I really liked Aloha Airlines and wanted to support them, so booked a round-trip flight from HNL to OAK at spring break. On the way over, we went HNL, KOA, OAK. All good. Flew Aloha Air. Sweet crew, clean, modern, well-kept plane, nice seats, comfortable.
All good. Then we flew Southwest to our ski destination, and came back to OAK for our return flight home. Return flight was Aloha Air from Oakland… nice planes, leather seats, legroom, legendary on-time service.
We’re sitting in OAK feeling all good, waiting to board at the Aloha gate, when over the intercom comes a nice, friendly announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to announce that today’s Oakland-Honolulu flight will be operated by Omni International, in proud partnership with Aloha Airlines. We hope you will enjoy your flight.”
WTF?? What does THAT mean? I thought I bought a ticket on Aloha. Who the hell is OMNI INTERNATIONAL?
(I invite you, dear reader, to Google yourself a little info on Omni International, at this point in the tale.)
At the appointed time, we boarded our flight, all on-time, just like you’re used to with Aloha Air. All good.
Then we sat there while one guy fumbled up and down the plane, trying to find seats for his kids and a space for his huge carry-on bag.
But there didn’t seem to be enough seats to accommodate everybody. The flight crew kept walking up and down the aisle, counting heads. “Hey! We found one back here!” So they stuck one of this guy’s kids in the seat and kept looking for other, open seats. They finally found a seat for the other kid, but had nowhere to stick the big guy himself.
They counted heads a few more times, then gave up and stuck him in one of the stewardessesses (Thank you, Rap Reiplinger!) JUMP SEATS near the emergency exits over the wings. This was near us and I could see the guy was proudly wearing his FAA ID card on an ALPA lanyard around his neck.
He chatted with the crew and ho’omalimali with some other flight attendants who were obviously trying to grab a free flight back home. There were a bunch of them, maybe 5 or 6 others trying to squeeze on the overbooked flight.
This stalled our appointed departure time considerably. We left the gate nearly 40 minutes after we were supposed to have left for KOA.
Aloha had “sold” us to Omni Air.
The plane had boarded on time, but they stalled at the gate for 40 minutes trying to squeeze in an Aloha pilot and his family flying home on standby. Moved people all over the plane, stall, stall, stall. Finally moved some folks around, put the kids together and the pilot rode one of the stewardess’ jump-seats.
We left late and we overheard the vacationing pilot talking to people sitting near him. “Oh, this pilot is taking his time going over. He’s in no particular rush.”
They had sort of Scotch-taped the Aloha logo on a bunch of stuff and pretended to be Aloha, but was really junky plane, microscopic seats, hard as rock, packed to the gills, so narrow my fat arse barely fit.
The movie was shown on 19″ CRT monitors that swung down from the ceiling. (One poor bugga of average height, while walking down the aisle to the lua cranked his head firmly on the hanging CRT!) The displays were faded, was hard to see the picture.
The captain suggested we close our windows to facilitate movie viewing so I went to close mine, only to discover that I had NONE! It was gone. Worse, while fumbling with the window, trying to find the window shade, THE WHOLE WINDOW FRAME CAME OFF IN MY HAND!!!! I banged it back into place with my fist and used a magazine for a window shade. The audio coming through the seat jack kept cutting in and out. After 30 minutes of James Bond, I gave up and listened to music on my iPod.
The flight took 6:15 minutes from Oakland to Kona. Our connecting flight was supposed to be at 3 p.m. from Kona to Honolulu. We pulled up to the gate at about 3:05 or 3:10 and they were still boarding.
A whole bunch of us charged off the Omni plane as fast as could and ran to the Aloha gate.
They told us the Aloha flight was full and that we would be put on the next flight an hour later. Grumble like hell! So the girl at the gate says, “We’ll give you a voucher for another neighbor island round trip and we’ll put you on the next Aloha flight at 4 p.m.” We were satisfied with that and calmed down.
She collected our tickets so, supposedly, they could get the future passes made.
Then 2 other gate agents showed up and took over. They started typing stuff into the terminal at the gate, but they pretty much ignored us. Then one of them turned around and told us to leave the gate area. We refused, because they had all our boarding passes and we were waiting for the future passes. They turned around and ignored us some more.
We waited and waited.
In the mean time, they started boarding passengers through the gate next to us! First was little kids. We thought maybe first class… They let a whole bunch of guys on the plane, then turned to us. They pulled out our boarding passes which they had collected, tore them and sent us toward the plane.
So I asked where my future round trip tickets were.
The gate agent tells me, “You’re not getting one. You were late from Oakland.”
YIKES!!!! That set me off.
“That wasn’t our fault. That was your fault! And the other gate agent promised us passes! That’s why we were standing here for the past hour!”
Her answer: “Look, if you want to argue, go stand on the side and we’ll let everyone else board first. Maybe you’ll get a seat then, or maybe you’ll go on the next flight! Take it or leave it.”
HOLY CRAP!
My family was halfway to the plane already. I decided to go with them. But I promised the gate agent that would be the last time I fly Aloha. I told her, “From now on, I fly GO!”
We were on the road for 12 hours from early this morning until we got home. Man, was I pissed.
I’ll never again fly Aloha unless I have no other options.