Dear US Airways

I know you're no longer in business, but I have a bone to pick with you

For those of you new to this Substack, you should know that I hold grudges, as tightly and tenderly as I hold my first cup of coffee in the morning. I’ve held a grudge against a pizza place near our house for the past 17 years because a) they serve mediocre pizza, and b) 17 years ago we stopped there for dinner after one of the kids’ soccer practice and even though we were THE ONLY PEOPLE THERE and had ordered a bunch of pizzas the lady behind the counter yelled at me when I went back to the salad bar to get another scoop of garbanzo beans because I had ordered a side salad and not the all-you-can eat salad. I have not set foot in there since, but I do make it a point to give it my most baleful side eye every time I walk by. Take that, garbanzo-hoarding mediocre pizza place!

If you think 17 years is a long time to hold a grudge, keep reading. And please don’t tell me that holding grudges is unhealthy. I know grudge-holding is not for everyone, but I enjoy it, okay? Like my first cup of coffee, it energizes me and gives me material and fills me up on the inside. My fellow curmudgeons and grudge-holders understand me. So does comedian Erin Jackson:

ejthecomic

A post shared by @ejthecomic

Today, I bring you a vintage post about a grudge I’ve held since September 1997, which, according to my calculations, was almost 28 years ago. And if you think nearly 28 years is a long time to hold a grudge, I present for your consideration my grandmother Tsilya, who held a grudge against my great-aunt Klara for over 50 years because great-aunt Klara (allegedly) slipped pocket money to my dad and his brother without first checking with my grandmother. What I’m trying to say is that I’m genetically preloaded for grudge-holding. I can’t help it. It’s in my nature.

And now I present to you an even longer-simmering grudge. The airline in question no longer exists, but my grudge will live forever.

---

To whom it may concern,

I’m writing to express my extreme disappointment with the way you handled my husband’s and my return trip from Rome, Italy, to San Francisco, California, in September 1997. Yes, I know it was a long time ago, and yes, I know your airline was absorbed by American Airlines in 2015, but I’m still mad about it. So mad that 27 years later, my husband still says, “Why don’t you write a letter to US Air about it?” whenever I complain about anything. To be fair, I complain a lot. It’s like a hobby. But in this case my complaints are absolutely warranted, even though I haven’t voiced them to anyone except people in my immediate vicinity for the past 27 years.

There’s a book called Dear American Airlines whose first paragraph goes like this:

Dear American Airlines,

My name is Benjamin R. Ford and I am writing to request a refund in the amount of $392.68. But then, no, scratch that: Request is too mincy & polite, I think, too officious & Britishy, a word that walks along the page with the ramrod straightness of someone trying to balance a walnut on his upper ass cheeks. Yet what am I saying? Words don’t have ass cheeks! Dear American Airlines, I am rather demanding a refund in the amount of $392.68. Demanding demanding demanding. In Italian, richiedere. Verlangen in German and требовать in the Russki tongue but you doubtless catch my drift.

Be grateful that unlike the fictional protagonist of Dear American Airlines, I am not asking you to picture me slapping an imaginary table and then “bursting to my feet and kicking the chair behind me, with my finger in your face and my eyes all red and squinty and frothy bittles of spittle freckling the edges of my mouth as I bellow, roar, yowl, as I blooooooow like the almighty mother of all blowholes: Give me my goddamn money back!” Technically, I can’t ask for our goddamn money back because you did eventually get us from Rome to San Francisco and also kicking chairs and bellowing is not my style. My style is less explosive outrage and more simmering resentment and tenacious grudge-holding.

Still. David and I were supposed to fly from Rome to New York, change planes, and continue from New York to San Francisco, where we would be met by my parents and our three-year-old son, who had been diagnosed with autism three months prior. We planned the trip to Italy before Jordan’s diagnosis, and we were going to cancel the trip, but my parents volunteered to watch Jordan and take on his intensive schedule of speech therapy and occupational therapy appointments and incidental teaching in between, and David and I were still shell-shocked by his diagnosis, and Italy was a charmed reprieve from worry and grief.

Not so much our return trip, so thanks for nothing, you jerks. We got to the Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport and boarded the plane and then we sat on the tarmac for approximately seven years before the captain announced there’s “minor technical issue” that’s preventing us from taking off, and I personally don’t like the sound of the words “minor technical issue” when you’re about to fly over a very big ocean for many hours, but whatever. Did I mention it was September, which is a hot month in Italy? Would it kill you to pass out water or those tiny bags of peanuts to increasingly irate passengers belted into their tiny seats in a very warm airplane?

Just waiting and waiting and waiting, without a single solitary snack. Photo by Hanson Lu on Unsplash

Four hours later (I’m not even exaggerating—ask David), the captain announced that they have rectified the minor technical issue but because it took so long, we can’t take off because if we do, the flight crew will be in excess of the time they’re allowed to spend on board an airplane so our flight is now officially canceled, and you can barely hear him over the crying babies and the cursing passengers. The disgruntled and disheveled mob of us files off the airplane back into Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport and now we’re even more disgruntled because we have no Italian money and nowhere to stay and no one seems to know where our checked luggage is even though it seems pretty obvious to all of us that it’s on the same airplane from which we just disembarked and there’s a very loud and very angry couple from New Jersey that is not having any of this and the rest of us are looking to them like, These people may save us all.

Finally our luggage turns up and we get shuttled to the Most Depressing Hotel in the World, which I guess is where you put up people who are stranded because of your inability to maintain planes properly, and we go to the Most Depressing Dining Room in the World to fill our plates at a buffet that looks like it came from the Department of Congealed Pasta and Wilted Vegetables and Maybe Some Kind of Meat. But then I spotted a couple that looked friendly and I said, “David, let’s go be friends with those people,” and David said, “Um, you can’t just do that,” and I said, “Watch me,” and then I made him walk over and sit at their table and we introduced ourselves and it turned out that they lived in San Francisco and had visited the same places in Italy that we did and we had a lot in common and 27 years later we are still friends, so take that, David!

I know what you’re thinking—something good came out of something bad, every cloud has a silver lining, blah blah—but don’t you dare take credit for this friendship and pretend that we were not profoundly inconvenienced by your aviationary incompetence, and also, there’s more.

The next morning we get put on a plane, only now it’s not Rome to New York, it’s Rome to Philadelphia, because there are too many of us to fit on a flight to New York, and let me tell you, the New Jersey couple is pissed (how pissed? I bet they wrote you a letter as soon as they opened their front door, if not sooner), but the Californians among us are assured that we’ll be put on a flight from Philly to San Francisco so not to worry. We get to Philly without incident and check in for our San Francisco flight with our new friends Matt and Shari and we wait and wait and wait and guess what? The San Francisco flight is canceled and there is a new burst of cursing and crying because SERIOUSLY, why does this have to be so hard???

So now we’re not going to San Francisco, we’re going to—get this—Los Angeles, and in Los Angeles we may or may not get put on a flight to San Francisco. Who knows? And all the ticket agents are looking at us like, Why are you all so needy? and we’re like Because we’d like to get the fuck home, that’s why.

Our new friends Matt and Shari, who both happen to be attorneys, tried to finagle us an upgrade to first class because of everything we’d suffered, but all the first class seats were already full so we flew to Los Angeles in coach, and it was then that we finally received our upgrade to first class, and let me tell you, that made all the difference during the 57-minute flight to San Francisco. (Sarcasm! I’m being sarcastic! Although the bigger seats were nice.) Also, not to sound entitled or anything, but I expected something a little more luxurious in first class than a bag of peanuts that was slightly larger than the tiny bag of peanuts that you serve in coach. What did the coach passengers get, an individually wrapped aspirin tablet?

And then we landed in San Francisco and my parents and Jordan were waiting for us at the gate, and Jordan, who previously evinced very little interest in either of us, yelled, “Mommy! Daddy!” and lunged toward us out of my mother’s arms, and suddenly all the indignities we had endured over our three-day-return trip vanished.

Temporarily. They vanished temporarily, because yeah, I know what really matters but also, as I might have mentioned earlier, I hold grudges, and 27 years after the fact I continue to be outraged by your malfeasance during nearly every phase (and there were many of them) of our return trip.

In conclusion, I would like to say that I will never fly on your airline again, and also, I might have left my favorite Gap jacket on the flight from Philadelphia to LA, which is also your fault because we shouldn’t have been on that flight in the first place. But please let me know if it turns up.

---