The reason I’m writing this instead of winging merrily over the Pacific Ocean, sake in hand, is that American Airlines shafted us. They canceled the local flight because they didn’t have a crew. (Which I’m guessing is airline speak for being chronically understaffed to inflate profits.) And so we missed our international flight.
The woman at the gate of our local airport was rude and unsympathetic, not to mention incompetent:
1) She told us that if the flight is also canceled tomorrow (wtf!) we should just drive to Chicago and board the international flight. First, driving three hours on one of the most epically congested roads in the U.S. and then paying hundreds for two weeks of parking is not a great option. Second, someone later told us that if we don’t check in with AA first, even despite the cancellation, our entire ticket would be voided.
2) She also supposedly reticketed us, but hadn’t actually booked the seats. If I hadn’t called our Japanese travel agent just to keep her in the loop, we would have arrived in Chicago and been marooned there.
So I guess we’re “lucky” we have seats tomorrow. I know airline horror stories are common as spit, and mine is small potatoes compared with many—missed family reunions, funerals, etc. But this still sucks, and the part that sucks worst is that AA won’t be held accountable at all.
When I posted on Facebook, a fair number of people wrote back and said they were former US Airways fliers, but that ever since US Airways merged with AA in 2015 flying has been dreadful.
Meanwhile, here’s AA CEO Doug Parker bragging about how mergers have made the airline industry loss-proof:
Parker spoke on the industry’s recent transformations at American’s annual meeting last week, Skift.com reports, furthering his argument that airline consolidation has made the major names relatively impervious to the slings and arrows of business.
“My personal view is that you won’t see losses in the industry at all,” Parker said. “We have gotten to the point where we, like other businesses, will have good years and bad years, but the bad years will not be cataclysmic. They will just be less good than the good years.”
Unregulated capitalism ftw!
FYI, Parker earned nearly $18 MM in in 2013 and $12 MM in 2014. (Now he’s being paid in stock, so the numbers are less clear.)
Anyhow after spending 45 minutes on the phone—mostly on hold—an AA rep offered me a $300 credit on a future flight. I told him I didn’t want it. What I really want is more regulation. Oh, and to break up the “quadropoly” discussed in the above-linked article. (Four carriers now control 80% of the U.S. market.)
In any case, if my sad tale moves you in any way, kindly refrain from flying American Airlines.
Pontiac
It was US Airways that merged with American Airlines.
Baud
That sucks.
satby
I’m so old I remember when it used to be fun to travel.
Pogonip
I refrain from flying ALL airlines, since I don’t enjoy being groped or packed in with the other sardines. If it’s not in walking, driving, or bus distance, we don’t go. I don’t even apply for jobs that would require airline travel.
rikyrah
You should be writing your complaint to the airlines. and to the consumer protection bureau.
Sorry about your trip :(
Dolly Llama
Great post. Would read again.
raven
Take the dough.
Hillary Rettig
@Pontiac: You’re right! Will correct.
FlyingToaster
American didn’t merge with United.
American took TWA (and a bunch of others).
United took US Air (and a bunch of others).
Delta took Northwest (and a bunch of others).
Southwest took a bunch of tiny airlines’ routes when the airlines failed, IIRC.
But yes, unless you live near a hub (O’Hare, Hartsfield, DFW) or a terminus (Boston, Miami, LAX, SFO), you can be in a world of hurt when making connections. And even those aren’t foolproof. Emphasis on “fool”.
I sympathize; I grew up an airline brat (the aforementioned TWA) so I’ve watched the downward spiral of the industry for my entire adult life.
Pogonip
@Baud: now you’re going for the Disgruntled-American vote. A wise decision. Disgruntled-Americans outnumber all other groups together. I myself am proudly and loudly Disgruntled.
pacem appellant
I used to despise US carriers until I visited Argentina and Chile. Our problems are peanuts compared to the carriers problems there. All that said, I hope you get to where you want to be. If it were me, I’d take the voucher, because that’s probably all the recompense you’ll ever get. Good luck!
raven
USA, USA!
Pogonip
Hillary, I think you should follow Rikyrah’s suggestion.
Hillary Rettig
@rikyrah: that will happen after the trip. I’m also considering small claims court. I know I’m unlikely to win but would consider payment in the form of hassling them.
Baud
@Pogonip: The gruntled are losers.
raven
@pacem appellant: Try Trans Love, get ya there on time!
Villago Delenda Est
Doug Parker is a parasite. He should be dealt with as one.
Mike J
In the summer time it usually means the crew worked the number of hours the FAA allows in one day, usually because of thunderstorms at ORD or DFW.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I’ve never understood how airlines stay in business. They always seem to be going bankrupt or out of business altogether. Why the fuck don’t we run these things as public utilities? Lots of other countries do this; why don’t we? Other than, I guess, that that would be soc¡alism or some such shit…
Roger Moore
If we refuse to fly on airlines that screw people over and never apologize, we won’t be able to fly at all.
Hillary Rettig
@Mike J: which doesn’t invalidate my assumption
Hillary Rettig
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Socialamism!
Hillary Rettig
@Roger Moore: i know. but sometimes we have a choice.
the really sad thing is that there’s no robust public train system that we can take instead. I love Amtrak but their coverage is spotty and their unreliable. In theory we could take Amtrak to O’Hare airport, but people who’ve tried that have wound up hours late and missing flights.
scav
Once you unshackle the whole outdated linkage of actually necessarily providing the good or service purchased in a Newtonian sense but move into Quantum (or Stochastic) Economics, well, whole new frontiers of profit horizons open before you.
Rand Careaga
The sovietization of the American consumer experience proceeds apace. It’s really not true that business thrives on competition: monopoly is way more efficient.
Nobody ever said late-stage capitalism would be pretty.
NonyNony
American Airlines is the worst airline operating today. I refuse to fly them anymore. I’ve had so many poor experiences with late flights, cancelled flights, and so on that I’m done with them. It isn’t just the technical and staffing problems either – their staff are the rudest when things happen and their “solutions” to problems are terrible.
Never again. If they’re the only game in town I’ll take a bus before booking on American again.
Roger Moore
@Mike J:
Which means they’re understaffed. Proper staffing levels let you continue functioning even when predictable problems crop up.
JMG
Never use a US airline for an international flight. Never use American Airlines for any flight.
Steve in the ATL
i don’t fly American often, but every time I do I have a bad experience
Villago Delenda Est
@JMG: If you’re in the US military, and you expect to be reimbursed for your ticket, you have no choice, by law, but to fly on a US flag carrier.
PonB
I can certainly sympathize as a person that flies a lot on business, but I have to say that American, warts and all, is the best of a bad lot. I also second Mike J’s comment – the worst time to fly is right around the first of the month because of the FAA’s hours limits. I’ve lost half days because the carrier had to fly a crew out to handle the flight.
Good luck – wish I was going to Japan :D
Pontiac
@FlyingToaster:
Nope, United and Continental merged.
inventor
@Hillary Rettig:
Dammit Obama! I KNEW there should have been a public option!
Roger Moore
@Hillary Rettig:
And too slow to be practical. It takes 34 hours to go from LA to Seattle on the Coast Starlight vs. about 2 1/2 hours by plane. So even if your flight is cancelled and you have to travel the next day, you’ll still get there faster by air than by train.
Woodrowfan
had similar problems with American at Charlotte. argh.
Villago Delenda Est
@Villago Delenda Est: I should have said “reimbursed for your ticket as part of official travel, that is, when you’re on permanent change of station orders, or other official business, such as temporary duty”. If you’re just flying on a regular old vacation not connected with government business, well, you’re free to seek ACTUAL friendly skies.
SuzieC
Don’t have a choice if I want a convenient flight to ORD to visit son at Great Lakes Naval base. (From CMH.)
JMG
If you live in Boston, Amtrak is by far the best, if not cheapest (that’d be the discount buses) way to get to NYC. It’s OK for Philly, but then you start to run into the time problem. DC? Ya gotta fly. I have never taken Amtrak outside the Bowash corridor.
different-church-lady
“New York to California in five hours? That used to take thirty years.”
Then again, everything you’ve said here is true as well.
Villago Delenda Est
@JMG: If this were a civilized country, we’d have TGVs linking every major city. But we’re not a civilized country. One need look no farther than one of the two major political party Presidential nominees to confirm that.
Iowa Old Lady
My town has an airport with a single gate, a single airline (American), and a single destination (Chicago). Minimum cost for a ticket is $500. Two flights a day at best. Easy parking and easy security, though.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m pretty sure I haven’t been on a plane since 2008. Too many horror stories like this (and mine were all domestic flights, and mostly being paid for by my employer — but still infuriating and stressful).
Do. Not. Miss. At. All.
seaboogie
@Hillary Rettig: Man – that sucks! I’ve walked a ticket* domestically (in Chicago during a Clinton [Bill] delay), and then weather. Pre 9-11, so everything was friendlier then. Any chance you can do that internationally?
* Walking a ticket means going to another carrier and exchanging your ticket on the original one for another that is traveling to the same destination. We did this during a Presidential delay that was exacerbated by weather in Atlanta, while on our way to Cleveland, of all places. Sussed out the local Cleveland hub and offered our AA tickets to Delta that took them for a much later flight. Desk folks were overwhelmed, so we purchased an assload of Snapples and delivered them to to ticketing agents as they sorted the mess, because they were so gracious and we appreciated the work that they were doing. Later they asked for our tickets, upgraded us to first class, and swiped their card so that we could make all the calls we wanted from the phone on the plane. Suh-weet!
P.S. I am drinking sake over ice, celebrating my new domicile, and will keep you in mind as you sort your travels.
Villago Delenda Est
@Rand Careaga: Reminds me of the old Lily Tomlin routine with Ernestine: “We’re the phone company. We don’t care. We don’t have to.”
scav
@PonB: Still, phrasing. The problem is not because the FAA put in places rules and enforces them any more than it’s the fire marshalls evil machinations keeping people out of Trump rallies. Both overbook for whatever reasons and then gripe about the burdens imposed by law. They refuse to build resilience in a system for a known, recurrent problem because it suits their various purposes and profits. Or well, sure, the bridge fell down because of gravity, but the engineer / designer that didn’t add enough rebar or whatever to handle two semis should certainly get a good stare.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne: Last time I was on a plane was 2005, agree with you about it.
Capri
My experience with United has been much worse than American. The problem with high speed rail for most of the country is that the US is too large. Trains make all kinds of sense in densely populated places like Europe and Asia.
I thought I knew geography pretty well, but I was floored that the distance between Indianapolis and Denver is about equal to the distance between Denver and Reno, NV.
Ryan
It’s hard to find a winner in this story. I generally fly Delta and miraculously have never had a problem. I’ve mailed bills in the past for my time. I never received responses, it was more for catharsis. Maybe we can expand the purview of the CFPB?
PigDog
Never, never fly AA.
My own air travel rant: just discovered that if you book a codeshare flight, you often can’t pick your seats. Not good for Mrs. PigDog who has claustrophobia and needs lots of legroom or ideally a bulkhead.
Lee Hartmann
I had an enormous amount of miles on AA which are worth diddley. Delta has been better for me but who knows in the future…
AA used to be good (80’s) but now is terrible. sorry.
Omnes Omnibus
@Capri: Trains tend to make more sense east of the Mississippi.
burnspbesq
American is nothing but horror stories waiting to happen. In contrast, I think United got better after merging with Continental–as long as you can avoid ORD.
Best domestic airlines, hands down, are Alaska and JetBlue. I love Lufthansa once you’re in the air, but FRA is German for ATL.
SiubhanDuinne
@satby:
My first flight ever was in the summer of 1956, the year I graduated from 8th grade. I was 13. My great-aunt, who was a schoolteacher in Swarthmore, PA, treated me (as she had treated my mother and aunt a quarter of a century earlier) to a trip to Philadelphia, New anorak* City, and Washington, DC. I vividly remember wearing my navy suit from Easter a couple of months earlier, white gloves, nylons and 1″ heels, and a hat with a veil, for the flight from Chicago to Philly. The entire trip was just fraught with elegance, and yes, enormous fun.
*Decided to leave it in just because it is such an epic example of autocorrect’s weirdness.
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer
Reserved but not ticketed is a dishonest gate agent’s method of fucking you.
Always use a travel agent – you can hit bumps, but not get completely in the ditch.
Mandarama
In addition to writing formal complaints, perhaps use social media as well? I don’t use Twitter, but my husband does. It seems to be a really effective forum for consumer complaint, because you can tag the offending business and get immediate public feedback. He has actually done this with airlines before and had their representatives really trying to do damage control. (They are much more effective at it than whomever is supposed to be trying to rein Trump in on Twitter.)
I’m envious, still! I would love to see Japan some day, but I’m afraid of flying. Itte rashai!
randy khan
I’ve found, in general, that I like flying Delta better than the other remaining major carriers. American tends to have more cramped seats and has adopted some of the less-pleasant policies that US Airways had before the merger. (Here’s a big one: The time on your ticket is not the time you need to be on the plane – they close the doors 10 minutes ahead.) United is a mess in more ways than I can recount. Southwest, despite the jauntiness, is really like a cattle car.
Of course, the reality is that they’re all better when you’re at even the bottom level of elite status. On Delta, that pretty consistently gets me free upgrades to premium economy, where there’s actual room and free booze and snacks, not to mention earlier boarding.
Roger Moore
@Capri:
And in some parts of the US, like the Boston-Washington corridor.
The other problem with putting in high-speed rail now is getting the right-of-way. You don’t want to share track between true high speed rail and freight, so you need to build entirely new track. That means acquiring new right-of-way, which is going to be outrageously expensive in the kind of dense area were high-speed rail makes sense.
bluehill
That sucks. I’ve flown all the majors remaining (meaning AA, United, Delta) and Delta is relatively the best in my experience. United and AA keep exchanging leads for being the worst and some of it is probably just luck of the draw in terms having a horrible experience.
Felanius Kootea
@rikyrah: Does the consumer protection bureau handle airline complaints? I thought it was just financial stuff. Boy do I have a whole lot of complaints for them if they also look at how airlines treat customers.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@burnspbesq: I used to fly Alaska when I was in grad school(LAX to SEA) and to Anchorage for work, great airline. My trip up to Seattle to start grad school was on PamAm, they had to move a 747 from LAX to SEA and booked passengers on it, virtually empty.
? Martin
@burnspbesq: The US really should focus on regulatory structures that don’t encourage race-to-the-bottom business models. Alaska and JetBlue (and Southwest, who I usually fly) are reasonably strong because they escaped the decades of long-term investments and liabilities that deregulation made difficult to impossible to meet and they’ve been in this overreach pattern ever since (which 9/11 hurt, etc.). The newer airlines avoided these problems.
There are other industries that suffer from the same set of poor regulatory incentives. These don’t need to be big government or price fixing or protectionist – they just need to reward behaviors that are consumer-friendly and lead to resilience in the industry. I don’t think this is a particular strength/failure of either Dems or Republicans – I think both parties contribute to the problem in different ways.
seaboogie
@SiubhanDuinne: A veil, you say? Mos ‘def a Catholic. On my first flight (at 13) with little bro and sis as minors traveling independently, we had a milk-run flight from Minneapolis, to Detroit to Toronto to visit our father. I felt safer because there were nuns on the flight.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: Yes, this is a practical problem that I don’t see a way around except by imminent domain, and it would be tied up in the courts for years, if not decades.
JMG
@Iowa Old Lady: Not to bum your day, but my son has a friend who’s getting married in Bangkok this fall, and he swears he found a round trip ticket for $500. It’s the medium-sized towns where they gouge you. I am basically satisfied with JetBlue, which has become Boston’s largest carrier, but it costs more to fly to Jacksonville where my mom lives than to either LA or SF.
PS: I have long felt that a candidate who promised to re-regulate the airlines and stage a few public executions of airline execs would get 75 percent of the vote. Nobody tell Trump.
Starfish
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I have had good experiences on Alaska and also Frontier.
Sorry that your trip hit a snag, Hillary.
The airplanes are so gross lately. I have seen busses that are cleaner.
SiubhanDuinne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
When I mention to people about driving from Atlanta to Canada, or Phoenix, or Boston, they all seem to think I’m afraid to fly. That’s not it at all. I simply hate it and, apart from going overseas, I will do pretty much anything to avoid airplanes and airports. (I also love to drive, so it’s never a hardship.)
seaboogie
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I flew on one of the last WardAir flights in Canada like that. The headlines in the complimentary newspaper (with warm towels to wipe your hands afterwards) were about the demise of the airline. Virtually empty, and terribly luxurious.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq: FRA is a nightmare for two reasons: it’s just like ATL as you said, and you also have that pesky Air Force across the tarmac at Rhein-Main AB.
Then there are the Zeppelins…oy vey!
peach flavored shampoo
AA….eh? My wife just about got herself arrested going ballistic on a AA grounds crew member who was 1) completely wrong, 2) belligerently unaplogetic about it, and 3) seemingly pleased he’d made her cry. We made it anyways, then connected onto Qantas, the world’s best. What an whiplash experience.
Hands down worst airlines on the planet.
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer
One of my rules of thumb – for international travel with a US domestic connection, I build in either a loooooong layover or an extra day, “just in case”.
I’ve been burned before.
Iowa Old Lady
@JMG: I’m not surprised. We lived in Detroit when it was a Northwest hub, and we could get reasonably priced, direct flight tickets. Moving here was a shock for a lot of reasons, but the airline situation was one of them.
seaboogie
@peach flavored shampoo: Also, their flight attendants used to seem super grouchy – so one assumes that they treat their staff as poorly as their customers.
sigaba
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
We run Amtrak like a public utility and it’s kinda miserable. It doesn’t have to be, and the routes in the NEC are tolerable and actually up to world class standards, but it’s mostly kept on life support by congress because every Kansas congressman and his mother don’t want to be known as the guy that killed passenger rail — it’s also a sort of backdoor subsidy for freight rail to keep them from letting all the tracks rust to shit. But they don’t want to spend any money on it either.
Rail would actually be a much more efficient and reliable way for people to make a “3 hour connection” overland to connect with a hub flight from Chicago, but we don’t spend money on rail transport in the US, because socialism.
I think the total government subsidy per mode in the US works out something like $30 per passenger year for rail, $600 per automobile-year, and like $1000 per airline passenger-year. But all that free money we hand over to the airlines, in air traffic control, safety, regs and airport construction, that’s not socialism. Planes aren’t socialism. Because reasons.
I think the reason they leave airlines private is because they want to preserve the narrative that airline transport in the US is private. When Nixon privatized Amtrak it didn’t matter because trains were old hat and culturally backward. But people are deeply invested in the idea that American aerospace isn’t just awesome but profitable and reifies American cultural ideals.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s not just that you need eminent domain to seize the property, it’s that even with eminent domain you still have to pay market price for it. In a big, dense city, that property price could easily exceed the construction cost. Not to mention that there’s the whole problem of tearing up neighborhoods in the process.
The Ancient Randonnuer
Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy and the rest of the Democrats (they controlled both houses) brought us the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Ralph Nader was one of its biggest proponents.
Emma
This is so weird. Flying out of Miami I usually have to use American — better connections almost anywhere domestically. I’ve never had anything but the usual minor annoyances.
Baud
@The Ancient Randonnuer: Everything I’ve read suggests that prices did go down as a result of deregulation. That said, cutthroat pricing isn’t necessarily good for maintaining quality.
Marc
@PigDog:
Actually you can, but it’s tough. You need the 16 digit ticket code, not the confirmation code. Hielw easy it is to get a seat depends on the airline, but I’ve been able to pull it off on no name foreign carriers with no English options on the web site. When in doubt, call and reach a human somehow.
burnspbesq
My Regulated Industries prof in law school had been GC at the Civil Aeronautics Board during deregulation. He correctly predicted that quality of service would be the first casualty of deregulation, because there would be no regulator to impose artificially high prices to make good service profitable.
Marc
@Baud: that was true at some point, but in the past 5 years costs to travelers have soared and there are record profits. They overconsolitated and we are paying for it.
Steeplejack
@Capri:
This is true. About a month ago I was talking to a friend about the possibility of my driving his car from D.C. to Portland, OR, where he was starting a new job (in a hurry). The plan fell through, but I got excited about a road trip and planned an itinerary with Google Maps.
Like you, I consider myself a geography hound, but I was taken aback to be reminded how big the West is. From NoVA you can get to Chicago in one very long day, and it’s not a problem to get to someplace in Indiana—South Bend, say (600 miles). From there it’s only about 300 miles to Iowa City, where I was going to visit a friend.
Then the next day would mostly be just getting across Nebraska, from Iowa City to Cheyenne, WY. It’s about 750 miles, but only about 10-11 hours because you can haul ass through the empty desolation. From Cheyenne it was two days to Portland, with a stop somewhere in Idaho—Twin Falls, I think. . . . Just checked: 615 miles from Cheyenne to Twin Falls, 550 miles from there to Portland.
Man, I would have loved to take that trip! But the sketchy transport company that was yanking my friend around finally got it together.
In talking about this with friends, I was surprised to find (a) how many people have weird car/van/moving stories and (b) how universally sketchy the companies in the industry are. It’s like a requirement.
JanieM
I haven’t read the comments yet, only the OP, but I had an “adventure” with American Airlines in 1997 that ensured that I would attempt to walk across the ocean sooner than ever book a flight with them again. The desk person I dealt with (in Logan Airport) was explicitly mocking, they lied about my reservation, they put me on an overbooked flight and promised not to take my luggage if I didn’t fly, then took my luggage without me and delivered it to an airport I never intended to go to outside London. They made me run back and forth between the ticket counter and the luggage people for an hour and a half because neither group of a$$holes would admit that my wrongly traveling luggage was *their* problem. One employee offered to go look for my luggage in the back room if I would pay him some hard cash. Eight or ten employees treated me with attitudes ranging from indifference to sneering, until I finally found one with a shred of human decency who told me the bad news that my luggage had in fact gone without me, and that it couldn’t technically be “tracked” because I hadn’t flown….
This is the Cliff’s notes. I would do *anything* rather than ever do business with American Airlines again. Sounds like nothing has changed in 19 years.
ETA: It’s the only time in my life when I would gladly have caused someone to lose her job if I could have: that’s the original desk clerk, who, my travel agent later told me, was lyingly deleting my reservation while sneering at me for dealing with a travel agency in Maine. (All of this happened because I had been booked at the last minute when my original airline’s pilots went on strike for 24 hours.) Getting someone fired, or getting any kind of compensation or even an apology, turned out to be more trouble than it was worth…..
Baud
@Marc: But you can’t attribute that to the 1978 act.
seaboogie
@one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer: I guess after the situation that I mentioned @comment 43, if you aren’t racking up frequent flyer miles or have an airline miles credit card, opt for the airline that is a hub for your destination. More flights, and more options when things go south WRT weather, equipment and such. Plus the flight crew is usually happier, as they are flying home.
Schlemazel
@Steeplejack:
I had sort of the opposite experience. Coming from out on the plains I looked at a mape & figured it would take the better part of a day to drive from New Haven to Boston via RI. HA! Less than 3 hours
? Martin
@Steeplejack: I’ve driven across the country multiple times. LA to Denver is doable, but it’s really rough. Doing the rockies while tired is not recommended. Grand Junction is more reasonable, but it’s still 750 miles, 11-12 hours. From Grand Junction your next stop is Omaha, another 750. Then Columbus, another 750.
The western legs are fantastic because you have a real sense of going somewhere thanks to the mountains and the distance between cities. That makes them challenging in some sense. The eastern legs are more uniform, but they’re flatter and more congested.
My dad lives in coastal Oregon, the next state over. It’s 950 miles and 16 hours – and I live 3 hours from the southeastern most corner of California, and he’s 2 hours from the northwestern corner of Oregon.
But I love driving across CA. My job takes me to small towns around the state and we have a lack of rail/airlines to get there, so I drive a lot. It’s amazing. Mountains, agriculture, ranches, desert, forests, coastline – and really dramatic cities (for all my criticism of SF governance, it’s a really fabulous city – 2nd only to NYC IMO). California is the best driving state anywhere.
Steeplejack
I fly only a few times a year, usually to Las Vegas, and American has been okay for me. They have a convenient nonstop that leaves Dulles early Saturday evening, which I have determined is one of the least favorite times for people to fly to Las Vegas. I usually come back on the corresponding nonstop on a Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon.
Their in-flight wi-fi has sucked the last few times, though, which is a bummer, because surfing the Web and reading Balloon Juice really makes the time go quickly.
I’m probably flying from D.C. to Atlanta sometime in the next month or so. Any recommendations? (I can leave from Dulles or National.)
On a related note, I was talking with a friend today about buying a new suitcase (her, not me). It’s one of those areas where I get wound up and do a lot of on-line window shopping, then don’t do anything because, as I said, I fly only two or three times a year and am not on a tight schedule, so it’s not a big issue for me to check a bag and wait for it at the destination. But there’s a lot of cool-looking stuff out there.
BillCinSD
@sigaba:
It was Military Keynsianism. Got to subsidize the plane makers so they can make us military planes along with those passenger jets.
scav
@Schlemazel: Those sneeky Road Atlases putting a state on every page (well some had 2 and I think TX had 4 but /pedantry). Even spookier when it’s the Europe US comparision. Paris to the Alps was essentially LA – SF.
seaboogie
May I offer a happy flight story, (repeated) just because my day has gone surprisingly and spectacularly well?
I don’t fly for business any more, but once – when I did – I flew from Vancouver to NYC on Cathay Pacific. This would be about 18 years ago. The airplane had these fancy, new-fangled screens on the seat in front of me that showed the flight path in real time.
My sister and her family lived on a flight path in a rural area of SW Ontario, just bordering Lake Huron, and I knew this because their dog would bark at airplanes flying at 35,000 feet. So I’m on this flight, and see on the screen that we are just past Lake Huron over where they live. Grab my credit card and swipe the airphone to call my sister. My 5-year-old nephew answers, and I tell him “Paul – go outside right now and look up in the sky to see if there is a plane flying over you….so he did, and said there was. Hey Paul – I am in that plane!”. One of the coolest moments of his life and of mine. There is still a bit of magic in human flight.
Auntie Beak
omg, yes, just a few days before aa merged with us airways, i had a reservation on a us airways international flight out of philadelphia, but i had to get there via a connecting flight out of boston. they went threw 2 airplanes and 3 flight crews, and naturally i missed my connection to the international flight in philadelphia. ultimately missed one day of a prepaid 8-day hiking trip in ireland. i literally had the same problem getting home after my truncated trip. i finally just took a flight ANY DAMNED FLIGHT that got me kind of close to home. what a horrible horrible experience, and i will NEVER fly aa or in fact book a connecting flight to anywhere anytime ever again.
J R in WV
Our (one and only so far) trip to Europe, we were ticketed from JFK to Paris on Air France, and back on Air France. The outbound flight couldn’t depart because it never arrived from Paris because of “a mechanical event” – no extra planes in case of malfunction. So they scheduled us on a Delta flight to Madrid, connecting to our ultimate destination in Bilbao.
Coming home on Air France out of Charles de Gaulle, which is a beautiful, artistic terminal with good food and a book shop with “foreign” language books in English, the flight was great, a great meal, good wine, actual implements to eat with, etc. Then coming home from JFK… well, as you say. AA/United.
Delta is the best major carrier in the US, and I would fly Air France any time, anywhere. They are associated with Delta somehow…
Mnemosyne
@? Martin:
We’ve been relatively happy when we’ve flown Virgin America, but they have limited cities they fly to and limited schedules, so if you have to be someplace by a specific time, they can’t do it.
We were surprised to not have any major problems with American on this last trip to Chicago. Delta was a freakin’ nightmare when we flew to Hawaii a few years ago — the lavatory was stinky and the AC didn’t work, but they flew us for 5 hours anyway. And, of course, we were two rows in front of the smelly bathroom.
HinTN
@Mike J: We were rolling down the runway at a pretty good clip when the pilot hit the brakes HARD. Then the plane drove around and about for about 30 minutes while the pilot explained that the brakes had to cool off. Then they found us a gate but that was mostly so the flight crew could get off because to take off and fly to our destination would exceed their allowed flying time. So we waited for them to find a new crew, which they did and we did fly that night.
Steeplejack
@scav:
Yeah. I was following the Tour de France last month on Google Maps—near zero interest in cycling, major interest in the gorgeous scenery on TV—and it was strange to realize that France is a little bit smaller than Texas (about 80% as big, according to Mapfight, one of my all-time favorite whimsical websites).
SiubhanDuinne
@seaboogie:
That is a really cool story!
Hillary Rettig
@scav: nicely put
SiubhanDuinne
@Steeplejack:
Are you going to be in Atlanta long enough to consider a BJ meetup?
Hillary Rettig
@JMG: yeah that’s another bummer. last year we flew out to Japan on JAL and it was marvelous. Back on American and it was literally disgusting – a filthy plane with shitty food and zero plugs for electronics (on a 14 hour flight!).
This year we reserved early and I was really looking forward to flying JAL both ways, but because of this screwup we’re flying American to Japan tomorrow. (Assuming we even fly. :-( )
Hillary Rettig
@seaboogie: quite a story, some good advice, and thanks for your kind wishes!
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’m with you on this. I love a road trip.
JanieM
Not about AA, but part of the same travel adventure — after AA shafted me I got on a flight the next day (a la @Auntie Beak‘s story, I lost a day out of an 8-day or so trip) on Continental to Gatwick. We landed fine very very early in the morning, but saw a lot of people milling around outside the airport — a strange and mysterious sight.
Then we found out why: we were kept on the plane for hours, watching movies, and then moved into a small lounge for more hours, because in the run-up to the election when Blair first became prime minister, the IRA (remember them?) had issued bomb threats for several airports around London, plus central London. After the lounge, I had another wait for my rental car because they were still sniffing out the parking garages.
I was frickin’ amazed when I finally did get my week in England — though not London, because there were threats there the whole time, and we just decided to stay away. But I saw Stonehenge and various other stone circles……Oxford, a bit — although that visit was also hampered by threats of violence against labs that used animals in research.
Did anyone try to say that times used to be quieter? ;-)
ETA: News article from that morning of bomb threats.
Hillary Rettig
@one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer: I actually suspected mendaciousness on the part of the gate agent, but didn’t want to say it b/c it sounds paranoid and also it’s a serious charge to level on her. I actually felt *a bit* sorry for her; she looked like pretty unhappy in general. Most of the conversation was pretty civil (on both sides) given the circumstances. I don’t think she acted with intent to harm, but it’s not impossible either.
i did report the incident to AA’s customer service rep, without calling it intentional, so if they care at all about customer service (which they probably don’t) she should get some kind of reprimand.
btw, our Japanese travel agent’s response to the “no crew” reason for the cancellation: “Oh my gosh.” Like she literally couldn’t conceive of any airline doing that.
Hillary Rettig
@Villago Delenda Est: we were told that in Japan, if the shikansen (high speed train) is late it’s literally news. we probably took a couple dozen trains last year, including to some remote locations, and never waited more than 10 mins to make a connection. And usually the wait was < 2 min.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
One of the sadnesses of my life is that I married a man who hates to road trip. Sigh. One must take the bad with the good.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
I don’t know yet. Plans are still up in the air. I’m shooting for three to five days, and I’ll be staying with friends between Stone Mountain and Snellville. I will keep you apprised.
Hillary Rettig
@Starfish: yeah, see my above comment 99 re JAL versus American.
Hillary Rettig
@sigaba: for all of Amtrak’s flaws – and it has flaws and they should be fixed – there are a lot of people who vastly prefer it to airlines.
Central Planning
I’ve done a fair amount of travel, and have coworkers that travel all the time, and I’ve generally been lucky. I’m also lucky we have a corporate travel team (well, outsource to AmEx I think) that I can call when things go sideways.
Back in May I got screwed by Delta and drove DTW-ROC via Canada instead of waiting 5 hours for my flight (and it kept getting pushed back). US Air screwed me once with “We have a mechanical problem. Please wait while we fix it.” to “It’s fixed.” to “Bad weather, flight cancelled.” I drove DCA-ROC after that too.
At least I’m in control of getting home when I drive, and work pays for those one-way car rentals without batting an eye.
Hillary Rettig
@one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer: good rule. I’ll try to remember it.
Hillary Rettig
@Auntie Beak: :-( sorry for your experience
Mnemosyne
@sigaba:
I’m pretty sure HSR from the Los Angeles area to Las Vegas would pay for itself within 5 years. Especially if they let them have a full bar and not just beer and wine like on the Surfliner.
Hillary Rettig
@Mandarama: I have been thinking of using social media. I don’t use twitter much either. i give it some thought in this case, tho.
Svoboda for all
My wife flies a lot for work. Mainly American, but the other majors as well. It’s all a crap shoot. Any one of them can suck on any day. But some routes you definitely want to avoid, like United to DC. Really, these days flying is just a commodity unless you’re in first class in Emirates or something.
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne: Oh, that’s lovely. You ignore the people who live in Atlanta, but you’ll go to freaking Snellville for an out of towner!
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
My condolences. I love driving anywhere. I even volunteer to take Bro’ Man’s greyhound to Philadelphia once or twice a year to get her teeth and nails did because it’s a good day trip. Drop the pooch at NGAP (the greyhound experts!), hit Nick’s in South Philly for an Italian beef sandwich, go by the Italian Market or someplace else, then pick up the dog and head back to NoVA. I always go with one particular friend, and we get caught up with each other, solve the problems of the world and listen to SiriusXM (a godsend for road trips).
My other common road trip lately is to Rehoboth Beach, DE, about three hours from NoVA. Went down there with a friend on July 4 and realized that I was already relaxed by the time we arrived. Two-lane roads through Maryland and Delaware, well maintained, not much traffic if you know the right route.
Another trip I would like to take, maybe on one of my housesitting gigs for my RWNJ brother in Las Vegas, is from Vegas to Lake Tahoe. It’s about 450 miles, a lot of it through desert, but you can veer off and go through part of Yosemite National Park and the Stanislaus National Forest. I’ve never been to Lake Tahoe but have always wanted to check it out. (Ditto Palm Springs.)
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
My condolences. I love driving anywhere. I even volunteer to take Bro’ Man’s greyhound to Philadelphia once or twice a year to get her teeth and nails did because it’s a good day trip. Drop the pooch at NGAP (the greyhound experts!), hit Nick’s in South Philly for an Italian beef sandwich, go by the Italian Market or someplace else, then pick up the dog and head back to NoVA. I always go with one particular friend, and we get caught up with each other, solve the problems of the world and listen to SiriusXM (a godsend for road trips).
My other common road trip lately is to Rehoboth Beach, DE, about three hours from NoVA. Went down there with a friend on July 4 and realized that I was already relaxed by the time we arrived. Two-lane roads through Maryland and Delaware, nice scenery, very little traffic if you know the right route.
Another trip I would like to take, maybe on one of my housesitting gigs for my RWNJ brother in Las Vegas, is from Vegas to Lake Tahoe. It’s about 450 miles, a lot of it through desert, but you can veer off and go through part of Yosemite National Park and the Stanislaus National Forest. I’ve never been to Lake Tahoe and have always wanted to check it out. (Ditto Palm Springs.)
ETA: Fuck you, FYWP!
Steeplejack
@Steve in the ATL:
Hey, I’m bona fide! I lived in Atlanta for 26 years—far longer than I’ve lived anywhere else in my life.
fastEddie
If you bring enough Bell’s and Arcadia Ales, you are welcome to stay over with us in Naperville. Closer to Midway but not really bad from O’Hare. ( BTW – Butch O’Hare was the USNavy’s first “ace” in Feb 1942 )
Steve in the ATL
@Steeplejack: we will put you on the tentative approved list, but will need confirmation of your tomahawk chop and “go dawgs sic ’em woof woof woof” skills
catclub
@Hillary Rettig:
Only if you actually enjoy hassling them.
I am trying to get someone to forget about an overcharge because trying to get it back just makes her angry, and the amount is no longer worth it.
I am not succeeding.
catclub
@Central Planning: I am guessing ROC is not the Republic of China.
John Weiss
Don’t you worry your pretty little head: being drawn and quartered vs. flying on any airline would be a difficult choice.
RaflW
We watched our friends endure hours and hours of horribly and often incompetent customer service from AA this past New Year’s week. The triggering incident wasn’t AAs fault – it was a freak (or, in climate change terms, no so freak any more) tornado near DFW just after Christmas.
But the luggage recovery was an absolute, unmitigated disaster. And then AA screwed the pooch on our friend’s return tickets to Europe. IIRC, the canceled their booking because our friends were claimed to be no-shows on the flight out of DFW. Yeah, the one that was canceled due to tornado.
The return flight was a code-share on British. At one point my friend managed to get both an AA rep and a British rep on a three way call. The AA rep was a total a-hole to both the customer (my friend) and the BA person trying to fix things. It was shocking.
And months later, her fully legit requests for reimbursement for ski clothes so their holiday wasn’t ruined by 4 days o nightmare luggage non-retrieval had gone unanswered, in what I’m pretty sure is was by then a violation of the Contract of Carriage.
So yeah, avoid AA.
Uncle Cosmo
@JMG: Back in summer 2004 or 2005 I took Amtrak from Lost Wagers to Flagstaff AZ & thence to Lamy NM (near FantaSe). The first leg in fact started as an hour-long minivan ride (luggage in a trailer) to Kingman AZ, where we caught the train at 1 AM. It was OK but not quite up to European train service.
So which airline got Useless Air, I mean UScare? Untied, wuzzit?
Amtrak in the BosWash corridor is good but waaaaay pricey compared with the buses (Megabus, Bolt) or commuter rail for shorter hops (Baltimore-Washington on MARC $8 each way).
Frankly, the more airport connections you have to make the more likely you are to get screwed. One year I was booked on Delta to Prague out of JFK with a connecting flight from BWI that was scheduled to get me there 2 hr in advance…& the puddlejumper orbited the destination for 1 hr 45 min. Very fortunate that the gate at JFK was right beside the puddlejumper landing area & even then barely made it on. Now if I’m flying to Yerp out of JFK I take the bus up to NYC a day or 2 early & crash with friends who live a couple of subway stops from the AirTrain stop at Jamaica Station. YMMV
redshirt
Fav domestic: JetBlue
Worst domestic: United
Fav international: British Airways
Worst International: Oceanic
redshirt
@Uncle Cosmo: I’ve been taking the bus from Portland ME to Boston twice a week for the past 6 weeks (ug). It’s cheap, fast, reliable, convenient, and pretty great. The Amtrak that runs the same route is way more expensive, slower, less options, and less reliable. I literally see no reason to take the train over the bus except for the small fact of being able to get up and walk around a bit. Big deal.
Scapegoat
@Steeplejack: TravelPro. Period. Full stop.
There is a reason flight crews use it.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Scapegoat:
Thanks. TravelPro is on my friend’s short list, I think.
bystander
@satby:
Another great idea for an NPR podcast. Olds reminiscing about air travel.
I’d have to take time off from my podcast series, Turn Off that Effing Phone: Things that Irritate Me, to put in a guest appearance.
bystander
Meant to wish Hillary R a Bon Voyage!
Ha Nguyen
Travel pro used to be good. When I was looking for luggage last year, I checked a website frequented by some airline crew. They said that Travel pro had recently changed to use cheap stuff so that the new luggage didn’t last. They were recommending Briggs, although it was pricy stuff.
Hillary Rettig
@catclub: i could totally wind up in your friend’s situation, but hope I don’t
Hillary Rettig
@RaflW: wow, that sounds dreadful. my own situation not so bad (yet – I’m still writing this from home :-/ ). Yeah the disparity in courtesy and professionalism between the JTB (Japan Travel Bureau – our travel agent) and AA staff is amazing. The JTB people have worked overtime to fix problems that AA created.
Meanwhile, AA gets rewarded for its incompetence by getting two expensive fares. (B/c today we’re taking AA instead of JAL from Chicago to Tokyo.)
As I mentioned earlier, our JTB agent’s response to the “no crew” reason for the cancellation: “Oh my gosh.” Like she literally couldn’t conceive of any airline doing that.
kindness
I used to like American Airlines. Back in the 80’s though, I booked a flight from SFO to JFK in February. I was going to to visit family in NY and then go up to ski in Vermont. Had 2 bags checked with all my winter clothes and ski gear. My bags went to Peru from what I was told. I never saw them again. I was at JFK with no winter clothes at all. Dealt with the AA people trying to find my bags. They ended up giving me a phone number to call. Called several times over the 2 weeks I was gone. In the end I had to sue American Airlines for my lost luggage. Bought new clothes & rented ski stuff but ski gear, especially the good stuff is really expensive. When I filed my claim for lost luggage American said I was lying and denied the claim. So I sued. The day before the trial AA settled. Assholes. I’ve never flown with them since nor will I.
Steve!
@? Martin: I just got done driving from Baltimore to San Diego. Day 1 was Baltimore to St. Louis, day 2 was STL to Santa Fe, and day 3 was the rest of the way to San Diego. Between 13 and 14 hours of driving each day. I dont necessarily recommend it.
Steve!
@? Martin: I just got done driving from Baltimore to San Diego. Day 1 was Baltimore to St. Louis, day 2 was STL to Santa Fe, and day 3 was the rest of the way to San Diego. Between 13 and 14 hours of driving each day. I dont necessarily recommend it.