What do you think about this airline frustation?

[Bandit]

Children under thirteen must fly accompanied or pay an unaccompanied fee. I understand that and it is only fair. The fee currently is $30. but is scheduled to go up to $75. on the first of July. Anyway our two ten year old granddaughters are flying up to spend a couple of weeks with us. We also have a close personal friend that is flying on the same flight and has volunteered to accompany the children to save us the $30.. Well the airline says that won't work. It is only a two hour non-stop flight. They say because at this time the children are still scheduled to return in two weeks unaccompanied we still have to pay the unaccompanied fee and it is at the new rate of $75 even though it isn't yet July 1. They will arrive later on today and can't wait to see them but this added charge has really bummed me out..The children are being accompanied by a close personal friend and yet we still have to pay unaccompanied fees. We will have to pay again in two weeks I suppose even if we find someone to accompany them on the return flight. What a rip off..

[MuseRider]

1. Have fun with

your grandchildren and remember, you are helping the airline CEO's so they can live in the manner they are accustomed to.

**I have not been following the airline problems so I really have no idea who is losing (I assume us) and if the CEO's are still collecting the usual (I assume they are)**

[Warpy]

2. Wow, I was 10 when I made my first solo air trip

and back in the 50s, there was no unaccompanied minor fee. They just assumed a kid with a ticket had the brains to get on the right plane.

In this litigious society, I can see why they'd have a $30 surcharge to cover the extra work a flight attendant needed to do to make sure the kid ended up where s/he was supposed to. The $75 seems more than a little ridiculous.

Between hazing by DHS and price gouging on everything from checking bags to the bag of beer nuts during the flight, they're making air travel more and more unattractive.

Something's got to give, eventually. My guess is that it will be the airlines, belly up, one at a time.

[Sal Minella]

3. I'm doing my part. Haven't been on an airplane since 1979.

Waiting two hours for a body cavity search so you can get on a monstrous gas guzzler is not my idea of a good time.

[MercutioATC]

6. I was 8

...and you're right. Your parents waited with you at the gate, a stewardess (they were stewerdesses back then)got you onto the plane and off, and whomever was picking you up met you at the gate at the other end.

Simple.

[TahitiNut]

4. Have you seen the current American Express commercial?

If you try to check in for a flight with anything other than an American Express Business credit card, the ticket agent will alert the TSA and they'll subject you to a cavity search. Yup. That's the message.

They show a male attempting to purchase a ticket for a business trip turning over his personal (personalized with a picture of puppies) credit card. The ticket agent summons two TSA goons who show up behind the guy, one of which is pulling on a latex glove. They take the guy away. (Maybe to Gitmo?) Then the 'hero' shows up with an American Express Business credit card and receives cooperation.

I thought it was jaw-droppingly blatant ... and not funny. (I have a great sense of humor, but find nothing funny about TSA goons doing cavity searches of someone buying an airline ticket without the 'approved' credit card.)

The very idea that such a scenario could be presented in an assumedly 'humorous' vein seems to betray how insane we've become.

[enlightenment]

5. There are a lot of very questionable commercials out there.

My pick of the week is the one for some wireless connect card, featuring misogynist supreme Bill Curtis, standing on a beach in front of a plane labelled Amelia.

He says he's discovered . . . the Internet. Because the deaths of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan is great fodder for a clever joke, right?

It is unnecessary. They could put Curtis on a beach in front of a plane without the label (Earhart's plane did not have a giant "Amelia" written on the fuselage anyway) and channelled the same sensibility without shoving it down people's throats.

People have just gotten nasty and crude. Hell, I thought the reality shows had reached their nadir last year, but now they have one that apparently revolves around making people vomit for fun and prizes.

Ah, well. I've been meaning to sit down and finally read all the way through Clarissa anyway . . .

[ThatsMyBarack]

7. Really, really sad....

To think I may never fly to Vegas or any skating competitions ever again. :cry: