Here We Go Again
This is my summer of of air travel discontent. The season is halfway over and I have taken eighteen flights. Four have flown on time. On Saturday we sat on a taxiway in Dallas for thirty-five minutes as the flight crew fixed an electronic gauge issue. Fixing it took five minutes. Filing the paperwork and getting approval to depart took the other half hour. The flight to Austin, once we took off, was only 33 minutes, two minutes shorter than the time we sat on the taxiway. They could have told us what was going on while we waited, but nope, they kept us in suspense until the end. It was 100 degrees outside and pushing 80 inside the plane.
While we sat on the taxiway I had no idea where we were because everyone on the entire flight was staring at their phones. From the time people sat down after they boarded until the seatbelt sign went off and they could leave the plane, they stared at their phones. If they happened to be sitting in a window seat, the window shade was never opened – not ever. You could be flying over the Grand Canyon, but you would never know because heaven forbid someone should open a window shade and cause a glare on someone else’s phone screen.
I used to sit in the first row on the aisle, to be close to the bathroom and to be the first person off the plane. Now I sit in the window seat in row one, so I can control the window shade and actually look out the window. The Front Range of Colorado was beautiful Saturday morning.
Saturday’s was not the hottest flight I’ve been on. There are a couple of aircraft types that do well with air conditioning when you are on the ground. On the whole Airbus is better than Boeing. As for the worst aircraft for keeping you cool when you are on the ground – a Bombardier CRJ200 wins, hands down. The CRJ200 is a clown car with wings. It also serves nicely as an oven should you want to bake a bunch of flyers while you wait to take off in Phoenix.
I should have expected the DEN-DFW-AUS fiasco. Do not ever fly through Dallas in the summertime. Come to think of it, do not ever fly through DFW anytime. Everyone who works there is surly, even more than Philadelphia, and PHL has a high bar for surliness.
Do not fly into Denver after one in the afternoon during the summertime. The thunderstorms that come off the mountains will get ya. Never fly into Newark, ever, regardless of the time of day. The reasons are too numerous to list. Cathy and I flew into Newark once from Vienna. It took us longer to drive home to Long Island than it did to fly from Vienna to New Jersey. It was a Friday afternoon in the summertime. If you live in metro New York, you understand.
On the list of airports to avoid, you can add Chicago O’Hare, unless you like taxiing for hours on end to and from the terminal. I’m pretty sure you land in Wisconsin and they drive the planes the rest of the way to the ORD gates.
Heaven forbid the flight you are taking into ORD should be late and therefore miss it’s slot at the gate. If that happens you will go to the penalty box (yep, that’s what the pilots call it) until the following weekend. And of course, since you are on the ground, you cannot get up to go to the bathroom the entire time you are in the penalty box. Should you defy their firm orders and get up to use the bathroom anyway, you’d better hope they don’t get clearance to leave the penalty box while you are in the bathroom. For the record, I do not say this from experience, but I have seen what happens to people who do. It’s not pretty.
Other things not to do when traveling – do not get a rental car in Phoenix. The rental car complex is 279 miles from the airport. The same is true of the rental car complex at Cleveland Hopkins airport. The rental building is somewhere across Lake Erie in rural Ontario. You have to have your passport to get there.
What four flights have flown on time for me this summer, you might ask. Believe it or not, two were flying into and out of LaGuardia, which is now one of the best airports in the nation. (Yep, I’m not kidding.) The others were into and out of LAX. If New York City and Los Angeles can figure out how to run on-time airports, why can’t anybody else?
Which airport has the worst TSA experience? Denver, without a doubt. They spent literally 2.3 billion dollars to update the terminal and TSA screening is now less efficient than it was before the updates. How do you even do that? I waited 30 minutes to get through the TSA checkpoint in Denver on my way to New York last month, and I have both pre-check and Clear. It took me literally 30 seconds to get through at LaGuardia on the way home. You read that right – 30 minutes at Denver and 30 seconds at LaGuardia! I have a theory about that. Denver’s TSA workers are from Denver, which has the worst drivers in America. LaGuardia’s TSA workers are from New York, which has the best drivers in America. Wasting time is not a New York option.
Do I have a favorite airport? Yep. It’s any airport where the lines are quick, the workers efficient, the gate agents known how to board a flight, and there are enough marshallers and wing walkers when you arrive to actually get you to your gate. Don’t get me started about waiting for wing walkers.
Why can’t other gate agents be as efficient as Karen at DEN, or MaryLynn or Debbie were at ISP, or pretty much 90 percent of the USAir people, folks who now have to deal with legacy American Airlines agents who board stray cats before first class flyers, especially at DFW.
I flew with Edwin Colodny once. I sat across from him. He was the CEO of USAir. I thanked him for running a wonderful airline. He was very gracious. Employees said he was one of the best airline CEO’s ever, along with Tom Davis at Piedmont. If I ran into Robert Isom on a flight, today’s American CEO, I would not be praising him for his wonderful airline.
I’m writing all of this on Sunday evening, while I wait for my flight back to Denver. My first two return flights cancelled. American said they can’t get me home until Monday evening. I switched to United. The flight that is supposed to leave at 8:30 is now pushed back to 10:10, arriving in Denver at midnight.
Reading through this I’m pretty sure I sound like that cranky old person who says, “Dang it, things ain’t as good as they used to be.” Come to think of it, when it comes to flying, things ain’t as good as they used to be.
I’ll let you know if I ever get home.
And so it goes.
