$10 Skybus Fares Might be Overpriced for What You Get

[Matt Molnar]

Consumerist.com has published the exasperating tale of a Skybus customer attempting to fly from Bellingham, WA to Columbus. A quick rundown of the events...

• Skybus's "terminal" at Bellingham is a double-wide trailer out on the ramp.
• Their computer system was down, so check-in was nearly impossible.
• The agents on duty said their IT guys were not picking up their phones to fix the check-in system. The ticket counter did not have phones... the agents were using their personal cell phones.
• Despite the guy having a printout of his confirmation, the agent refused to allow him on the plane as his name was not on their manifest, simply concluding "that's not my problem."
• Demands to speak with a supervisor were refused as there is no supervisor and they don't have a call center.
• Agent forced him to buy a $440 walk-up fare, double his original round-trip fare.
• After buying his ticket, agent refused to accept his 71 lb suitcase, claiming they don't take bags over 50 lb, even though their website says the limit is 75 lb.
• After hitting the Submit button on their website customer service form, their autoresponse read "Thanks for letting us know about your problem. We may or may not get back to you. Good luck!"
• When he returned to Bellingham from Columbus, the nasty agent confronted him: "Hey, I remember you! You're the jackass who sent our corporate offices a complaint email about me and demanded I be fired! Well good luck, bucko, you're gonna have to try a lot harder than THAT!"

Click below for the much more detailed story: http://consumerist.com/339587/turns-out ... at-you-get (http://consumerist.com/339587/turns-out-skybus-might-actually-be-overpriced-for-what-you-get)

[T-Bird76]

That's absolutely AWESOME!!! Has anyone looked at the airport they plan on using in Fort Meyers???? There's no dam terminal...no parking...no public transportation, there's nothing! Even the runway looks to small for a A319. I don't know why anyone would fly them. I was checking their prices, not one $10 fare was found and the other fares were the same at any other airline. It’s simply shocking how they run their business...

[Art at ISP]

It just goes to show you--the high cost of cheap.....

Happy New Year all...

[LGA777]

As I have mentioned before, I have and old friend who is a 30 year plus ramp agent for a major carrier in CMH and a major airline geek, worse than most of us. He has a ring-side seat for Skybus's daily screw-ups, as their operation is right next to and shares facilties with the carrier he works for. Here are a few excerts from recent e-mails from him about Skybus snafoos.

From his 12-13 e-mail update
"Interesting" things about Skybus that just came to light. 1st off their new service to GPT is timed poorly. I heard on the employee bus yesterday from several of their Flt Crews that GPT has a Curfew at night and that the bozo in charge of their flt scheduling set up the flight to come in at night & go back out to CMH right up against the CURFEW! AS a result their Inauguaral Flight from there was late inbound, as usual, & boarded up quickly but when it came time to push back, BINGO it was past Curfew & they had to deplane everyone, RIGHT IN FRONT OF ALL THE NEWS CAMERA'S there to film the inaugual flight!!! CANCELL the INAUGUAL FLIGHT!!! The crew was laughing about it as they told the story.

and from 12-26 during thier Christmas cancellation meltdown
This weekend hasn't been good for some Skybus passengers. Due to 2 aircraft incidents many flts were XLD yesterday and even more are XLD today since the aircraft aren't back in service yet. From what my sources report to me, 1 aircraft was damaged when a Jetway driver in FLL rammed the aircraft with the jetway. Apparently some airports have refused to remove the Jetways to replace them with steps and ramps the way CMH did and force them to use the Jetways. The 2nd aircraft had damage done to one of the aircraft doors. From what I heard and from what I have seen and also heard I'm sure I have a very good idea of how this damage was done. Their "Rent-A-Mechanic's" they have here have been removing the rear stairs after the aircraft is on the ground and deplaned. They pull them around to the tailcone and raise them so they can work on the APU Exhaust. When they return them to the aircraft for boarding, they don't lower them to the correct height and position them next to the rear door. If they are too high, then when the aircraft takes on the passengers weight, the plane settles into the struts and lowers the door onto the Air Stairs platform. If it settles too much, the door hinges bend and the door won't close & seal properly. A former aircraft mechanic working for them as a Ground Equip. Mechanic has seen this happen & has said their rental mechanic's don't seem to care what they do to the aircraft. They already broke one set of Air Stairs by raising them up too high to where they won't retract.
As a result of the 2 aircraft being out of service, yesterday they XLD the BUR, GPT & PSM CHA flts. Today they have announced on the news they will be cancelling BLI, FLL, MKE & PSM. They said they didn't want to cancel the same flts 2 days in a row. This was reported on all 3 local TV news reports at 11 p.m. last night & is again on the Noon TV News today as well as every 30 minutes on the largest Radio Station in town on their News Updates. Skybus's Automated Reservation System didn't bother to notify anyone about the cancellations yesterday & the news reported they are looking into this matter.

and from 12/10
Just thought I'd update you with the latest goings on at Skybus. They have a 2nd corporate sponsor for 1 of their planes, it's CIticorp. They have the white plane painted with pink flying pigs all over it. The pigs are wearing a jet engine strapped to their backs. It's different I must say that. Their other white plane now carries a huge DISCLAIMER on both sides about their cheap Air Fares. The disclaimer it probably 4 feet tall and 12 feet across. It talks about their cheap fares and says something to the fact that not all fares are that low but many are. It's the only time I've seen a disclaimer painted onto the side of the plane.
They have now taken over gates 16 & 20 at CMH. They also have the ramp use of gate 18 which is in between those other gates but with 2 319's on 16 & 20 there isn't room for another one at 18. These gates were modified to fit 3 RJ's not 2 BIG airplanes. They ARE using JETWAYS for the 1st time. Apparently there wasn't time to remove them from the building. The 1st day they were practicing using them they broke both of them. Airport Mtc. had to be called to repair them.
Overheard on the employee bus yesterday by ME was this. A Continental AGent asked one of their gate/Tkt AGents "What airport do you use for FLL"? After she said for a moment her reply was, "Oh we fly into Jacksonville but we don't call it Jacksonville, we call it Saint something or other, like Bernstein or something." "It's only 45 mins from there to Ft. Lauderdale and Miami." I said, "Jacksonville is at least 4 hours north of FLL", to which her reply was, "Yes that's why we use that other airport." I just sat & shook my head.

I hope some of you enjoyed this update from the front lines in CMH

LGA777

[cancidas]

amazing ron, simply amazing. it's sad that aviation has come to this...

[mirrodie]

And yet, they have lasted this long. Who's keeping them in business is what I wonder.

[adam613]

And yet, they have lasted this long. Who's keeping them in business is what I wonder.

Nationwide Bank:

[airlinerstp://www.airliners.net/open.file/1310206/L/[/airliners

[Matt Molnar]

Nationwide is actually an insurance company...according to Ron's post though, they now have a Citibank jet. It seems foolish to me for an established company to make a co-branding deal with an unproven company like Skybus whose poor service could potentially damage the advertiser's reputation.

I've been thinking of a way to describe Skybus' apparent management style and it's just mind-boggling. Their top-level officers are all industry veterans, which explains a lot given what a disaster the legacies are. The best metaphor I've come up with: it's like they've taken every over-the-top exaggerated joke about discount airlines ever made, and actually did all of those things.

[LGA777]

Here is the 1-4 Skybus update from my buddy in CMH, more to shake your head at.

Locally, they have 1 of their new aircraft stored across the field, near the old terminal N573SX an A319 with 1 Emergency Exit. It's been there for about 3 weeks now, all white with a black tail & winglets. Not sure what's going on with it or why it's unpainted and stored.

This week was not good for them, they had continued flight delays and at least 1 cancellation, a Burbank trip. Wednesday night the afternoon trip inbound from BUR was at least 5 hours late and once it arrived it needed Maintenance work before returning to BUR. This would have made the outbound trip departing CMH around 2 a.m. They took the plane scheduled to run down to St. Augustine & back and sent it to BUR, departing here around 9 p.m. and made the St. Augustine passengers wait for the arrival of the trip from Burbank and then do the Maintenance and continue on to Florida around 3 or 4 a.m. much behind their 8 p.m. scheduled departure time. Three Port Authority Police Officers were dispatched to their gate area that night for riot control. They say their work load has increased with the arrival of Skybus. The fun continued Thursday when they cancelled a Burbank trip and later in the day the flts to Chattanooga & Greensboro were running 1 hour late, Milwaukee was 3 hours late which in turn made the Punta Gorda flt 3 hours late. They had cartloads of baggage stored on gate 16 across from their baggage make up room.

Speaking of that, one of their contract Ramp Agents from DGS struck the fire hydrant outside their baggage make up room & knocked it off the base and it's now out of service. They have damaged the overhead door leading from their baggage make-up room onto the ramp so many times now that the Port Authority won't fix it anymore & has set so that it won't close. Thus those agents are working in a frigid baggage room all day long. They also continue to damage the ground equipment by turning the ignition switches so far when trying to start them that they break them off. They had at least 5 pieces of equipment out of service for that reason on Thursday. Tuesday night when the snow showers began it was a mess on their ramp. The employees were slipping & sliding around having a heck of a time trying to push the passenger boarding ramp & stairs to & from the aircraft. The security person working the access door to the "B" concourse watched 2 passengers slip and fall walking across the ramp plus many other employees. No one came to the aid of either of the passengers when they fell. The check-in line for their ticket counter Tuesday night went from their counter past American, United, Midwest Connect, center lobby and US Airways. At one time they had 14 cart loads of baggage on the ramp. The DGS Manager told people at a Port Authority Meeting Thursday, that he's been begging Skybus NOT to increase service out of here until some things change. They can't handle it. They are using the Midwest Connect Baggage make-up room for 2 flights in the morning since they can't handle all 7 of the originating flights bags in their own baggage make-up room. I pity the passengers bags who are delayed waiting for a flight. They are all stored outside uncovered on the ramp sittng in the rain or snow for hours. All of them will be drenched when they are finally loaded onto the plane.

So that's the latest on the "Hometown" Airline. One last thing to laugh at was that their President, Diffendurfer was 1 of the 3 people on the list to be chosen by Columbus Monthly Magazine as their "Man of the Year". They instead chose Mayor Coleman.


So if you still insist on flying Skybus please don't check any bags, especially if it's raining or snowing. I doub't they have tradditonal baggage service offices to even take a claim.

Cheers

LGA777

[PhilDernerJr]

A friend of mine flew into Stewart from Ohio last night and I was surprised at what he said. I'll write his trip report for him.

Good things first. A $35 ticket, a clean plane, and you get from Point A to B fairly easy at a good price. The hand-held computer thing that the F/As use for ordering the food added ease to it.

What shocked me most was when he told me that the flight attendants were pushing for tips! Saying that for the $10 meal, gratuity is not included or mandatory, but appreciated.....I can't believe it! I've never heard of anything like that...you'd get fired for it anywhere else. For serving me a pre-made sandiwch no less? Get real.

My friend then told me that as he was leaving the plane, he looked in the cockpit and saw that the CAPTAIN was wearing jeans a Derner-style polo hat.

The gate agents wore t-shirts. The F/As wore regular long sleeve shirts (no collar) with a logo on it, and none of them were over 25....no seniority at all it seems. He said it remidned him of Trader Joe employees.

I just imagine something bad happening on the plane, and the inexperienced crew not being able to handle the situation. Crash, disgruntled passengers or whatever.

My friend said he'd still fly them in the future just because of the basic concept of flying for cheap. That, to me, is the unfortunate problem. People are willing to sacrifice niceties for good cost. Sadly, I think it probably sacrifices safety as well, and can and will eventually cost people their lives. Sorry if that sounds dramatic, but as low-cost as you want to be, but flying needs to be taken seriously by the airlines and the people to fly them.

[coloneltigh]

Nationwide is actually an insurance company...according to Ron's post though, they now have a Citibank jet. It seems foolish to me for an established company to make a co-branding deal with an unproven company like Skybus whose poor service could potentially damage the advertiser's reputation.

Well, Citigroup has been making a ton of bad decisions so it doesn't surprise me that they are sponsoring SkyBUST.

[MarkLawrence]

Reading all of the above - just makes Skybus laughable. A colleague of mine is flying FLL-CMH-FLL this weekend on them - should be interesting to hear his comments next week! The interesting part he said - his fare was nowhere near $10, even $50 - booked 5 weeks in advance - leaving FLL Saturday - returning Monday, $200 / passenger!! Then - he thought about changing the reservation - Skybus wanted $40 per leg per person i.e. $240 to change the reservations - that would have made the whole fare $840 for 3 people!!! He said he wished he'd booked WN now! Still...the comments on Tuesday will be interesting....

[T-Bird76]

Ron that is truly an amazing update...I'm shocked! I'd love to fly them once on a weekend just to sit back and observe their operation...I think I might have to, hehe.

[hiss srq]

Diffenderffer is a profit shark from Texas. A sucker is born every day but you will not catch me flying that airline. It lowers the bar to dangerous levels in the industry for employees because the majors are surely looking at this nut job and his little airline to see what becomes of it and how they can cut into the pay of employees as well as shaft the passenger a little more. I personally met the guy a few months prior to the take off of this flying joke and I can tell you that the attitude to customers that the airline shows is the same one Billl shows to the world. At that time he was flying as revenue to CMH from LGA on USAirways.

[Matt Molnar]

Not to mention the name Diffendorfer sounds like he should be a character in Harry Potter.

[i_mizrahi]

The gate agents wore t-shirts. The F/As wore regular long sleeve shirts (no collar) with a logo on it, and none of them were over 25....no seniority at all it seems. He said it remidned him of Trader Joe employees.

I just imagine something bad happening on the plane, and the inexperienced crew not being able to handle the situation. Crash, disgruntled passengers or whatever.

I thought that in the proccess of getting airline certification from the FAA you have to prove that at least some of your staff are well experienced and veteran. In that respect Skybus doesn't look good, but so does the FAA.

[PhilDernerJr]

I'm sure they have SENIOR people, but maybe not on every flight.

[LGA777]

I'm sure they have SENIOR people, but maybe not on every flight.

Actually Phil one of the things I read just prior to their start-up they did not want any flt att's with previous airline industry experiance but instead, retail experiance so they would be better at selling all their stuff.

LGA777

[LGA777]

Well it's been a little while since we've had a new installment of the Skybus follies so here is the 1-18 update from CMH:

Well friends here's the latest in the Skybus Follies, although I must admit this could have happened to any other airline & no doubt has in the past in some form. Last night (Thursday) their flt 81 to FLL departed CMH around 10:30 p.m. Somewhere around the Ohio River, a bozo drunk, loud mouth passenger from the Cleveland area, decided to start mouthing off to everyone around him to show how important he was. He claimed he was the Federal Air Marshall and supposedly showed some of the passengers some fake badge according to 1 news account. That wasn't good enough, so then he decided to tell everyone around him that he actually had a gun on him and enough bullets to take out everyone on board, from what the news accounts say. It was during this time that several of the Flight Attendants heard what he was saying and didn't think that was such a good idea and notified the Capt. who decided it was time to turn that ole Airbus around & head back to Port Columbus. The flight was met by the Port Authority Police "Welcoming Committee". Apparently according to the latest news reports, he and his Girlfriend had drank 3 -4 drinks and were quite upset at the 3 hour delay the flight was taking. It was supposed to depart around 7:30 p.m. but didn't leave until 10:30 p.m. The Pilot told the passengers they were returning to CMH due to a Mtc. problem. The passengers believed this until they saw the "Welcoming Committee" come on board & take off the 2 of them in handcuffs. The pilot finally came out and told everyone the real reason for the return. Then everyone was removed from the plane & run through security again and reboarded. The aircraft was searched for a gun but none was found. A number of the 134 passengers decided NOT to get back on for various reasons and stayed in CMH. This process they say took another hour to complete. The flight finally departed around Midnight and the Bozo passenger got to spend lots of time talking to lots of local and Federal Law Enforcement people. His girlfriend wasn't charged but he appeared in Federal Court today and has been charged with interfering with a Flight Crew and could possibly be released later tonight on bail.
Interestingly the Skybus Officials today were still telling WCMH-TV 4 that the real reason for the return to CMH was a Mtc. Problem, but they were telling WBNS-10 TV (A financial Backer of the airline) the real story and all the details.
In still other interesting news, On Jan. 6th they inaugurated service from CMH-SWF and Russ from the Friendly Airplane Association (FAA) decided to ground that plane that day for Mtc. problems! Oh well! Their all white A319 remains across the field, but it was brought over to 1 of their Jetway Gates 3 days ago for some reason & left there for several hours & then returned to the Cargo Pad. I also just found out that 1 of their A319's has the Fuel panel on the opposite side of the plane. On all U.S. Planes, it's on the Right wing but this plane has it on the Left wing. So the fuelers have to bring the big tanker truck under that wing & miss all the passengers walking to & from. Then they often park it beside one of the A319's with the fuel panel on the Right side & now you have 2 fuel tankers rear end to rear end & only 1 can pull away at a time. This delays the flights even more. That's the latest from CMH the Skybus Hub that's NOT a hub since ya can't connect.

Now LGA777's coments

As my friend said the First event could have happened on any airline and mine has had similar incidents with intoxicated passengers that has led to flight diversions and passenger arrest. But my issue is even if one CMH TV station is a financial backer you don't tell one story to that station and then change the "truth" with the others, very poor public/community relations IMO. For the second story why would an airline that has such an "experienced" upper management team who has an airline who's gate model is based on ground/airstair boarding to both front and back doors, and who's same model is based on 25 min "quick" turns on EVERY flight (except Originators) lease an "oddball" Airbus that has to be fueled with large tanker trucks on every flight on the left side of the aircraft where passengers are trying to deplane and board? It must be very difficult to do those 25 min turns with this one, especially at CMH!

[LGA777]

And if the above was not enough entertainment for you here is todays CMH update.

Well friends, the fun continued for Skybus passengers on Friday morning, after the Passenger with a possible gun incident the night before, who by the way from my source on the inside tells me, this guy with the gun also exposed himself on the plane but that didn't make the news. Anyway, on Friday morning they loaded 2 full 319's, passengers & baggage and were ready to push back when they found out that both planes were bound for destinations that had no Air Start units and both these aircraft had inop APU's and they'd been that way for days from what my other sources tell me. So they had to unload & deplane both aircraft and swap them to other aircraft with operable APU's. When all was said & done they were over 2 hours late departing CMH. They may have had to await inbound aircraft to swap with from PSM & or RIC. I guess that's what ya get when your Flight Dispatchers are contracted out too!!! Also from another source, two morning flts to PGD from CMH & GSO were diverted to PBI due to bad weather at PGD. They both returned to PGD when conditions improved. This was Friday or Saturday. Still a 3rd bit of news from my "Man on the inside at SX" is that they had another DGS Ramp Agent arrested last week for being on some sort of Wanted iIlegal ailean list and deported him back to Africa. That's at least the 3rd person they've arrested while at work. Thursday they continued to drag carts full of bags out of the Baggage Make-up Room and store them on the ramp at gate 16 in the rain for hours. Luckily for the passengers that night it wasn't raining too hard so the bags didn't get too wet. Their Baggage Make-up Room only has space for 3 or 4 carts at the most since it was built to handle 3 North Central Airlines Flights per DAY to MKE, 2 DC-9-30's & 1 CV-580! So the most they'd need would be 2 or 3 carts inside.
That's the latest from the Skybus Central "Focus City" The Hub that's not a hub cause you can't connect

You just can't make this stuff up folks !

LGA777

[T-Bird76]

Ron I love reading this stuff! This should be a feature on the site "Skybus's latest tricks." Its just great! Keep it coming!

[NIKV69]

I love the way Skybus conducts business! Especially the employee that confronted the passenger who complained about him. Priceless. Well people want cheap fares. This is taking no-frllls to a whole new level.

[nwafan20]

This stuff is better than TV!

[lijk604]

It should get MORE publicity on the news and elsewhere. This gives new meaning to the term discount carrier, and if I were SWA, Air Tran, jetBlue...I'd be petitioning for a third class of carrier...."no-class" because from all these accounts, that is what Skybus is. I can't wait for them to disappear.

[cancidas]

they contract out dispatch? :roll: