Back during the irrational exuberance late 90s and early 00s I traveled constantly for work. Most of this business travel involved riding around the world in airplanes, as such I am fairly familiar with the workings of airlines and their minions.
Okay, okay, I know all the standard bullshit to cover up for the ongoing poor service – “911 changed everything(TM)â€, “the economy is differentâ€, “profits before serviceâ€, blah blah blah. All that aside, I just have to utter a great big what the fuck?!
Granted I have only flown a few times this year, however every flight has been a great big pile of shit. I recently took a flight from Denver to Minneapolis for a wedding. The flight from Denver to Minneapolis is traditionally one hour and 24 minutes give or take a few. This last flight took almost three hours. Then to cap it all off we had to wait 45 minutes to get our luggage.
All the shit started after boarding the airplane. First, these two women were out of their seats in the back of the plane yacking it up like a couple of local newscasters on a meth binge with their travel partners and would not sit down after the sky waitress told them to take their seats. Finally, the sky waitress had to get on the intercom and embarrass them into sitting down. Then we taxied out onto the runway amidst the screams of future date-raper and bleach-blonde-quarterback-fucking spoiled middle class fatass children, as I am wedged in the middle seat next to a guy who had the republican bathroom stall wide-stance down to a fine art form, and my girlfriend, who was trying to catch a quick snooze on the other side of me. Mr. Widestance not only was hogging leg space from me but he was poking me in the ribs with his elbow as he selfishly clung to the armrest. C’mon people, simple airplane etiquette grants the armrest to the poor sap in the middle seat.
After we taxied for about 15 minutes the plane driver got on the intercom and commenced to tell us that since one of the Minneapolis airport runways was (and still is) closed for maintenance we would be taking off ten minutes late and then he parks the plane on the runway. To the surprise of no-one Mr. Plane-driver was lying and we sat on the runway for ~45 minutes before taking off. Again, what the fuck? If you know that the destination airport has a closed runway you should schedule all flights accordingly, not just wing it, right? Thanks Ronnie Raygun and your deregulation of air traffic controllers.
After about an hour and a half we reached Minneapolis airspace. “Outstanding†I think to myself, “soon we’ll be on the ground and in the rental car for the remainder of the journey.†But no. We circled around Minneapolis for another 45 minutes because of the runway work. The plane driver did not even mix up the flight path any to try to even fool the passengers into us making any progress. We just flew at 10,000 feet in boring NASCAR like left turn circles for almost an hour. Then we landed. This starts the whole ordeal of deplaning. Can’t people get their shit sorted while they are waiting to deplane instead of standing there like a the main character from Slingblade waiting for a biscuit and making the off load time take an extra 20 minutes? So, 911 may have changed everything(TM) and the economy is shit, but, when I fly in a full airplane every time I fly and the airports are always busy and travel is still strong I am not going to buy any of that shit reasoning for bad service. It all comes down to the airlines boards of directors and their insatiable need to gut costs, reduce the work force and maximize their fat, greedy CEOs profits at the expense of everything else. They would probably outsource the airplane maintenance to China if they could get away with it. Fuck them.