Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

Just returned from a vacation in Michigan and Toronto.  It was a big family get together and things went very well except for trouble with Spirit Airline.  It started when two of my children tried to fly from California to Michigan.  Their flight was canceled about 5 hours before scheduled takeoff.  The choice became taking the same flight 24 hours later or take an indirect flight with stop in Houston the next morning.  Given that there was a storm coming into Houston, it was risky taking the earlier indirect flight.  So my children arrived one day late and almost missed the banquet we had planned.

Then when we were leaving Michigan back to California, we were notified our flight was delayed three hours.  We missed the email notification and got to the airport as planned.  We noticed a lot of people were already at the gate, apparently also missing the notification.  We all waited patiently but then one hour before the new takeoff time, we found out that it was going to be delayed two more hours.  People were almost at a riot mood, standing at the gate desk, complaining loudly.  My wife thought of her flight to Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific last year when the flight was delayed several times and then was eventually canceled, forcing her and others to scramble to San Francisco to catch another flight to Hong Kong.  The people here were thinking about the same and were screaming at the gate agents.

Finally a member of the flight crew calmly spoke thru the microphone that the agents had no control and that they were trying their best to contact the authorities to see what was happening and that it was best that people let them do the job.  She did a great job of calming the passengers, things settled down although many angry faces continued to mill around the gate.  Finally two hours later, it was revealed that the original pilot did not show up and they had to fly one in from some place else to take over.  He did show up, in fact an hour earlier than the second delay time, and we were on our way.

Was the missing pilot the reason for the delay?  How did they know that he wasn't going to be there several hours earlier (from the time they sent out the email).  And couldn't they have got another pilot during the first delay?  When they announced another two hour delay, I assume if another pilot was on the way, they would know when he would get there.  But he actually showed up one hour earlier than expected, given the estimate second delay time.  I would not think about conspiracy too much except less than two weeks ago, my children's flight was canceled without explanation.  Was Spirit trying to save money by not having a flight that was not crammed like sardines?

My wife also observed that the passengers going to Hong Kong, who were majority Asians, were much more polite than those flying from Michigan to California.  Is it that Asians are less confrontational?  There is the old saying that in Asian, a nail that stands out gets hammered.  In the U.S, the old saying is that the squeaky wheel gets the oil.  Did the almost riot situation caused Spirit to act and quickly get the flight going?  I don't know.  It maybe just the passengers going to Hong Kong happened to be calmer individuals and those on the Spirit flight were just happened to be more impatient.  Maybe some study should be done.  Better yet, find out how often Spirit and other airlines delayed or canceled, causing grief among passengers.