Good flight out, not so good back

After writing a pretty glowing column about Boutique Airlines six weeks ago, I got to try them out over the weekend and the results were mixed. The flight from McCook to Denver was pretty perfect. The co-pilot took time to explain everything to us and snacks and drinks were also available if we decided to partake. The plane left on time, the flight was smooth and we landed on time too. Even though the cabin is small, the seats were plush and comfortable and the noise level was no worse than a jet airliner. So the things I had heard about the airline all proved to be true on the way out.

On the way back, it was a different story. My Delta flight from Atlanta landed in Denver at 5:30 so I had a three-hour layover before the scheduled 8:30 departure from Denver to McCook. I ate, walked around a little and eventually made my way downstairs to the Boutique terminal where I ran into a former colleague of mine that still teaches at the college. He had landed at 10am that morning on a flight from the west coast so he had been there a lot longer than I had. We talked between ourselves until 8 p.m. when I wondered out loud where the Boutique desk person was and he said she had told him she would be back around 8:15. The message on the board listed our departure time for 8:30 and stated that the flight was on time. But 8:15 came and went with no personnel present. Some other people who were flying back had located the airlines website and mentioned that the flight had been delayed for an hour, again without any explanation from the employee who was supposed to be there but wasn't. Around 8:30, the people monitoring their website said that the flight had been cancelled but there still wasn't an employee present. About ten minutes later, an employee showed up and verified that the flight had been canceled due to maintenance issues with the plane.

My friend and former colleague was visibly upset because he had now been at the airport for 10½ hours and he asked the employee what our options were. She suggested either renting a car and driving to McCook or spending the night and coming back for the next scheduled flight at 6:30 the next morning. He asked her if she could guarantee that flight would, in fact, depart at the scheduled time the next morning and she said she couldn't. He and I then discussed our options before we asked about vouchers for hotel rooms and were told that she couldn't write vouchers because that was 'way above her pay grade.' She said we would have to pay for the hotel ourselves along any other money we had to spend while stranded and then submit our receipts to Boutique Airlines for reimbursement. There were a lot of things wrong with Great Lakes Airlines but at least they issued vouchers. Other passengers were having no luck in finding a rental car to McCook so we decided to spend the night in the airport because we didn't want to leave, pay cab fare, pay for the hotel, then get up the next morning, pay for a cab back to the airport and then go through security again. Because Boutique doesn't issue vouchers, we didn't get a hotel room, didn't pay for a cab, didn't eat and received no monetary compensation because airlines don't put a price on your wasted time.

I don't recommend spending the night at ANY airport but especially DIA because there are no chairs anywhere you can get comfortable in because they all have armrests that prevent you from stretching out. I tried the floor but the floor was too hard. I tried sleeping sitting up but never could get comfortable. So we were essentially awake all night long and the only thing open at the airport past 10 o'clock was a McDonald's restaurant. I went down to get a pop and there were at least 100 people in line waiting to get served.

So we spent from 8:45 on Sunday night until 6:30 Monday morning sleepless in Denver at DIA. It was the longest night of my life!

Thankfully, the plane left on time Monday morning and the flight back to McCook was uneventful. I'm trying to be fair to Boutique Airlines but the last thing any passenger wants to do is to fly into Denver and not be able to get home on the last leg of your trip. That's what drove down the boardings here on Great Lakes because they had so many cancellations in their last year of service that you couldn't count on them to get you out of McCook or back to McCook. So I hoped this cancellation was an anomaly. In talking to a Boutique employee, I found out that cancellations are rare but not anomalies. The employee told me they had cancellations in McCook on August 2nd and 3rd and, in addition to the cancellation of our flight on August 14th, the 6am flight from McCook to Denver on August 15th was cancelled too.

The employee also told me that some new cities had been added to Boutique's schedule and that more planes would be showing up although she didn't know when or how many. For Boutique's sake, I hope cancellations don't become a negative expectation because that will drive away business faster than anything else. The planes are good, the flight crews are cordial and friendly and the flights are smooth and those are all good things.

But cancellations are not good things so hopefully they will be kept to a bare minimum because without air service to McCook from Denver via Boutique, you can't hardly get here from there.