The hassles of air travel

[question everything]

The hassles of air travel

By Robert Rector
San Gabriel Valley Tribune

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I then quoted an airline official as saying, "As load factors have crept up, we have been seeing involuntary denied boardings go up proportionately, and we'll see them go up even more so this summer." I thought about these words long and hard one recent evening when I found myself stuck in Denver with several thousands of my closest traveling companions, looking for a way out.

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For reasons that remain unclear, almost every single United Airlines flight into or out of Denver that day was either delayed or cancelled. This is no small deal. Denver is a major hub for United and the resulting chaos was instantly evident. It didn't appear to be weather. There was some rain in the area but nothing that would ground a jet. Based on a weather map that United conveniently displayed on a large flat screen near its complaint department, the only bad weather appeared to be over the Dakotas, the land that time forgot. No cause for delays there. Security breach? Nope. Overbooking and bad management? Probably.

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At a gate for a flight to San Francisco, the attendant announced she already had 125 standbys and that any others should go away. In the midst of all this, it was remarkable to see the patience and fortitude that most the traveling public shows in the face of this bovine boogie woogie we call air travel.

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Maybe that's the problem. Maybe we, the traveling public, need to raise holy hell with everyone from the Federal Aviation Administration to our congressional representatives to the ticket clerk to the sky cap until the airlines begin to understand that an acceptable level of service is not treating passengers as though they were qued up for a meat packing plant. Then again, this is an industry where bankruptcy in the norm and employee strikes are commonplace.

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As air travel horror story goes, however, it doesn't touch one told to me by a friend who used to travel the world for the government. In a flight over Nigeria one evening, the co-pilot emerged from the cockpit to shake hands with the passengers and wish them a pleasant journey. Moments later, with the plane on auto, the pilot emerged to get a drink of water from the galley. Just then, the plane hit some turbulence, slamming the door to the cockpit shut, locking both pilots out. They had to break down the door with an axe to regain control of the plane.

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