Miami International Airport was in a state of chaos. No one was being allowed into the concourses. Passengers and employees were being evacuated.
My source? A panicked client who called me for help.
A check of American Airlines’ website revealed no problems. And CNN.com didn’t have any “breaking news.”
So I tried Twitter. And sure enough …
Police working security incident affecting Checkpoint 2, Skytrain on D & some D gates. All passengers safe & secure. Updates as available.
— Miami Int’l Airport (@iflymia) November 9, 2015
I quickly called American Airlines’ “Flagship Desk,” its elite reservations department for preferred travel agents, and asked what the procedure was for rescheduling flights out of Miami. The response was basically, “We don’t have a problem at Miami.” Uh, yes, you do. So I called back in five minutes. Same response. The client, who is elderly, decided he would go to a hotel at his own expense. He figured no one was going anywhere and said to change him to a morning flight; he’d pay a change fee if necessary. At this point, there actually was a pretty rapid series of tweets from the airport, along with passengers chiming in.
Update #2: security incident affecting Ck.Point 2 & other areas of D. Everyone safe. Until all clear, expect delays.
— Miami Int’l Airport (@iflymia) November 9, 2015
#BREAKING 500 people stranded in Terminal D as #MDPD investigates suspicious item. @iflymia says all is safe @nbc6 pic.twitter.com/cmBAtMI7I7
— Marissa Bagg (@MarissaNBC6) November 10, 2015
Twitter pictures showed hundreds of people milling around. And you could also see online that the local media was beginning to pick up the story. But American still insisted there was no problem, and no change fees would be waived. Even when they checked with supervisors. It seems absurd that the airline would really charge penalties when passengers couldn’t get to their planes. And generally, when flight delays are more than a couple of hours, which seemed pretty likely, they waive change fees. So I kept calling. And also tweeted American, telling them they needed to communicate a problem to their staff.
Got to love it, Twitter knows security checkpoints at #MIAAirport are closed, #AmericanAirlines phone agents don’t know, & it’s THEIR planes
— Janice Hough (@leftcoastbabe) November 9, 2015
Curiously, one phone agent insisted that the only way to change a flight without penalty would be to talk to a gate agent at the airport, although I kept telling her that the gate agents had also been evacuated from the terminals. And American didn’t have enough check-in agents outside of security to deal with more than 1,000 people.
Finally, almost an hour after the initial call, American apparently figured it out, and an agent told me they would waive reissue fees. So I was able to switch my client’s ticket to a flight the next morning at no cost.
In the end, the security issue turned out to be something innocent: a bag containing dental equipment had been flagged for extra screening. The TSA secondary screener didn’t notice, and so the man went along to the gate with the bag and boarded his plane.
The fun wasn’t over at that point though, as police stormed the plane and took the poor man into custody. They later released him, presumably with an apology. And eventually the terminals were reopened, with flight delays of two to four hours.
So this all could have been much worse, although perhaps those who missed connections or ended up getting home in the wee hours of the morning don’t feel that way.
But it still strikes me as bizarre that in a 24/7 Internet social media age, it took almost an hour for a major airline to realize their flights were inaccessible at a major hub. But there it is.
My colleague Christopher Elliott recently visited American Airlines’ headquarters in Dallas and spent a little time with their social media group. He reports that they have several employees assigned to follow Twitter, both in headquarters and in their new operations center.
Here’s a group shot of the team.
One moral of the story, for now, is that social media, while it can give rise to unsubstantiated rumors, is often ahead of the game. So keep calling back until they catch up. And American Airlines, maybe you need to hire a few more agents to monitor Twitter.
Janice Hough is a California-based travel agent a travel blogger and a part-time comedy writer. A frequent flier herself, she’s been doing battle with airlines, hotels, and other travel companies for over three decades. Besides writing for Travelers United, Janice has a humor blog at Leftcoastsportsbabe.com (Warning, the political and sports humor therein does not represent the views of anyone but herself.)
