd worst, I think.

Carol