The Oddities of Airline Travel

I did some traveling over this past weekend and it is such a strange, odd activity - I thought I'd share some of my observations.

First of all, even though I vowed never again to fly on United Airlines after a string of horrible misadventures over the past year, I did it. Mainly because I had a bunch of "miles" to spend that were going to expire in a couple of months. It cost me 25,000 of them to travel 1600 miles round trip, so I've never quite understood the correlation between the two values placed upon this measure of distance. (Is this the currency used in the rest of the world? Do people in Germany collect kilometers in return for taking flights?)

The first leg of my journey was from Washington- Dulles to Chicago-O'Hare. Fairly uneventful. What stuck in my mind is the odd way the airlines have now divided up the aircraft. It used to be you had First Class and Coach. Now there's Business Class, Premier, Economy and something called Economy Plus. For $39 you can buy four extra inches of leg room. Four inches! It doesn't seem many people are willing to do this because the Economy Plus section on the airplane was completely empty. And there was no way they were going to let us sardines in Economy move up a row or two to spread out a bit. That would completely defeat their attempt at creating and maintaining a system of passenger worthiness based upon how much you're willing to pay for "upgrades."

One of the things that always has amazed me about people who fly on airplanes is the need of many of them to leap to their feet as soon as the plane stops and the fasten seat belt sign goes off. We all know it's going to be a few more minutes before they get the stairway or walkway hooked up and the door open, but there is a contingent of people who seem to insist on being the first to stand in the aisle. It reminds me of people in traffic who swerve in and out of lanes in order to get the next stoplight a few seconds sooner than anyone else. I simply stay in my seat - often to the great distress of people seated in my row who can't get out around me - until the line starts moving. I know I'll see the quick jumpers at the baggage claim. They'll simple have been standing there a couple of minutes before I get there.

Of course more and more people are now not checking baggage since the airlines have imposed a fee for doing so. This was supposed to offset the increase in fuel charges a while back. Of course as soon as the prices dropped back to their previous levels we all expected this charge to disappear. Nope. The thing is, it results in people lugging bags that are way too big to fit in the luggage compartment on the plane with them. It slows the whole boarding process down and makes the cabin even more crowded and uncomfortable that it normally is. But the airlines don't care. The cargo hold is now a money-maker, right? It's amazing to me to see a guy trying to cram his full-size suitcase into a space half the size it would need to be to fit. Usually he ends up checking it at the gate, but I guess he gets out of spending the $15 this way.

On my return flight from O'Hard to Dulles I took a huge, new 767. First Class looks like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Little bed-like pods with everything at your fingertips, a monitor, pillows, blanket. It's basically a bed. And there were lots of people sitting there. For a 90-minute flight?!?! I really don't get it. Maybe the are totally duped by the special attention they get at the gate. It's actually kind of comical.

United puts down two carpets side-by-side. One is blue, the other red. There's a rope connected to some stands to enclose the red-carpet area a bit. If you have the right kind of ticket, you get to walk on the red carpet. If not, you have to walk on the blue. They are side-by-side. One isn't a shorter distance or plusher or anything...just red. However, if you walk on the red one and stop at the rope, the gate agent immediately stops what he or she is doing to open up the rope and let you through. What service! You get to jump ahead of all the low class jerks who didn't over-pay for their flight. You must be important!

It makes me laugh. How easy we are able to be flattered for absolutely no reason!

After First Class there is another one with big, plushy seats and foot rests. I assume this is Business Class. You don't get to lay back completely, but your 90 minutes in the air is going to be a pampered treat. Not too many people seated there. I think the upgrade was around $159. That's $1.77 a minute, and a free drink doesn't justify this, I assume, to most people.

In the back the seats were seven across and the plane was packed. I likes the fact that there were individual TV monitors in front of every seat, but when the person in front of me decided to recline her seat, it sort of pointed my monitor toward my chest instead of my eyes. They had a pretty good selection of films available. I opted to watch Frost/Nixon - until I realized that it's impossible to watch a two-hour film in 90 minutes. Oh well, at least I now know I want to rent it.

Some people seem extremely nice and courteous when they travel, but there are always a bunch of jerks. The one that stood out most to me was in Chicago. There is a shuttle that United operates that takes people from Terminal One to Terminal Two and vice verse. I got in line and up stepped a shirmpy little Type "A" man who looked like he was about to come out of his skin. He was obviously in a hurry and very impatient about it. He kept looking around everyone to see what the hold up was, and I'm certain if he could have done it without anyone noticing, he would have snuck past the line to be first on the shuttle.

When it finally arrived, he dashed on board and refused to take a seat, probably because the only one available was in the rear. He tried to stand by the luggage rack, but the driver wouldn't leave until he sat down. Oh, did that make him mad! We travel for the two minutes from terminal to terminal, and as soon as it stops, he jumps up, grabs his bags and bolts out the door. Almost left a cloud of dust. Everyone else exited in a nice, polite orderly fashion.

A few minutes later, when I got to my gate, the first thing I noticed is Mr. In-a-Hurry standing as close as possible to the boarding door, still looking very inpatient and urgent. Of course they didn't start boarding for another 15 minutes, so he had plenty of time to stand there pushing out the arteries in his neck. Amazing.

United did OK this time. I was worried because they were about 0 for 4 leading up to this. I'm not in a great hurry to fly them again, but I see I still have some "miles" to spend before the end of October. We'll see.