Complainers gonna complain. And if they can find a place to complain to (here’s how to get an actual person when you contact travel companies), complain they will.
Sometimes their complaints get them a response they’re not expecting:
- Hotel owner reamed guest for complaint
- Complaining business class passenger got what was coming to him
- The sneaky way an airport ended passengers’ complaints about long waits
But sometimes the complaints are just so crazy that they go into the annals of the internet, waiting for travel bloggers to pick up on them. Case in point, people who have complained to airlines. Some of these are classic. Take a look…
Dear Virgin Atlantic: Let me tell you about my “culinary journey of hell”
Back in 2008, Oliver Beale, a passenger on Virgin Atlantic, was on a flight from Mumbai Airport (BOM) to London Heathrow Airport (LHR). He was apparently not happy with the food on his flight. But instead of writing to the airline, he wrote to Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson. The 6-page letter was done so well that many at the time thought it was a publicity stunt.
Click here to see it, as well as Branson’s and Virgin Atlantic’s respective responses.
Dear Air New Zealand: Too much cheese, not enough cracker
Another food-related complaint. Jerry Scott was on an Air New Zealand flight several years back and thought the cheese-to-cracker ratio was unforgivable. He let the airline know via Facebook:
Dear Air New Zealand, I am writing this as a matter of national concern. I have been having sleepless nights wondering if I should mention it or not but tonight the straw broke the camels back. I’m pretty sure that all Air New Zealand faithful have been having the same struggle as I and so tonight I officially raise this concern;
Your cheese to cracker ratio is completely out of whack…
I mean I like cheese, I REALLY like cheese but often the best part of the cheese is having it accompanied by a firm and crisp cracker. I feel that there is sufficient cheese to justify at least four crackers!! Now maybe it’s the one ice cold red wine that I consumed in flight talking here but I took the liberty of taking a photo to show the terrible extent of your problem. Please rectify this horrid oversight…
The airline did reply to him, a bit more than an hour later:
Hi Jeremy, thanks for getting in touch, we appreciate your feedback and have passed this on to our team to look into.
Jeremy’s reply was that he will be publicly executed if they reduced the cheese allowance. 😉
So…more crackers, not less cheese. Got it. LOL I wonder how they worked out for him.
Dear Ryanair: What is UP with your employees?
Ryanair, an ultra low cost airline based in Ireland, is well known for its clapbacks to complainers. But in April, 2014, a passenger on one of their flights had so many problems with Ryanair employees that they couldn’t help but write a letter. It’s unknown if the airline ever wrote back.
The name of the letter writer has been lost of history. But the really funny letter has not. Click here to read it.
Dear Continental Airlines: This lavatory situation stinks
Continental Airlines has gone to the Great Hanger In The Sky (well, it really got bought out by United Airlines in 2010). But little bits and pieces of it live on, thanks to the internet. Like this charmer, handwritten (with drawings!) by an unnamed passenger in late 2004 (heads up for mild NSFW adult language).
12-21-04
FH#888/500 → HOUSTON
SEAT #29ERECEIVED
APR 13 2005
CUSTOMER CAREDear Continental Airlines,
I am disgusted as I write this note to you about the miserable experience I am having sitting in seat 29E on one of your aircrafts. As you may know, this seat is situated directly across from the lavatory, so close that I can reach out my left arm and touch the door.
All my senses are being tortured simultaneously. It’s difficult to say what the worst part about sitting in 29E really is? Is it the stench of the sanitation fluid that’s blown all over my body every 60 seconds when the door opens? Is it the wooosh of the constant flushing? Or is it the passengers a**es that seem to fit into my personal space like a pornographic jig-saw puzzle?
I constructed a stink-shield by shoving one end of a blanket into the overhead compartment — while effective in blocking at least some of the smell, and offering a small bit of privacy, the a**-on-my-body factor has increased, as without my evil glare, passengers feel free to lean up against what they think is some kind of blanketed wall. The next a** that touches my shoulder will be the last!
I am picturing a boardroom, full of executives giving props to the young promising engineer that figured out how to squeeze an additional row of seats onto this plane by putting them next to the LAV.
I would like to flush his head in the toilet that I am close enough to touch, and taste, from my seat.
Putting a seat here was a very bad idea. I just heard a man GROAN in there! THIS SUCKS!
DEPICTION OF MANS BUTT IN MY FACE
Worse yet, is I’ve paid over $400.00 for the honor of sitting in this seat!
Does your company give refunds? I’d like to go back where I came from and start over. Seat 29E could only be worse if it was located inside the bathroom.
I wonder if my clothing will retain the sanitizing odor…. what about my hair! I feel like I’m bathing in a toilet bowl of blue liquid, and there is no man in a little boat to save me.
I am filled with a deep hatred for your plane designer and a general dis-ease that may last for hours.
We are finally descending, and soon I will be able to tear down the stink-shield, but the scars will remain.
I suggest that you initiate immediate removal of this seat from all of your crafts. Just remove it, and leave the smoldering brown hole empty, a good place for sturdy/non-absorbing luggage maybe, but not human cargo.
No word if Continental ever responded.
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