Have you heard of Alice in Wonderland? Have you perhaps read it? No need.
It has been replicated on a very recent flight—West to East in Canada, and I here offer its themes. The dialogue here is my own, but it accurately captures an actual incident on a real flight.
A traveller on one of this country’s prominent airlines who is seriously allergic to cats asked a flight attendant if he and his ailing wife could be moved away from a passenger in their row of seats who was travelling with a cat.
Flight Attendant: “Excuse me, sir. Do you have your ‘cat allergy’ card?”
Passenger (on the delayed flight, ‘delayed’ here being probably redundant): “My what?”
Flight Attendant: “A card from a medical authority that proves you are allergic to cats. In particular, that you are allergic to the window-seat passenger travelling with her cat.”
Passenger: “No, I don’t. And let me say I have nothing against cats. And as far as I know, cats don’t have anything against me. But they cause a severe allergic response when I am close to them, so I wonder, can I and my wife change seats? It has to be both of us, as she is suffering from a quite debilitating chronic illness, and I have to stay near her.”
Flight attendant: “So you do not have on you a card proving you have an allergy to cats?”
Passenger: (His eyes are watering now, and splotches appear on his skin.) “Well, no. I thought the passport, driver’s ID, the medical card, and the boarding pass was all I needed. To be honest I never even heard of a ‘cat allergy card.’”
Flight attendant to window passenger: “I also have a cat.”
This next part is my interpolation: The flight attendant may have determined the passenger was a cat-phobe, so her sympathy was with the cat, not the humans.
Such are the vagaries of air travel in today’s Canada, with its wonderful, celebrated, first-in-the-world awards for customer service.
You may think this dialogue is a fantasy. It is nothing of the sort. A man, travelling with his ill wife over Christmas to visit his daughter, met with this idiot interrogation from a flight attendant when he wished to move with his wife away from a passenger who was carrying a cat. (The passenger, by the way, was all consideration and politeness during this episode and is not meant to be seen as a target in this account.)
The man was delayed in Toronto. But that is like saying Wednesday follows Tuesday. He lost baggage. That is like saying the sun rises in the East.
He was polite. He was pleasant. I will vouch for that. But he didn’t have his “cat-allergy” card and had to put up with the “I’m in charge” arrogance of a uniformed attendant on one of Canada’s premier airlines.
I should perhaps offer his own testimony at this point. He was so wildly optimistic he sent a letter of complaint to the airline. This is, we all know, not a triumph of hope over experience. It is a definition of futility fed by the fumes of utter desperation. You grow old waiting for a reply.
Here is what he wrote: “When we were seated a lady with a cat sat next to us and after chatting, I informed her that I have a serious allergy to cats. She politely told an attendant that I had an allergy. The attendant then informed me that I was supposed to carry a card for allergy (first I heard) and she could put me in the seat ahead but my wife (who has Parkinson’s) had to stay in her seat. I told her I couldn’t leave her by herself. She, the attendant, informed the lady that she also has a cat!!
“I asked her for a mask twice but had to ask another attendant before I got it. Trying to keep this short, I ended up at the emergency clinic for swollen eyes and throat.”
I will suspend more detail.
This is one of a hundred, perhaps a thousand, stories of how the regime of air travel—yes, regime—has forgotten service, dignity, respect, and concern for their passengers. They plead and get subsidies from government, and they have no human accountability whatsoever.
Every fault in airline service is always placed on outside circumstances. The plane doesn’t land, it is the weather. The baggage is lost, it is flight interruption. Passengers are in planes on the tarmac for needless hours, something mechanical must be holding us up. You bought a ticket and your flight is cancelled, well, try our online site.
Or dive into a bottomless cave, which features idiot pre-recorded messages telling you how “important your call is to us” till you expire from frustration and unexamined cold stupor.
To get an answer when calling an airline number holds the same odds as beating Bobby Fisher in his dubious prime. What is the salary of key airline executives? We know they have no shame to be taking whatever money they earn, but could they at least say, once, that they don’t deserve any payment whatsoever.
Someone once said, “Canada is not broken.” Well, some of its bits aren’t in a great shape.
To that poor husband and wife, and the rudeness and discompassion they received, all gentle Canadians wish you well. You made a long journey to see your daughter when her mother was ill, and this is not the way you should have been treated.
