I Hate Air Travel
12 January 2012
My family just returned from a quick trip to visit our relatives on the other side of the country, and I have confirmed something I already knew – I hate air travel. These days it seems to get worse every year. With all of the mergers of airlines it seems like they are all trying to out-do each other with who can make the experience more miserable for their passengers or “customers” as the flight attendants now refer to us. I would imagine that their bosses probably refer to us as “marks”.
Getting through security is a major hassle. You have to take everything out of your pockets, remove your shoes, your belt, your jackets, your hat, all jewelry and even scarves if you are wearing one. And all of that goes through a scanner with your bags except for your shampoo which now has to go into a clear plastic baggie and must be removed from your carry-on bags. Of course, you might also be selected for the complimentary TSA “massage”. This is a full body grope, so if you prefer not to be felt-up don’t travel by air. The terrorists have won, and so have the businesses making money from all of this airport security nonsense.
Once you’ve managed to get through security and re-dress yourself you now get to wait for your plane for a while. This is probably the nicest part of the ordeal. At least you can walk around and buy some over-priced airport food. Getting on to the airplane can also be interesting. Some airlines like Southwest make you fight to get a seat. You can’t just select a seat when you make your reservation. You have to secure a place in line by being either the first to call them 24 hours before your flight or by paying a bit extra for a spot at the front of the boarding line. This does not guarantee you a particular seat; it just gives you a running start at beating some other schmuck to the seat you want. So, good luck if you are traveling with your family and were planning on sitting together.
Airplanes have always been cramped, but they seem to be packing more people into less space. Maybe I just need to lose more weight; although I should point out that I carry, at most, an extra twenty pounds. My blogging partner is a punchy six-footer, so he has more difficulty getting into those seats than I do. And for those who are truly obese… well, just pray you aren’t one of them – or one of those sitting beside one of those!
It seems that most folks these days are trying to cram everything into their carry-ons now that the airlines are charging about $25 extra for each checked bag. So, you need to make damned sure that you get into the plane as quickly as possible in order to find an overhead spot for your well-stuffed carry-ons. You can, of course, jam your carry-on under your seat and have even less leg room. Failing that, the attendant will check (chuck) your carry-on for you. The problem I have with that is that often I don’t pack the carry-on as securely as a bag I would check, so fragile stuff like eyeglasses and shaving razors are really at risk of total destruction. And right after you sit down you remember that your snacks, book and boarding passes for the connecting flight are all stuffed into the bag that was just checked. Oye…
You would think that before they packed all of the passengers in the plane they would determine if there are any problems with either taking off at the airport or landing at the destination. You would think. But for some stupid reason THEY think it’s better to make those checks after the fact so everybody gets a nice uncomfortable wait on the plane. On our last two flights we sat on the runway for about an hour before we could take off. Rrrrr…
For domestic flights these days there is also no longer a meal included with long flights. Either you bring your own food, or you have to buy something on the plane. If you thought airplane food stank before, it’s much worse these days. And it’s not cheap either. You can easily spend $9 on just enough food to make you hungry. I made the mistake of not buying something at the airport and then getting sucked into buying some airline food based on a great looking ad photo in their magazine. United/Continental has something they are referring to as Tapas. They show an assortment of crackers, olives, almonds, humus, cheese spread and a roasted tomato dip. It looked good in the photo. What they gave me was a cardboard box with a half dozen crackers, a little foil wrapped baggy of tiny olives, a few nuts, a tube of humus to squeeze on the crackers and a little plastic shovel to smoosh the cheese spread and the tomato stuff on the crackers. To be fair, it was pretty tasty; but there was just not enough to satisfy an adult. My kids ate most of it.
So, at least there is entertainment? Well, the days of free in-flight movies are rapidly going away. Our return flight featured DirecTV players – $7.99 per person. Yeah, I’m going to pay an extra $32 for my family to be able to watch DirecTV during the flight.
The one positive experience that we did manage to have was a nice man who walked down the aisle passing out free drink tickets. Of course the rather grumpy flight attendant was not happy to redeem the ticket. So much for flying the friendly skies. Well, at least my kids thought that flying through turbulence was fun. Hopefully I won’t have to travel by air again for a long, long time.
Joe Dusel
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3 Responses to “I Hate Air Travel”
January 12th, 2012 at 9:16 AM
The experience discribed makes me rethink my future flying plans.Well put with a funny twist.
Me
January 12th, 2012 at 6:39 PM
Since Joe is my blogging partner, I obviously know his family. The picture of them at the airport is an absolute crackup, especially his younger daughter. That girl is ALWAYS in motion and always happy. Then they plopped her in the airport for half a day!
January 19th, 2012 at 1:17 PM
Isn’t that the truth. Good stuff!