Sewage in the aisle tops US tales of air misery

Everyone has a story to tell about the torture of flying in the United States these days. Years of cost-cutting by all the major carriers coupled with an antique air traffic control system and record numbers of fliers are yielding the inevitable results: misery in the skies for passengers and for airline employees alike.

Studies confirm what every frequent traveller already knows: the quality and reliability of service just keep getting worse. Flight delays are commonplace and so are missed connections and lost bags.

A survey by the US Department of Transportation shows the passenger complaint rate for US Airways, still grappling with its merger last year with America West, tripling year-on-year. The rate for Delta Air Lines, which has just emerged from bankruptcy, doubled.

This week, USA Today published a page-long inquiry into the indignities meted out by United Airlines to its customers. The company that used to operate under the slogan "Come Fly the Friendly Skies", was suitably mortified. "We know we haven't done well," conceded Jean Medina, a company spokesman.

Flying the fetid skies is a new twist on airline disservice. Yesterday's victim-of-horror-story headlines was Continental Airlines, which otherwise does least badly in customer satisfaction surveys among the big network carriers. It had to do with toilets and, well, poo.

The unhappy fliers were on Continental Flight 1970 from Amsterdam to Newark, New Jersey, last week. Shortly after take-off, the toilets rebelled en masse, refused to flush and began overflowing. The pilot made an unscheduled pit stop in Shannon, Ireland, to have the facilities fixed. It turned into an overnight delay, before the journey was resumed the next morning.

Before long, according to passengers, all but one of the toilets were spewing waste and human sewage was seeping down the aisles. The flight attendants appealed to passengers to stop eating and drinking as the best solution. "I felt like I had been physically abused. I was forced to sit next to human excrement for seven hours," said Colin Brock of Washington state. "To be told that we were supposed to monitor what comes out the other end of us was insulting."

Jet Blue Airways, a five-year-old discount carrier that used to pride itself on customer loyalty, had its nightmare when a winter storm hit the East Coast in February, creating a cascade of cancelled flights. One group of fliers was stuck on their plane on the tarmac at JFK Airport for 11 hours.

Members of Congress vowed to pass a bill of rights guaranteeing passengers the right to get off a plane after three hours on the tarmac. Last month, the founder and chief executive of Jet Blue, David Neeleman, resigned from his position in recognition of everything that had gone wrong.

There is little mystery about what ails the airline industry in the US. No fewer than four of the main carriers found themselves in bankruptcy after the terror attacks of 9/11. Their efforts to get airborne again were hampered by soaring fuel prices. Today, they are trying to fly more passengers than ever but with far lower costs and significantly slimmed down staff levels.

United has shed 21,000 jobs, a quarter of its workforce, since 9/11 and cut annual expenses by $5bn (£2.5bn). Pay is down and so is staff morale. Yet, the carrier is trying to accommodate just as many passengers as before.

"There were days in the not-too-distant past when United's service was fantastic," Jordan Ayan, a high-tech firm's CEO based in Chicago told USA Today. "Boy, have times changed."