I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m no longer a fan of
commercial air travel. I enjoy the adventure of traveling and there was even a
time when I preferred airline flights to most other modes of transportation,
but these days I only fly when I am forced to for a business trip…or when I
feel the need to be strapped into an uncomfortable seat next to a talkative
overweight stranger with hygiene issues; so mostly business trips.
I used to really resent the whole standing in line for the
opportunity to partially disrobe and subject myself to the TSA’s unreasonable
search and seizure thing. Over time I’ve learned that, much like listening to
your wife talk about your relationship, it’s causes much less anxiety if you
just forget that you’re an grown man with rights and endure it. Wait…did I just
say that out loud?
Recently I’ve grown to resent the airlines themselves. I’m
not sure when it happened but during my lifetime a commercial air travel
transformed from a pleasant event where you were treated like a customer,
served complimentary meals and beverages by a stewardess into a flying third
world bus where they stuff as many people as possible into a jet where you may
be offered a sip of soda and a bag containing three stale pretzels by a surly
flight attendant.
In addition to the loss of comfort and services the airlines
have reduced the number of flights available to ensure every flight is filled
to capacity and they’ve started charging for checked luggage so that everyone has
a “carry-on” the size of a steamer trunk on wheels, ensuring you’ll be late
even “in the unlikely event” that you should arrive at your destination on time
because it takes forever to get on and off the freakin’ plane.
Just this week I experienced another airline adventure while
retuning from an otherwise pleasant business trip back to my old stomping
grounds in Nevada. I was scheduled to fly from Reno to Salt Lake City then on
to Atlanta where I would catch the last commuter plane into Pensacola arriving
at 1030, a long but not entirely unreasonable trip home.
After enduring the usual TSA indignities in Reno the flight
to Salt Lake was relatively uneventful and I arrived at the gate for my Atlanta
flight in pretty good spirits; meaning I had time to grab a beer before the
next flight. That’s when things started getting weird…and when you’re flying,
weird is rarely a good thing.
The pilot announced that, because it was so hot in Salt Lake
and our flight was full, if he took on a full load of fuel the jet would be too
heavy to get off the ground, never a good thing. He had decided to partially
fuel the plane in order to get off the ground and add an unscheduled stop in
Kansas City to get the additional fuel required to make it to Atlanta.
I’m not an airline pilot and I did not stay at a Holiday Inn
Express, but I wondered why they would schedule a 757 for that particular
flight if it could not lift off from the Salt Lake runway with enough fuel to
reach its destination. I’m also not a navigator but I also wondered why a
flight from Utah to Georgia would stop in Kansas City for fuel…maybe they
didn’t have a fuel coupon for the Oklahoma City or Little Rock airports, but it
sure seemed out of the way to me.
When we landed in Kansas City the pilot estimated that we’d
have our fuel and be back in the air in about 25 minutes so I figured I still
had a shot at making my connecting flight in Atlanta. When we actually got
airborne over an hour later I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to be sleeping
in my own bed that night.
I’m a big boy so I wasn’t too upset about missing the
connecting flight, I realized that the delay wasn’t about me so I didn’t take
it personally. What upset me was while we sat at a gate in Kansas City the
flight attendant announced that the captain had decided that no one would be
“allowed” off the jet. Seriously, few things in life chap my ass more than
being told that I cannot come and go as I please.
Sure enough we arrived in Atlanta too late to catch the last
flight to Pensacola so I was herded, along with the other tired and frustrated
passengers, onto a shuttle bus and driven to a nearby hotel where a single desk
clerk checked about a hundred of us into complementary rooms…eventually.
By the time I got to bed I had almost four hours to sleep before
I had to get up in time to catch the shuttle to the airport so I could be
unreasonable searched by Atlanta TSA agents before finally boarding a plane
home.
The good news is I made it home…eventually, but the
experience confirmed everything that’s wrong with air travel today. Once you
get on a jet you surrender any control of your destiny until you actually walk
off of it. If there is a delay in route, someone else decides if you will be
“allowed” to get off the jet and make other arrangements.
The thing is, I have no problem putting my life in a pilot’s
hands while he’s flying me from point A to point B. The problem is that as much
as I appreciate the convenience of traveling across three time zones in a
single day, I resent the loss of personal freedom even more.
So I’ll drive when I can and, when I have to fly, I’ll
remember the lessons learned over 26 years of marriage and just endure it. Wait…did
I just say that again?!?
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