What’s The Worst Airline You’ve Ever Flown And Why?

I’ve never flown by a US airline, but I used to live in Dubai for a couple of years. One time, we were flying back to England, and the flight used to change in Doha. I think it was P.I.A we used to fly. Well, this one time, we all boarded the plane, waited for a bit, and on came some paramedics with a stretcher. On this stretcher was a very poorly guy who was being rushed to London for emergency treatment they then didn’t have acess to in Doha, and the quickest way to get him there they decided, was to stick him in the doorway on a stretcher accompanied by a couple of paramedics. All good and well, until an hour or so into the flight…

…when he died. We, were naturally sat a few seats infront of him. So we spent the remainder of a long flight pretty much next to a corpse. Really nice at about 11 years old. The cabin crew were casually handing out sandwiches. All in all, a fun flight!

I was going to share my story until I read syntheticpulse’s… I’ll just go back to eating my stale pretzels now…

Ah ha! I knew it! Alaskan Airlines is the best. I always fly with them, whenever I can.

~mink~

We once flew from the UK to Egypt with Qatar airways.
The flight out to Qatar was the most luxurious flight I’ve ever been on; HOWEVER the transfer flight from Qatar to Luxor (still Qatar Airways) was this dodgey, old, rickety plane which even Ryanair wouldn’t dare use (and that’s saying something!!).

We actually found it quite funny at the time, especially as we paid quite a lot for the flight… but definitely the worst we’ve been on.

Ryanair is generally rubbish.. you are so close to the person infront you can smell their aftershave (or lack-of!). But they offer cheaper flights than anyone else, so I guess you get what you pay for! Also in their defence; they are ALWAYS on time.

I don’t fly all that often, but I can’t recall ever having any truly terrible experiences with any one airline over another. If there’s one thing I don’t much care for on commercial airline flights, it’s that I seem to end up on MD-80s all the time. They’re cramped, noisy, and it seems that I end up on the things for 75% of the flights I take for some reason…

Looks like you will have to put up another poll sometime for non-US airlines.

Southwest is the worst if you get to the gate late. All of the good seats are taken and you have to walk down the isle of the plane looking for a middle seat. You feel like the scene from Forrest Gump when he is on a school bus looking for a seat and no one wants him to sit next to them.

I’m thinking that those with the fewest “votes” are those least used by Neatorama readers. We all have our horror stories and they a probably not the fault of the airline company per se.

By far my worst experiences have been on American. I will not fly with them unless it is the only flight I can get. Ive had the best flights with Continental so they are my first choice when I need to fly.

Continental lost my luggage both ways. Destroyed both my kids car seats, which they said they were not reponsible for and left me stranded for 24 hours in an airport with two toddlers with no one telling me when, if ever, my flight was actually going to leave.

I travel a fair bit since my family is on the other side of the country, and that was the worst experience I’ve ever had. I’ll never fly with them again!

I was going to submit Aeroflot, the Russian state airline until you restricted it to domestic carriers. Aeroflot is a whole ‘nother world — ‘festival seating’ in the plane; stewardesses (with more gold teeth than the Russian hockey team) auctioning off the two six packs of beer allocated for the flight; flights cancelled due to inability to pay for fuel; massively uncomfortable seats; oh, and you get served your tea when the guy behind you (who’s been hacking up a lung the whole trip) finishes with the teacup.

But Delta, overall, is worse — they think they have a lock on eastcoast / southeast travel so they treat their customers like cattle.

Undoubtedly, Air Kenya was the worst airline. I’m a private pilot, and it was unnerving to get on a plane *with* the pilots, and observe that they did no pre-flight check. (So, Air Kenya might have division of labor—someone else who did it for them, but this seems prone to other problems.)

Then, the luggage went to Burundi instead of Uganda. And even though I identified that within 30 minutes of landing, it still took 3 days to get it back.

Oh, and I’m just shy of 5′ 8″. I had bruised knees on that flight.

[That said, I've certainly had worse *flights*. For example, the spring, 2002--just after 9/11---flight to London...in which the 3 year old kid near me screamed, ran up and down the aisles, threw toys which hit other passengers, and woke people up if he say they were nodding off...for the ENTIRE flight. Flight attendants tried to occupy him, but his mother sure didn't. And I think people were just too scared to complain about inconvenience and rudeness at that time, especially to folks with brown skin---they were middle-Eastern, I think. A combination of biases, prejudices, and passivity meant that we put up with this for the whole flight.]

Airlines are subject to questions like this because they provide very bad customer service, and mistreat their customers. It is not whining to complain when treated poorly. I expect more for my money than being treated like a diseased refugee.

And, sorry, I’m not trying to be whiny either, since that is the attitude I am criticizing, but I laugh at people who complain about the security screening. Oh no! you had to remove your belt? The horror! You had to take off your shoes? Oh the humanity!!

Fair enough. I know this was not the question posted for this thread. I couldn’t help myself though Just reiterating that I have flown plenty and never had any significant problems primarily because I think if people search out problems they find them. I rarely see anything that prevents me from getting on my plane, sitting down, and getting off when I arrive. What more does one need. Ok, off my soap box and done with my own whining

In 1988 I flew Garuda, the national airline of Indonesia, from Jakarta to Denpasa. The plane rattled like an unblanaced load on the spin cycle, and was so loud I honestly couldn’t hear the person next to me unless we screamed at each other. All of my fellow passengers seemed to have live chickens in their laps until we took off, when they just let the chickens run around. Oh, and everyone on the plane was smoking those foul “clove” cigarettes.

CharlesNelsonReilly, you’d have to set your standards mighty low to find this an acceptable travel experience.

United and American have been my worst.

One of them out right canceled a flight -poof- it disappeared from the departing screen without explanation- no “cancelled” on the screen. Had to hunt down someone to find out that the flight was cancelled and got the handoff twice to “go to that desk”. Ended up that everyone was rebooked on a later flight so the airline could combine two flights (but they didn’t tell me that). Well,the later flight ends up delaying 1, then 2, then 3 , then 4 hours. Once we were on the plane it took 1 1/2 hour delay to load up and get airborn. I get into the medium sized but podunk city I was flying to at 1am on a Tuesday night so nothing but an Arby’s drive through was open for food- no pizza, no bars, nothing.

Conversely all the people above crowing about Southwest are just whining about the seating. Bah, seating issues are nothing to deal with compared to being treated like I was by the other airline. Southwest might be like taking the bus, but Southwest typically treats its passengers as humans, will communicate problems in real time with real explanations, and are typically on time.

Obviously I have too much time on my hands today and am suckered back in here. I’m sure most have seen this video (Louis CK on Conan): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk

I paraphrase: Your flight is delayed, maybe there is a chicken on board, but did you not just fly, like a bird, in the sky???

aberguy: I think most people do not grasp the complexity of the airline system and the work and coordination it takes to make it run as smoothly as it does.

CharlesNelsonReilly: “What other industry is put under such demands?” A: Every single service industry, at least the ones that claim to give good service.

Southwest makes the top of the list for me. As mentioned above, the way they do the seating is SO dumb. And they tout it like it’s a big advantage over every other airline!

For those who don’t know, SW doesn’t allow you to reserve seats. You get assigned a Zone, and have to STAND IN LINE at the gate, so you can hopefully get the seat you want. But they ARE kinda sorta assigned, because there are numbered areas within the zone! So, if you’re assigning zones within zones, why not just assign seats?!? Arg! And who wants to stand in line while having to travel all day? ARG! And to get a better seat, you have to stand in line longer! ARG ARG!!

The thing that is most aggravating is that I can plan everything well in advance, get my ticket 3 months ahead of time, and some random person who just bought their ticket at the counter 5 minutes before I arrive at the airport can get a better seat than me. Stupid.

The WORST airline I ever flew isn’t even on this list: American Trans Air (ATA). Cattle Car with Wings – and less!

I enjoy flying. Granted, I’ve had some luggage issues but that was because a nice older gentleman accidentally grabbed mine by mistake and then he invited me over to his friend’s house (Bill Gate’s neighbors) for drinks and appetizers! What a nice ‘after-work’ pleasure that visit was!

I just don’t like it when you get there 2 hrs early and the bag-check line takes 1 1/2 hrs, then they detect ‘bomb’ material on my diaper bag and detain me another 30 minutes. THEN have the nerve to ‘lecture’ me at the gate that I should’ve gotten there 2 hrs early, so as to not miss my flight.

I had to sit with a tired baby all day and part of the night until the next available flight.

Thank God that SeaTac has a children’s nursery/ play area for breastfeeding mothers and tired babies.

That trip made me regret flying out with a young child and no husband to accompany me. It just made me appreciate my husband more!

Internationally: Aeroflot. Quite a few of the seats were broken or missing completely, they offered vodka to kids, people smoked on board (even though they “were not allowed to” and during a stop over in Magadan strange white powder was blasted out of the ceiling venting system.

Nationally: Alaskan. They are the only airline that flies in and out of my Alaskan town, and I get to see their “dark side” because I fly them so much. I really dislike them.

Mmmm… Assuming most the Neatorama readers are not frequent flyers, the airlines with the biggest market share should be the worst airline, because of simply the highest number of problems.
Methodology in doubt here.

aberguy, hold up. I don’t think anyone reasonable is blaming the pilots or attendants for bad service on planes. Anybody who’s ever had a service job knows you probably get the brunt of peoples’ bad attitudes and appreciates what you do.

American cancels my flights on short notice 2/3 of the time, so I’m going to have to go with them. Why isn’t Airtran on here? I never really have bad service on their flights, but their planes can be pretty junky and gross.

Best experiences domestically have been on SkyTeam flights, so Delta, Continental, and Northwest. But everybody knows the best airlines are out of Asia.

I’ve only flown (why does that sound grammatically incorrect?) domestically once through United Airlines, from Trenton, NJ, to Chicago, IL, and then to Dayton, OH. A week later I went back the same route. That SkyMall magazine was filled with some pretty nifty stuff, which fortunately was enough to keep me occupied. The flight from Chicago the Trenton got delayed by two hours, although they said that was due to rough winds or something. And then, when we were literally on the edge of the runway, it got delayed AGAIN (they said the Trenton Airport was closed or something so they couldn’t fly, which didn’t make any sense to me because what if an airport closes because of weather-related reasons while there’s a plane scheduled to land? Oh, how I digress.)
I’ve been on Delta when I was six years old (I still have the little pin they gave us;)), but that was an international flight to Karachi, Pakistan (I can’t remember if that was the flight we stopped at Manchester and found out that we left our passports on the plane, when we needed them to get back in. Ah, good times).
But I’ve been on plenty of other international airlines, although I’ll wait for someone to ask me about my experiences then. I’m surprised to see so many others fly so frequently. I wanna go traveling all the time (as in, when it’s not summer time).

Nobody asked, but I still get a chuckle sometimes at the worst public relations I’ve ever seen from an airline. Aero Caribe had a twisted wreckage of a plane just like the one we were on (a De Haviland with doors for every row on the left side of the plane and no aisle) that laid rusting just past the end of the runway in Chichen Iza, Mexico. It made the Catholic ladies in the row ahead of us cross themselves all the frequently and rapidly when they looked out the window and saw it just after takeoff. The Aero Caribe logo was still clearly visible on the tail of the plane. Half a gallon of paint would have gone a long way to improving the perception of danger for some of the passengers.

Air Transat, of course (

The absolute worst is American. I have flown it twice and both times I had 5+ hour delays on flights that were only supposed to be 3 hours total. One time they did not even offer anything to the people waiting. The second time all the passengers received $25 off their next flight with American.

The best is Virgin America. Never once had a delay and actually have left early before. Decent sized seats and in-flight personal entertainment. Plus Google maps as you fly which is awesome.

Here’s my American Airlines story.

Flew from Los Angeles, CA (LAX) to Boston, MA (MA) with a stopover in New York, NY (JFK). Flight from LAX to JFK was uneventful, but the flight to BOS was delayed. At first, they said it was something having to do with equipment, but I found out later that our crew didn’t have enough time on the ground between flights.

Eventually, our flight was canceled, but we were told that American had arranged to have us take the Delta Shuttle to Boston. However, we had to go downstairs, get our bags, get on a shuttle bus and go to Laguardia airport to get that plane. OK, a pain, but what can you do?

We all head down to the baggage claim, and wait for what seemed like another 1/2 hour or so. The bags come out and … they’re not ours, they’re from another flight … the bags go back to wherever they came from, we wait around for another 15 minutes (at least), and finally get our bags. Then, it’s out to the shuttle for the trip to the Delta Terminal at Laguardia.

We get to the Delta Terminal at Laguardia and are told that the they never heard of us, were never contacted by American, and the flight (the last flight of the day) is gone anyway. There is, however, one more flight out of Laguardia, on Northwest, out of another terminal. The Delta rep said he would call Northwest and tell them we were on our way there and call for a shuttle bus, but he couldn’t guarantee that the shuttle would get us to the Northwest terminal in time to make the flight, so he recommended we share cabs and later try to get our money back from American. Which is what most of us did, and we made the Northwest flight and finally got to Boston.

I suppose it’s possible that the Delta reps lied to us and had been contacted by American but didn’t hold our flight, but I still blame American for taking so long to cancel the flight and putting us in that situation in the first place.

I haven’t throughly read through the whole list but I’m pretty sure it’s not here. Qantas Australia. The foods GREAT but the service is totally cr@p. I remember when a handicapped person was put next to me and she was flying unattended and some hissy bumhole told me that it was officially my job to look after this lady on a flight to London from Perth! No, I didn’t get any say. I tried to entertain her by painting her nails with the little tub of nail polish I had, until Hissy Bumhole came along. Passengers 10 rows infront and behind of me were either reading, sleeping or playing. None of them seemed to be angry at me for letting the odour of nail polish out.
“Passengers are COMPLAINING about the smell of the nail polish. Put it away.” So what? Can the pilots effing smell it? Never again