A harrowing tale of survival from a Vietnam veteran

I admit it, U.S. domestic carriers make me crazy some days, with their various fares and rules that seem arbitrary at best and flat out stupid at worst. It seems, the best foreign carriers leave many of their domestic competition in the dust.

Then there are the moments that put it all in perspective, such as my family’s experience with Vietnam Airlines for a roundtrip from Saigon-Ho Chi Minh to Siem Reap earlier this week.

Vietnam Airlines got the basics right. The planes were on-time, they got our luggage to us in one piece and served a snack. On a 40-minute flight they served water and a small mystery meat sandwich to all passengers. (After seeing enough restaurants proudly proclaiming “We do not serve dog, cat, rat or worm,” we did, however, pass on the unidentified sandwich.)

The problems encountered with our flights were with the reservation and reconfirmation processes: a combination of computer glitches, lack of information and less-than-stellar customer service.

The fun began before we left, when Vietnam Airlines — four separate times in the last month — sent us a schedule change, saying that our reservation was canceled on the original return flight, and rebooked on a new flight. Strangely, the old flight and the new flights had identical flight numbers, and identical times. When, as a travel agent, I checked the flight, sometimes it appeared in our GDS airline computer, sometimes it did not. For about a week the flight appeared, but showed sold out.

We decided to cross our fingers and count on it going. The outbound flight, at least, appeared to be no problem, until we landed in Vietnam. Our hotel advised us to reconfirm our outbound flight the next day, and the concierge offered to do it for us in the morning. He spent about 10 minutes on the phone, during which we couldn’t understand what he was saying, but understood that he wasn’t happy.

When he hung up the phone, the concierge apologized profusely, sputtering that he was Vietnamese, and he hated Vietnam Airlines. They refused to reconfirm the flights, and told him we needed to go to their office. This was about 10 a.m. Our flights were scheduled to depart at 3:30 p.m. When we questioned the necessity of doing this, he advised that we should do it. Fortunately, the office was nearby.

We walked over, explained the situation to the bored-looking girl behind the reception desk. She spoke English, and told us, “You must reconfirm.” She handed us a number and we took out seats. After about 15 minutes our number was called, and a reasonably pleasant woman stamped our tickets, gave us a ticket envelope and told us to be at the airport two hours in advance.

At the nearly empty airport, things went fairly smoothly, except for a last-minute gate change. We boarded a flight that was, at most, 20 percent full.

Had we not reconfirmed, who knows what would have happened? And what was the purpose of asking us to go in person? Who can answer that question either? The concierge had also explained that sometimes there was no logic to what they did. (On the return, our hotel concierge had no problem reconfirming by phone.)

The return flight, which had been canceled and rebooked so many times, ended up about being 70 percent full. The flight was uneventful except for the fact that somehow we had missed the fact that Cambodia now charges every departing passenger $25 to leave the country, on top of the $20 entry visa fee.

So, as noted, everything ended up fine, except for the nearly constant feeling that we were on the brink of travel disaster.

I have heard similar stories of travel craziness flying within India. Plus, I remember, as much as I might want to black it out, some different challenges with Aeroflot in the early 1990s. I have no doubt that consumertraveler.com readers have had other, or far worse, surreal flying experiences. (Feel free to add them in comments.)

But the whole experience was one of the few times I have wished longingly for the customer service of say, United Airlines.