A fellow flier supplied the following template for making complaints to your airline for non-weather-related inconveniences.
Complaint Template:
Dear <<Airline>>:
I was on Flight <<>> leaving <<>> on <<>> when <<>> difficulties forced us to exit and change planes and delayed our arrival by over <<>> hours. This resulted in me missing several extremely important meetings in <<>>. I am a frequent flyer with <<>> (FF: <<>>) and am extremely upset that the <<>>. I trust you will provide a refund or similar compensation for this incredible inconvenience.
Thanks,
<<>>
Along with the an example of a response from the airline:
Thank you for contacting us.
Use it, but don’t abuse it.
Every so often, I’ll introduce a new feature available through the More Than Points Personal Travel Assistant. This post introduces the flight status command. Using this command, you can see if you’ll be home on time. It also displays FAA-provided gate information in case you have an unexpected gate change. Since the MTP PTA lets you send commands through any jabber-compatible client (e.g. Google Talk) or any email client (like your BlackBerry), you can use it anywhere you have data service.
The flight command only requires the the two-digit airline code followed by the flight number:
Remember: To use the MTP PTA just send an instant message to morethanpoints@gmail.com OR send an email with NO SUBJECT and the command in the body of the email to the same email address. Why bother with pulling up a website when a simple email or IM will do the trick.
More Than Points is all about saving you time so you can spend it on yourself and your family. Enjoy the rest of your week.
MTP is proud to announce the availability of your Personal Travel Assistant (PTA). You can access the PTA through email or through a Jabber-compatible client such as Google Talk . Just add morethanpoints@gmail.com as a friend and type ‘help’ for available options. You can also send an email to morethanpoints@gmail.com without a subject and your command in the first line of the email body.
Weather can be the bane of our traveling experience. Bad weather is the cause of delays and canceled flights. As travelers, we sometimes need to pack in preparation for the entire week. Forgetting a warm jacket or umbrella in bad weather dampens our already weakened immune system.
Getting the weather through your PTA using a instant messenger client like Google Talk is as easy as typing:
weather SDF
This returns:
You can also just send an email from any device to your PTA as follows (remember – do not put anything in the subject line):
This returns:
You can use airport code, zip code or a city,state to identify the location. If you put a number at the end (1 through 5) it will forecast the number of days specified – the default is 5 days.
Going forward I will continue to highlight another useful command made available through your PTA. MTP is always looking for ways to make life easier for the road warrior. If you have comments or suggestions on PTA or anything else relevant to frequent travelers please send them our way.
Kayak has an excellent reference for fees across all airlines which is updated on a regular basis. I’ve attached a snapshot of the table as an example (Click on the thumbnail to get a readable picture).
It’s always a good idea to stay up-to-date on the fees so you can make the right decision for yourself and your clients.