After my trip to Detroit last week, I have officially had it up to HERE :points to neck: with the airlines, airports, pilots, flight attendants, gate attendants, luggage handlers, check-in staff, courtesy individuals, airport transportation, and the transportation security administration staff, also known as a TSO or transportation security officer. I’m not fed-up because Northwest is no longer offering pretzels on their domestic flights. Yeah that’s right, beginning June 9 you will only be offered a beverage. You can read more here about the removal of pretzels from the airlines if you’d like. It’s not because I lost my luggage, in fact - my luggage actually arrived to the airport before I did - on the flight I should have been aboard.
I will no longer utilize airlines for domestic flights because of (1) the cost and (2) the time. This isn’t a sudden reaction, this has been building for months on end and has finally taken its toll. This last flight was just the frosting on the cake, so to speak. You see - I spent $160 dollars for the flights and $250 for the change fee associated to the tickets to travel a mere 672 miles (road distance). This is $410 for the trip, which isn’t a bad price - but that’s because this was just the cost to change the tickets. If you count the original cost of the canceled tickets, the total charge for this trip would be more like $750. The drive time would have been a total of 22 hours round trip according to google maps (probably less in reality, sometimes I speed) making a one way trip less than 11 hours.
The quick weekend started out something like this: Driving to the vicinity of the airport at 3:30pm Thursday evening in order to avoid rush-hour traffic and to ensure we would arrive at the gate on time for our 6pm flight. We arrived promptly at 4:20 and went to Friendly’s Restaurant for dinner - that’s really not important. After finishing dinner and being glad to have beat the traffic we arrived at the airport at 4:45 - 1 hour before the flight as recommended by airports around the world. With our bags checked in we arrived at the gate only to find our plane not prepared. I won’t go through every step, but in the next few hours I was happy to learn that United Airlines has switched from Pepsi back to Coke. I was told that they still have a lot of Pepsi in stock, so it’s a toss-up as to which you’ll receive on your next flight, assuming you still take one by the time you are done with this article. Did I mention my trip originated in Hartford, CT out of BDL Bradley International Airport and was destined for DTW - the Detroit-Metro Airport. Quick side note, I often fly from BDL to GRR (Grand Rapids, MI) and get routed through Detroit as one of the stops. However, it never fails, when I fly to DTW direct I get routed through some nonsense place like Chicago. For those of you unfamiliar with US Geography, or if you are just lazy and don’t want to think about compass directions, Chicago is further west of Detroit - I should have brought my parachute to jump out when we passed over Detroit!
Anyway, to make a long day short and concise, we ultimately arrived in Detroit at 12:18am. Proceeding to baggage claim we were greeted by the kind folks that picked us up so late in the night. Waiting for what felt like eternity, our bags finally came tumbling around the conveyor belt and we were on our way. Another half hour drive to our ultimate destination and we had “arrived” at 1:10am. Total travel time is now 10 hours. Not bad, the airlines saved an hour versus traveling by car. Of course, I rarely follow the speed-limits, so the time is probably about equal. In addition to that - the food, magazines, and eye drops bought while in transportation with airlines is far more expensive than would be by car. If you think this isn’t much to complain about - you are right. I’m not really complaining about the first leg of the trip. It’s the return flight on Sunday that really kills me. Read on..
One wedding and a few quick hours later, Sunday morning arrives and it’s time for our purposely scheduled quick flight back to Hartford, CT. Because of the location we were Saturday night (near to Canada which, by the way, provides easy access back to CT) we had to drive an hour to get to the airport. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 9:30am and arrive in CT at 1:30pm with a quick stop in Washington Dulles International Airport. We leave the house at 7:30am in efforts to arrive at the airport the suggested hour beforehand. We arrive in time, one of the bags is a pound over-weight this time. The kind lady lets it pass and we head to our gate. We sit, and we sit, and we sit some more. The time to depart has come and gone and we still don’t see a pilot or stewardess - not to mention our bags aren’t being loaded. It’s 8:45 in the morning, but the Quiznos across the way is staring me down like no tomorrow and there is no other restaurant in site. I end up purchasing a sandwich - it’s the worst sandwich I’ve ever had, must not be a true Quiznos I remember muttering to myself. Finally we get on the plane and the pilot ensures us that we will make up time in the air and arrive early. We don’t. In-fact, we arrive at the gate and there is a fuel truck in the way forcing us to wait even longer to pull up to the gate. Our next flight now departs in 20 minutes.
We finally deplane and run like no tomorrow through an airport with very poorly marked concourse. Eight gates later we finally arrive at some television monitors and discover that our gate is 31 gates away in the opposite direction we had just run. Running like their were bombs chasing us through the concourse, dodging those people-vehicles and hoping that my luggage was moving at the same speed, we finally arrive at our gate only to find the door closed and no one, I repeat - no one at the desk to help us. We were at the gate 11 minutes before departure with no chance of getting on the plane. The planes close their doors 10 minutes to departure as required by law, but we had 60 whole seconds to spare - which is a lot given the circumstances.
Angry without a plane I sulked back to the customer service desk to inquire about later flights bound for CT. I was suppose to be home in just one hour, but the chances of that happening looked quite grim. It took the agents a good 20 minutes to reroute our tickets. The conversation began with “I’m sorry, we have no more available flights going to Hartford today.” I’m sorry..what? Wouldn’t that indicate that the gate agent would have waited to the last possible moment for us to arrive. Knowing that our originiating plane had landed, learning that there were no other available flights, could she have waited one more minute just in case we were running? To top it all of, I later learned that our baggage DID make it on that flight and made it to Hartford before we did - 7 hours before we did!
To make a long afternoon more discouraging we were routed through North Carolina and back to Hartford with an arrival time of 7:30 through a different airline - US Airways. After claiming our bags from customer service and driving back home our quick weekend trip came to a frustrating end at 8:30pm Sunday.
Total travel time on the return trip was 13 hours. This puts the total trip travel time at 23 hours. By car we should have been under 22 hours. Total cost by plane - $750 + Really expensive food, no control, and uncomfortable chairs. Total would have been cost for car - $201.60 assuming the given mileage and $3/gallon. Not to mention, we wouldn’t have to borrow a car during our time there - we’d have one to drive around!
So, hopefully now you’ve understand my position. I congratulate you if you’ve read all the previous text, I’m not sure I would have. Lesson learned - Could have saved $600+ dollars, several hours, and lots of frustration by driving. I like to have freedom to pull over, listen to music, or watch a movie with ease. These options do not exist on the plane. I will highly consider driving to any destination that does not cross an ocean in future trips. What else can I do?
At least you didn’t have to mess with security. For some reason the security in Europe is nuts compared with ours. I had to go through 3 different searches by x-ray and of course they decided to frisk me. The really bad one was when my friends and I were coming back; the airline gave away our seats, so we were trying to find another flight. Well, the desk at the gate and the clerk at the front desk weren’t communicating. We had to go in a circle 4 times back between the main desk and the desk at the gate. Each time we had to: 1. go through two security checkpoints 2. get on a bus to go to the different terminal because Heathrow is so big 3. run to the gate because they told us to hurry if we wanted to seats, we actually, no joking, had to run more than a half mile one way. We ended up doing about 4 miles that day in a sprint. Then finally they had the nerve to tell us that it was our fault. At this point we are about to reach across the desk and give the airport security a real reason to be there. Well, we eventually get free rooms and dinner from the airline, but in so doing they made it clear that they were giving us the rooms and dinner out of generosity, not because they could accept any responsibility by giving our seats away. When was the last time you heard an airline being generous. The rest of the night did go well though because we got an extra night in London paid for and we got to miss a day of school.
Hope all is going well,
Kees
Statistically, its still safer to travel by plane, and I like not being in control sometimes.
i totally agree and understand, the last 3 plane trips I have taken have just as hellacious and frustrating…w/ luggage problems added in…ridiculous! i still don’t know why i didn’t file a complaint, i’ll have to send you the stories sometime because it’s THAT ridiculous