Two birds walk into the Philadelphia airport Admirals Club bar. They sit down and the first bird asks the bartender, “you got any bread?” The Admirals Club bartender replies, “No, sorry.”
The second bird then asks, “Have you got any bread?” And the bartender starts getting angry: “we haven’t got any bread, what do you think this is a Delta Sky Club?”
The first bird then asks again, “Hey, mate, have you got bread?” That’s it. The bartended is furious. He looks at the two birds and says “No. No bread in the Admirals Club. If you ask me again I’m mgonna nail your beaks to the bar!”
The second bird chirps, “Have you got any nails?” And the bartender responds, “No, no nails either.” So the first bird bird asks the bartender, “Do you have any bread?”
Yesterday I shared video of two birds flying around the American Airlines Admirals Club in Philadelphia. According to staff there, the first bird arrived months ago and the second on in early August.
After I brought it to the airline’s attention they let me know they’re now “working with a local company to safely remove the birds.”
Now another reader passes along video of the two birds – rather than flying here they’re walking around the entrance to the club.
The primary reason for writing about the birds was a pun – so I could point out that if both birds stay too long it’s a real issue since American Airlines allows only one carrion.
Question: How can you tell the difference between ranch dressing, vanilla yogurt, or freshly crapped bird poop on top of your lunch salad in the Philadelphia airport American Airlines Admirals Club?
Answer: It’s the taste.
Given the absolutely horrific performance that American (right along with United) and even worse is Southwest for June based on the latest DOT Air Travel Consumer Report, birds in a lounge are the least of American’s problems and it is no surprise they blow off your request about what they are doing about it.
When American’s on-time, cancellation, baggage handling, oversale, and even civil rights complaints performance is worse than the industry average by a fairly wide margin, providing service that is even remotely acceptable is not even on their radar.
We all understand that there have been significant outbreaks of weather that are substantially different from the norm in many places across the country this summer but this isn’t the first summer that Texas has been above average in rain, long range forecasts predicted it months ago, and American is performing worse than its competitors not just in its own hubs, including DFW, but across its system.
The US DOT just released its latest Air Travel Consumer Report which covers operations for the month of June 2021 and, as I have consistently said it would be, it reflects how absolutely aweful air travel is in the United States this summer with most airlines.
As usual, Hawaiian is at the top of the list in terms of on-time and fewest cancellations but Delta has performance that is just as good despite being much, much larger and having hubs and operations across the continental US, the same cities that other airlines operate from. Delta’s system on-time performance was more than 10 percent higher than American and United and a mind-blowing 20 plus percent better than Southwest and JetBlue. Even Alaska’s on-time is 6 points worse than Delta. In cancellations, Delta cancelled just 0.1% of its flights while American and Southwest each had over 3000 cancellations for more than 3% of their system cancelled. And the statistics for other metrics including baggage and wheelchair/scooter handling, customer complaints, oversales and even civil rights complaints are far worse than they were pre-covid and what even those airlines were doing in the spring.
And this is only the report for June.
Weather is not the issue here.
Some airlines including esp. American and Southwest have pushed their systems to their limits throughout the pandemic and they are doing it with predictably poor results this summer
And to add insult to injury, American and Southwest are the two large airlines that are not serving alcohol in economy. Their passengers are acting out because of the horrible operations and their managements are blaming customers and cutting them off from alcohol rather than admitting that their covid management plans have been wrong throughout the pandemic.
The level of customer disservice in the US airline industry is not sustainable and airlines that cannot and are not delivering reliability have an opportunity to cut schedules to what is manageable and appropriately deliverable.
Better than the roaches that used to be at the old USAirways club there. As well in the Admirals club in Chicago. Proper maintenance and cleaning has never been a strong suit in the U.S. We are really just a third world country disguised by flashy cars and glitzy movie sets.
Wait, I heard this one before. Except there were also a priest and a rabbi.
PHL can’t even eliminate running rats around WN gates at terminal E!!
I guess PHL management level probably thinking birds no big deals.
The carrion pun is brilliant. Thank you!
The correct guarantee of the go to go to Greenwich Point is still there when there are no other options other than Bryam.
This was a hoot! Well done, Gary!
@ Tim Dunn YAWN !
@Tim Dunn
What’s your job title at Delta?????
There have been birds flying in the club from concouse B to C for as long as I can remember. I worked for USAir 2005-6. PHL has had this problem for a long time.
To help really annoy their customers, airlines could consider training homeless birds like those squatting in the Philadelphia American Airlines Admirals Club to tow a miniature airborne promotional advertising banner.
I was there last Friday afternoon, the terminal and club was so empty that the birds helped fill the space.
Hey, at least American has something that’s happily flying.
My bird story: I came home feeling terrible, turned out it was a kidney stone. This was the house I lived in for 16 years and it was the one day when a big bird flew in. Shared the afternoon between moaning on the floor until my wife could get home to drive us to the hospital and staggering around trying to shoo it out a window. Finally did. After that experience two little sparrows or whatever walking around look like a friendly diversion.