The Beautiful Beach Wedding
Recently I spent a weekend in Key West, Florida for a friends beautiful beach wedding. I had a wonderful experience with Delta Airlines on the way in, but when I flew out of the island I had a much different experience with a different airline.
Flying out to my connecting flight in Fort Myers, Florida with Cape Air, was a day from hell. I had used Priceline.com to book my round trip flight, and Delta was spot on with sending me my confirmation email saying that I could check into my flight. My bags were packed and I was ready for my two flights to make it into sunny Florida. But when the day came to leave the beach front and make it back to chilly Ohio my email inbox was empty. There was not “You can check into your flight now!”
So I decided I would try the airports website to make sure my flight was departing on time. The website said all flights were on time. My flight was at 3:45 p.m. and I figured I’d leave the hotel around 1:00 p.m. to make sure I could check in and have plenty of time to make it through security.
Well lucky me there was a Blue Angels Air show happening at the Key West airport and I was never informed that it would delay all flights. Every single one of them. This was not mentioned on any websites that I checked. And apparently my flight wasn’t leaving until 4:45 the earliest. I had a connecting flight that left at 5:50 and the trip from Key West to Fort Meyers was suppose to be 50 minutes long. I was being told by the snobby desk women that I would have to most likely re-book.
NO ONE contacted me about this delay either. No phone call or email. They claim that they didn’t have one on file. How could I have booked that flight without providing a phone number of email? How could I have gotten a conformation email from the other airline when I was flying in? Why would other people show up at the same time as me to board the same flight?
Cape Air was the worst flying experience I have ever had while traveling. I could not have been more upset at the fact that I could had been at the beach spending time with my friends instead of watching Netflix in a small airport lounge. Cape Air is far behind the advancements of other airports. I had no idea I was flying out of a 10 passenger airplane until I was boarding. Which explains why I got the worst customer service ever. It also explains why they are in the stone age of technology. They probably don’t even know how to operate an email account. And really if you only had nine passengers to worry about shouldn’t ALL NINE of them be aware of the flight delay. Should’t that at the very least be posted on your website?
My view of the front of the plane from my seat.
Don’t worry though. I was a beast running through the airport and a second security check and barely made it onto my flight.
So Cape Air, my suggestion to you, is upgrade your website, your customer service/training, and how you retain emails and phone numbers of your clients. It will keep you from losing customers.
Directing Your Brand 