This weekend I was in Toronto with my family celebrating my grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary. Quite the landmark, eh! People flew in from Denver, Greenville, DC… and just down the street. So, of course, I’ll be writing about something stupid that the airlines did.

My dad booked his and my mom’s ticket on United using their points credit card (with his name on it). Booked as any married couple traveling together might - booked at the same time, on the same card - no big deal. They showed up to check in on the day of the flight and discovered that my dad’s super platinum medallion something-or-other status had put him in row 11 and my mom, since her name was not attached to the exciting status, was placed in row 18. It didn’t seem to matter that they had made their reservation together, only one name was elevated, and by golly-you-betcha-wow, only ONE person was going to be receiving the “Friendly” part of the Friendly Skies.

Now don’t worry… my dad wheeled and dealed (since he was allowed to board before my mom) and got them sitting next to each other. But come on people! We’re not even talking about a first class upgrade here. We’re talking about seating two people who booked their travel together… together! Affinity programs are great.  Rewarding those customers who have shown their loyalty is rockin’.  But this is where a company needs to empower its employees to allow common sense to win out over who the computer spits out as “loyal.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 3:20 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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