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CHAOS AIRLINE- WHERE THINGS FALL APART

Sep 23, 2010 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

American Airlines or AA is “Always Awful”.  Alitalia is “Always Late In Transit; Always Late In Arrival” or “Airplane Landed in Tokyo And Luggage In Atlanta.”  SATA is “Such A Terrible Airline” and TACA- “Take Another Airline Always”.
TWA is simply, “That Was Awful” but this is better than VARIG or “Virgins Are Rare In Glasgow. PANAM was “Poor Airline Needs Any Money” until it went bankrupt and out of existence.
The airlines in our region have acronyms that reflect their abysmal performance records.  LIAT is “Leaving Islands Any Time”, “Long Intervals Awaiting Transport” and “Lord I Am Tired!”  I saw a new one, “Luggage Is Always Tardy”.
Interestingly, nobody questions the accuracy of the interpretations.  They are not flights of fancy.  They are based on our experiences over many years.  Guyana Airlines was “God Awful” and BWIA had many different variations – “Baggage Wandering In Africa”, “Better Walk If Able”, “Bound to Wait In Airport” and “But Will It Arrive.”  I also remember when it was nationalized it became “Bill Williams International Airline” and that in those days we had the “Best Women In the Air.”
BWIA has morphed into Caribbean Airlines (CAL) or “Constantly Always Late”.  The phrase might be redundant or tautological but so is CAL.   On Sunday, September 19, I got my boarding pass for a CAL flight to Trinidad.  The aircraft was late getting into Antigua and that, though expected, was not propitious.
When the flight was announced and I went to the gate, the lady in charge told me, “Free seating”.  I knew immediately that she was not offering me a refund but that I was due for a hard time.   I could not understand why CAL would change the procedure from an orderly process to one of absolute anarchy that is the norm for LIAT.
No explanation was offered.  I walked to the plane with trepidation and found it first by a security guard who refused to understand “free seating” and sent me to the back stairs of the plane where I encountered a large crowd waiting to use the washroom.   By the time I got through them, the other passengers seemed to have charmed the guard and had already entered through the front of the plane.
Some of the passengers were livid and then I found out the reason for their anger.  They were bound for St Maarten on Saturday when something went wrong with the plane.  They were then sent on the Sunday flight and had expected to disembark in Antigua and get a flight to St Maarten.   In Antigua they were told they had to go to Trinidad and then fly back to St Maarten on Monday morning.  They had lost two days.
A CAL stewardess told me that the decision was made to go to free seating because the St Maarten passengers were expected to disembark in Antigua but “Port-of-Spain” had decided they would remain on board.
Tom Peters has a book called, “Thriving On Chaos.”  Caribbean Airlines seems to have achieved the chaos without actually thriving.   What there was on that plane ride from hell was chaos a-plenty.  I figure the “C” in CAL should be changed from “Caribbean” to “Chaos”, “Confusion” or “Commess” and that instead of a humming-bird in the logo, they should use a Caribbean mockingbird. (Tony Deyal)

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