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5 Funny airline passenger complaints

Cape Town - After months, possibly years of silence, an Air New Zealand passenger, Jerermy Chaston, decided it was finally time to lay his bottled-up complaint on the carrier's Facebook page. 

While you might have expected it to have something to do with legroom, or rude staff, or dirty bathrooms, you know, the things people would normally feel the need to raise, Chaston's complaint was a lot more... let's say original:

An out of whack cheese to cracker ratio.

Accompanied by a photograph of the offending snacks, Chaston writes:

"I mean I like cheese, I REALLY like cheese but often the best part of the cheese is having it accompanied by a firm and crisp cracker. I feel that there is sufficient cheese to justify at least four crackers!!

Now maybe it's the one ice cold red wine that I consumed in flight talking here but I took the liberty of taking a photo to show the terrible extent of your problem. Please rectify this horrid oversight..."

Chaston received a reply from Air New Zealand shortly after.

"Hi Jeremy, thanks for getting in touch, we appreciate your feedback and have passed this on to our team to look into," it read.

Soon, New Zealand Air regulars weighed in on the complaint, with most begging the airline not to reduce the size of the cheese, but rather to add a few more crackers.

We found Chaston's grievance so amusing that we decided to search for a few more online. These were the funniest we came across:

Richard Branson once called this the world's best passenger complaint letter

After a nightmarish culinary experience on board a Virgin Atlantic flight from Mumbai to Heathrow in December 2008, a passenger decided to write a letter of complaint to Sir Richard Branson himself. Including a photograph of unidentifiable dishes on his tray table, the anonymous passenger writes:

"Look at this Richard. Just look at it. I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?"

The letter continues for quite a few substantial paragraphs, detailing in colourful terms just why the experience was so awful, with the following probably being the apex of hilarity:

"I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about. Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing."

Branson found the detailed complaint so compelling, he actually gave the disappointed customer a call to personally apologise. Read the entire letter on the Telegraph... you won't be disappointed.

A little bit of sarcasm from a tennis star

It was actually also Sir Branson that brought the world's attention to another brilliant complaint when he posted an open letter penned by Arthur Hicks, a well-known UK tennis player, to Caribbean airline, LIAT on his blog. 

Dripping with sarcasm, Hicks opens his letter by thanking the airline for giving its passengers such a thorough tour of the Caribbean and then continues:

"Most other airlines I have travelled on would simply wish to take me from point A to B in rather a hurry. I was intrigued that we were allowed to stop at not a lowly one or two but a magnificent six airports yesterday. And who wants to fly on the same airplane the entire time? We got to change and refuel every step of the way!"

In his blog post, Branson praises Hicks's letter, calling it a 'brilliant note', adding that responding to customer complaints is of the utmost importance for airlines and that he hoped LIAT had responded accordingly. Read the full letter on Virgin.com 

Complaint over having to sit next to an obese passenger goes viral

In one of the most legendary viral posts to ever grace the internet, blogger Rich Wiskens penned a detailed complaint to Jetstar about his unpleasant experience sitting next to a man as big as 'an infant hippopotamus' and who smelled like 'blue cheese' and a 'Mumbai slum', despite having spent an extra $25 for an emergency row seat.

His graphic and creative letter takes readers right into the very depths of his misery, as he describes having to prepare for a 127 Hours-like escape just to leave his seat. After various failed attempts to convince cabin crew to help him move, he realised he would just have to accept his fate, but didn't leave it without a fight: 'so that's why I'm demanding a full refund of my ticket, including the $25 for an emergency row seat... I'm also looking to be compensated for the physical pain and mental suffering caused by being enveloped in human blubber for four hours."

Jetstar offered him $100 compensation as well as refunding his outlay for the emergency seat.

Check out Wiskens' blog for the full letter.  

Hand-written letter about the dire situation in Continental Airlines' seat 29E


Not all airplane seats are created equal, and apparently seat 29E on Continental Airlines flight 888 either from or to Houston, Texas is particularly bad... or at least it was back in 2005. 

A distraught passenger decided to approach the airline with a hand-written letter to raise awareness about his discomfort, which was republished on Gadling a while later.

The powerful opening lines of the letter, penned while on board the aircraft, read:

"As you may know, this seat is situated directly across from the lavatory, so close that I can reach out my left arm and touch the door.

All my senses are being tortured simultaneously. It’s difficult to say what the worst part about sitting in 29E really is? Is it the stench of the sanitation flued that is blown all over my body every 60 seconds when the door opens? Is it the woosh of the constant flushing? Or is it the passengers asses that seem to to fit into my personal space like a pornographic jig-saw puzzle?"

Pretty hilarious, right? Read the rest of it on Gadling 

Have anything to add? Leave a comment below, tweet @traveller24_saconnect with us on Facebook or tag traveller24_sa on Instagram

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