In business and in life, it’s not necessarily what things happen, but instead how you react to them. This goes for people as well as companies.

Last week I was on an American Airlines flight from Denver to Chicago. I was wiped out after a 5 day business conference in Colorado Springs, and I was hoping to get home on time so that I could kiss my kids goodnight.

The first sign that something was wrong was when I received the text message alert that the flight was 30 minutes late. By the time I checked in (2 hours before the flight), the delay had already reached 1 hour. After a quick lunch, I planted myself in a cubicle at  the Admirals Club to get some work done. Every 15 minutes, my phone would buzz with another alert telling me the flight was delayed even longer.

Turns out there was a mechanical problem with the plane in Chicago. After trying to fix the plane, they ended up swapping aircraft. Instead of taking off from Denver at 3pm, we ended up leaving from Denver at 8pm. To American’s credit, they did try to accommodate me on another airline, but all of the seats were full.

I didn’t grumble too much (other than a few Tweets), and tried to look at the positive side. I’d rather have a fully functional airplane than a broken one. Also, I did manage to get a ton of work done in the Admirals Club.

Today (less than a week later), I received an unsolicited appology email from American Airlines along with a 5,000 mile frequent flier mileage credit. It’s this type of attention and focus on the customer that keeps me flying with American.

Thank you American Airlines!

Yes… As much as I can’t stand United Airlines, I recently flew them again.

My mother-in-law passed away a couple of weeks ago, and we flew out the next day from Chicago to Boston for the funeral. Even though American Airlines (my preference) and United Airlines were the same price, my father in-law had vouchers for United Airlines, so they won.

There was the usual get on the plane, wait, get off the plane, wait, get back on the plane, go the end of the runway, wait some more. This is not what got under my skin though.

It was a horrible week anyway, with the passing of my mother in-law. To make matters worse, my father in-law caught a stomach bug the morning we were flying back. The flight was about 2/3 full. United charges extra for the “preferred” seats like exit rows, etc… My father in-law was the last person on the plane, and they closed the door behind him. As he got to the exit row, he noticed that there were plenty of open exit row seats. He sat down and was quickly told by the flight attendant that those were only for people who paid extra. My wife explained that her mom had just passed away and that my father in-law also wasn’t feeling well and asked if he could just sit there since the seat was otherwise empty.

The flight attendant looked at my wife and father in-law and said “no, go back to your assigned seat.”

All I can say is that this flight attendant acted like a complete jackass, and showed absolutely zero compassion. United Airlines continued to remind me why I do all of my business travel with American Airlines.

I’m sure that there are still some good employees left at Northwest Airlines, but the ongoing labor battles seem to have taken a toll on the morale and attitudes of the their flight attendants.

 I took a Northwest flight from Chicago to Minneapolis on business a few weeks ago. On the way back, I was in the very last row. This wasn’t really a big deal to me since the flight itself is less than an hour and I had a good book.

As we started to taxi, I started getting dripped on. In fact, everyone in the last two rows was getting soaked. I looked at the flight attendant right behind me and asked her what was pouring out on us and should we be concerned. She replied that it was condensation build-up from the air conditioning. As I looked at the side vents for the last 10 rows of the plane, there were paper towels shoved into the vents. This was not exactly the mechanical fix that gave me confidence in the overall safety of the plane.

 When I asked the same flight attendant if this was a problem only with this plane or the entire fleet of DC-9 planes, she told me that it was a problem with the entire fleet. I asked her if she had ever reported the problem, and she replied that she had never reported it because it’s a problem with all of the planes and wasn’t worth her time to report.

Yikes…. Can’t help but love a flight attendant who takes such pride in her company. Do you think Northwest Airlines has some serious problems?