Airline passenger says ‘go! a no go’

A flight delay at Honolulu International Airport left one traveler fuming about go! Airlines’ lack of customer service.

Tina Liu, a Taiwan resident traveling to the Big Island for a class reunion, said she spent several hours Wednesday evening at the Honolulu airport’s commuter terminal without water and no communication from the company’s management. After a four-hour wait, a go! employee who worked on the runway brought bottled water for the nine passengers still waiting for the 8:30 p.m. flight, which finally departed Honolulu at about 2 a.m., Liu said.

While the company’s lower-level employees, such as gate agents, were accommodating, Liu said she could see higher-ranking employees just outside the terminal’s security barrier. Those managers did nothing, she said, to help passengers waiting for their airplane to be repaired.

All she wanted, she said, was a little sympathy from the company.

Liu said she would have appreciated “any gesture of showing apology. I have had none.”

Instead, she got “attitudes” from the managers with whom she was able to speak, including a guest services supervisor.

“go! should not be allowed to continue like this,” Liu said, adding she heard comments from airport staff in Honolulu and Kona about the company’s track record of delayed interisland flights. “It’s getting worse. In the interim, we’re all the victims of it.”

To make matters worse, Liu arrived in Kona without her luggage. She was told the luggage would arrive at 9 a.m. Thursday. It finally showed up at noon, she said.

Messages left with Mesa Airlines, which owns go!, were not immediately returned Thursday afternoon.

Liu, an experienced traveler, has lived in Asia, the United States and Europe. Her experience Wednesday evening left her questioning what impression go! was making on the tourists who support Hawaii’s economy.

“Everyone should be warned,” she said. “go! is a no-go.”