I’ll keep it short, since this story is still developing. I flew from Dallas to Miami this morning, and as the flight attendant was serving drinks she drenches my MacBook Air with orange juice. I mean drenches. She was pretty apologetic about it and at first I thought it was no big deal. She brought me lots of towels and I spent a few minutes drying my MacBook Air. For a short while everything looked okay, though as soon as I turned it on I noticed the keyboard didn’t work. Crap. That’s one of the downsides of the MacBook Air — I don’t think you can remove the keys, so when something like this happens you’re more or less hosed.
After a few minutes the computer also stopped turning on. I mentioned this to the flight attendant and she said she’d file a report. I requested that they have someone meet the flight regarding the issue, and she assured me she’d have the captain send a message to Miami for someone to meet the flight. A few minutes later another flight attendant came by my seat to apologize and said “to be honest this is Miami, so I really wouldn’t count on anyone actually showing up.” Yes, that has indeed been my experience with American at Miami — service is awful.
We land and sure enough there’s no one there to meet us. Not only that, but there’s no gate agent in sight. After waiting for about 15 minutes a gate agent shows up though is entirely clueless as to the situation. I explain it to her and she says to go to baggage claim to file a report. She was apathetic and clearly had no desire to help me. Fortunately (or so I thought) a supervisor showed up to handle a different issue. As it turns out he wasn’t much help either. He said the same thing, and looked at me as if I was nuts when I suggested someone was supposed to meet the flight. Before leaving I wanted to have something in writing documenting the situation. Once the crew disembarked the flight attendant that spilled the drink on my laptop documented the incident on the computer and gave me a case number.
I went to baggage claim and they told me that wasn’t their responsibility and to go to aa.com and file a complaint with customer relations.
That seems a bit ridiculous given that we’re not talking about a complaint or minor service issue, but a seriously busted laptop.
Anyway, mark this as “developing.” I’ll keep you guys updated as to what happens. In the meantime, my apologies for being slow to respond to emails, since I’m more or less without a computer till tomorrow night.
And that leaves me exactly where I started — with a broken laptop and no resolution.
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