American Airlines, US Airways Merge To Form World's Largest Inconvenience

[iandhr]

FORT WORTH, TX—American Airlines and US Airways stunned the aviation industry Thursday upon announcing the two air travel titans have combined in an $11 billion merger that sources say will unite the industry powerhouses into the world’s largest and most complete pain in the ass. “Today we embark upon a bold and unprecedented new venture into customer frustration,” American CEO Tom Horton said of the historic alliance, which analysts predict will pose an immediate threat to rivals United and Delta in the air travel industry’s key areas of flight delays, lost luggage, and useless customer service. “When you take our general administrative incompetence and integrate it with our new partner’s long-proven inability to meet flyers’ needs in any capacity, you’ve got a brilliant new model in passenger aggravation and travel plan disruption. This truly will be the leading entity in the hassle industry.” Horton also confirmed the the new multi-billion-dollar headache hopes to fuck up more than 4,000 flights a day.


http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-airlines-us-airways-merge-to-form-worlds,31302/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=standard-post:headline:default

[louis-t]

1. Funny stuff.

Mostly true.

[Arcanetrance]

2. The onion is not wrong world biggest pain in the ass and inconvenience is right.

I used to fly a lot for my job I flew both of them once never again

[wercal]

3. The last time I flew American, everything went wrong

Too many details to bore people with...but one aspect of it was absolutely terrifying:

As part of the pre-flight safety briefing, we were told there was no oxygen..but not to worry since we would not go over 10k feet.

Well that was fine until we went directly through stormy weather (couldn't fly over it and it was too big to go around).

I thought the wings were going to get ripped off the plane....I kept looking at the crew, to see if they had any panic in their eyes. Some of the plastic covers by the lights above our heads fell into people's laps.

Before we took off, we literally had to rotate some larger passengers to the back, because the plane was front heavy. This had something to do with the way the baggage was loaded by an unhappy baggage crew - the captain had got on the intercom and announced they were shirking their duties by not loading baggage due to rainy weather...and when they finally started loading, they were SLAMming the bags in the plane.

Anyway, the plane was obviously dangerously close to its limits, as far as loading is concerned, and there we were, plowing through weather so bad that parts of the plane's interior were falling off.

Oh yeah - it was obviously an old plane. It still had ash trays. Not the metal covers you see in the armrests today, but the actual ashtrays, spot welded shut.

Anyway, that is just one aspect of my last trip on AA.

[Hard Assets]

4. Last time I flew American Airlines was 9/17/2001.

Yes, we were among the first to take a good look at the post 9/11 WTC from the air. It was still smoking.

That flight was not even 1/4 filled. So we had pretty much the choice of seats on a MD-88 to JFK.

The scary thing is that we were scheduled to fly on the 12th of that year to New York from Tucson.

[Initech]

6. Last time I flew AA solo was 2003.

I was going to Nashville for a wedding and they of course had a layover in Dallas. Of course there's no advanced warning that a massive thunder storm shut down the airport. So my flight and about ten others were rerouted to Abeliene Texas. They don't let us out of the plane, there's no food, no water, nothing to keep us occupied- it was a complete disaster. I miss my connecting flight by two hours and had to stay the night in Dallas.

[Berlum]

5. They'll have to go some to out-inconvenience UniTurd Airlines

[smirkymonkey]

7. Sometimes I think the Onion is actually more relevant than the MSM.

They really know how to call it.