As many of you know, I was injured on a flight from Los Angeles to New York recently. Shortly after take off, an American Airlines beverage cart negligently came loose from the front of the plane, went flying down the aisle and smashed into me at high speed. Naturally, I thought, as a human being, that someone at the airline would care. Maybe they’d send a card, a sweet phone call, maybe even flowers and chocolate. Well, better late than never I got flowers, a card and something totally unexpected in the mail today, but it wasn’t from who I expected…
Virgin Atlantic Sent Me Flowers, A Hand Written Note And…
My wife came in the room laughing holding a beautiful bouquet of red and white flowers. Why was she laughing? Because they were NOT from American Airlines, but rather Virgin Atlantic. Attached to the flowers was a hand written note and a bag with something carefully wrapped inside. I opened the note to find…
“We might not be who you expected these to be from, but we heard what happened and everyone at Virgin Atlantic wishes you a speedy recovery. And in case you ever fly AA (American) again, we’ve got you covered. Get Well soon.” – The Virgin Atlantic Team
From the flowers and note I had no idea how “Virgin Atlantic” would “have me covered on American Airlines”… until I opened the nice little neatly wrapped bag. Inside…? KNEE PADS. In fact, an entire ground crew kit of elbow, knee pads and other protective equipment. Virgin Atlantic does totally have my back (and knees) covered. Quite literally now…
American Was Asleep At The Wheel. Virgin Atlantic Made Me Laugh…
After two weeks of quietly and discretely hoping that American would show any interest in dealing with a person injured on one of their planes with no result, I opened up about the incident this past week. American Airlines has since done nothing. Zero. It’s abundantly clear now that American Airlines customer service is best handled by airlines completely uninvolved, especially those with a sharp sense of humor, because I am happier now than I’ve been since the incident. Someone cared, somebody cracked me up and geez, let’s be honest… someone made someone else look EXTRA bad here. And if we’re being honest, if I have to get hit by a beverage cart again, I hope it’ll be on Virgin Atlantic. Necker Island must be nice this time of year…
Missed this first time around… See there are British Airlines that deserve to be the flag carrier, not a #nationalembarrassment because of the way they treat their paying customers… Quality and a sense of humour not; gouging, lies, evasion and profiteering (despite their recent party…since they actually deliver what they sell or apologise and compensate most of the time)