PETpla.net Insider 06 / 2018

imprint EDITORIAL PUBLISHER Alexander Büchler, Managing Director HEAD OFFICE heidelberg business media GmbH Bunsenstr. 14 69115 Heidelberg, Germany phone: +49 6221-65108-0 fax: +49 6221-65108-28 info@hbmedia.net EDITORIAL Kay Barton Heike Fischer Gabriele Kosmehl Michael Maruschke Ruari McCallion Waldemar Schmitke Anthony Withers WikiPETia.info petplanet@hbmedia.net MEDIA CONSULTANTS Martina Hirschmann hirschmann@hbmedia.net Johann Lange-Brock lange-brock@hbmedia.net phone: +49 6221-65108-0 fax: +49 6221-65108-28 LAYOUT AND PREPRESS EXPRIM Werbeagentur | exprim.de Matthias Gaumann READER SERVICES Till Kretner reader@hbmedia.net PRINT Chroma Druck & Verlag GmbH Werkstr. 25 67354 Römerberg Germany WWW www.hbmedia.net | w ww.petpla.net PETplanet Insider ISSN 1438-9459 is published 10 times a year. This publication is sent to qualified subscribers (1-year subscription 149 EUR, 2-year subscription 289 EUR, Young professionals’ sub- scription 99 EUR. Magazines will be dispatched to you by airmail). Not to be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. Note: The fact that product names may not be identified as trademarks is not an indication that such names are not registered trademarks. 3 PET planet Insider Vol. 19 No. 06/18 www.petpla.net If you have ever experienced the ineptitude of American Airlines then you will empathise with our team and our nightmare journeys to and from NPE. The saga began with PETplanet staff Valentin T. on May 5, whose flight from Frankfurt never left the ground. After 4 hours sitting on the aircraft, all passengers were asked to disembark and the flight was cancelled. Luckily Lufthansa saved the day and Valentin managed to get on a flight to Orlando that very day. I wasn’t quite so lucky. Booked onto the same American Airlines flight I wasn’t even able to board the fated plane as my passport was supposedly ‘too worn out’. “You won’t get into the States with this, pal”, was the sneer- ing advice. The fact that I had flown to Hawaii only a few days earlier with the same passport, and that neither the carrier nor the immigration authorities had found anything wrong with it seemed to cut no ice with American Airlines. I never got to NPE. American Airlines sank to new depths on Valentin’s return flight. His first connecting flight was delayed due to technical problems, which meant he arrived at the departure gate for the Frankfurt flight just five minutes before final boarding. The Gate had closed. A bad tempered customer service assis- tant rebooked him via Dublin, arriving 12 hours later than scheduled in Frank- furt. Valentin’s harmless comment about Lufthansa getting him there quicker soon escalated into the assistant saying she felt “under personal attack”. And the American Airlines saga does not end there. Kay Barton drove to Atlanta in the Editourmobil to catch an American Airline’s flight to Frank- furt. No surprises that the first connection to Philadelphia was delayed and then cancelled. Amazingly a re-booking was made on an alternative Atlanta- Dallas-London-Frankfurt flight on the same day. However, this flight to Dallas was also delayed, resulting in a re-booking for the next day and an unin- tended overnight stay at the airport. The following day, an announcement at the departure gate confirmed that this flight was also delayed and therefore cancelled. Finally, the only way that American Airlines could get Kay back to Frankfurt was to re-book him on a direct flight with one of their competitors, Delta. Having spent 30 hours in Atlanta, Kay was finally able to get a return flight to Frankfurt, with no hitches... Thanks to American Airlines, two of my colleagues spent over 24 hours in airports and I never even got to fly. Needless to say we’ve had no acknowl- edgement of our emails of complaint... I should just mention that other colleagues did manage to fly to NPE with- out a single problem thanks to Lufthansa and Delta. Yours, Alexander Büchler Dear friends of PETplanet Insider, Never Ever American Airlines