Last Friday afternoon, my family flew to SFO from Osaka with Asiana Airlines, connecting through Incheon. During check-in, we asked for a bassinet as we have a 4 month old.
The Osaka leg was no problem and our family of five (with three kids aged five and under) made it through. We got a bassinet seat, and the flight was short regardless.
In Incheon, Asiana Airlines truly failed us.
When we boarded, we realized we did not have a bassinet seat. We immediately told the stewardess, concerned. She asked us to contact an email address at Asiana. She didn’t clearly understand the urgency of getting on to a 10+ hr flight without some sleep assistance for our 4 month old, alongside having kids of 2 and 5 years of age on the same trip. I said that the email would not help us in this situation and we needed help right away. I stated that we had asked for a bassinet seat during check in and that we had received one on the connecting flight.
We sat down and waited. As a side note, we made sure to ask for the bassinet seat because on our flight to Asia, we had forgotten to ask Eva Airlines for one and they didn’t ask us either. In the past with Eva, they had always set this up automatically or at least asked us – it’s obvious right? If you have a child who is young enough to share a seat with a parent, especially on a longer transcontinental flight, no parent can hold a baby uninterrupted for that long. But Eva failed us so we knew we needed to remember to ask for the flight home. On the first flight, my wife and I were up for 12+ hours of the 14 hour-ish flight standing and walking with our baby to help her get some sleep relief. It was a miserable experience and and I knew we couldn’t do that again.
So we made sure to let Asiana know.
A few minutes later, a manager was brought on board to talk to me. He immediately said there was no record of the request. His tone felt like he wanted to show me that Asiana did nothing wrong.
I told him, we requested the seat, we had received the seat on the previous flight. He kept saying there was no record and that they could not verify. I told him he could easily see our seat on the previous flight and realize that what I was saying was true. But he did not care.
I asked him, let’s assume that what I am saying is true. That I did ask for such a seat and that their team did not record it. Would this be their fault? Or would it be my fault?
He refused to answer. He kept saying they had no record of the request. He didn’t care about “let’s try to help you somehow”, he just wanted to show me his team had done nothing wrong when there was a clear parenting crisis situation coming for me and my family in dealing with the upcoming flight. I had to interrupt him because he wasn’t just going to get me to shut up so he could leave. I kept asking the same question, would it be Asiana’s fault if I had truly asked and they missed it? How could they have missed it if I had received the request on the first flight?
He never answered. I asked him what can you do now to help us? He pointed back to there being no record.
I was so frustrated because all he cared about was implying that I had made the mistake because there was no record. He didn’t see the human side of the issue and see what we were facing as parents. He then stopped the conversation, saying, “I will not continue this conversation. I am walking away.”
And so he did.
My wife later told me that he was trying to tell me they had no more bassinet seats. But that really wasn’t the issue. The issue was that they couldn’t say, we don’t know what happened here, but clearly this isn’t ideal for you, let’s figure out some stopgap way to make something better. And to have someone walk away from me, knowing that because I was already on the flight I had no recourse, was classless.
I don’t think I need to tell you to guess how bad the flight experience was for us coming back. What made it worse was realizing they had some empty front row (non-bassinet) seats in the same class that could have been offered. My wife could have had more space to take care of our baby, stand up without affecting our flight neighbors, created less noise for others.
But again, Asiana Airlines didn’t care. They only cared that I was shown they had no responsibility. And once that was “proven”, they could walk away.
I Spit Hot Fire 