<span style="font-weight: 40A few years ago, I was on my way home, eager to visit my beloved family. It was a direct flight, lasting approximately ninety minutes, scheduled early in the morning. However, due to the unusual occurrence of foggy weather, we were unable to land smoothly. Given that my hometown rarely faced such issues, the pilot believed that the fog would soon clear and continued to circle around, patiently waiting for it to become safe.
<span style="font-weight: 40It didn't happen as expected. By the time they finally gave up and decided to take a different course, we didn't have enough fuel to make it all the way back. So, they took us to the largest airport in the country, which was approximately halfway between the two towns. There, they assured us that we would be well taken care of and would be boarded onto a plane as soon as the weather cleared.
<span style="font-weight: 40When we arrived at that place, however, the crew members from our plane mysteriously disappeared, and the airport staff seemed completely clueless about our arrival. Nothing had been communicated to them, and they looked lost and panicky. They firmly believed that it was simply impossible for them to come up with a plane on the spur of the moment to take us to our intended destination, and they had to find some alternative solution.
<span style="font-weight: 40They placed us in a corner of the airport – not in a specific room, but in an area that wasn't being used at the moment. I found myself sitting on one of the conveyor belts behind a check-in counter because there simply weren't enough seats for everyone, and there were a lot of elderly people as well.
<span style="font-weight: 40After some heated discussions, the staff grudgingly provided us with vouchers for food that barely covered anything in the overpriced airport restaurants. We then requested our luggage so that we could get toothbrushes, changes of clothes, deodorant, and other necessities. We had already been there for about three hours at that point. They said it was impossible to locate our luggage at the moment, but we could clearly see it in a corner behind them, and we pointed it out to them. They claimed that the corporate policy prohibited them from giving us our luggage. It took a lot of arguing from some of the most vocal passengers before they finally allowed us a brief moment to go to our luggage and fetch whatever we needed.
<span style="font-weight: 40When four hours had passed and we still didn't have any information about what would happen to us, we went back to hunt down an employee and demand some kind of solution – put us in a hotel, take us back home, do something. But they just kept repeating the same thing over and over again: they were doing their best to accommodate us, but there was no solution at the moment because all the flights were fully booked.
<span style="font-weight: 40I then asked if they could provide us with a bus. It was a six-hour trip, more or less, to either of the cities. It had been far longer than that since we had left our homes. They said they would check, and thirty minutes later, they said it was possible and they only needed to know who would go to which city and who would rather wait.
<span style="font-weight: 40Relieved, we gave them our information and waited. And waited. And waited. Apparently, the traffic was extremely bad and the buses were stuck. It took over two hours for them to finally arrive. No second voucher for food was provided, although we did receive some water, at least.
<span style="font-weight: 40When they finally showed up, we discovered that the company had made a mess of the number of people who would go to each city. This meant that those going back to where we had started had to squeeze into a bus with no seats left, while those continuing on to our original destination had two full buses with not enough people to even fill one. Fortunately for me, I was on the latter bus, so I was able to sleep soundly throughout the journey by using two seats.
<span style="font-weight: 40I could have sued them. They had violated so many laws by the lack of support they gave us, and it would have been a relatively easy case. However, I decided not to. I didn't want to spend more time and energy on it.
<span style="font-weight: 40The thing is, I ended up working for that company. There, I learned that they had meticulously calculated how much it would cost to follow the law versus how much it would cost in lawsuits and how many people were likely to go to court. If following the law was cheaper, they would do it. Otherwise, they would rather keep their passengers in limbo.
