Wednesday, June 08, 2005

The (Un)Friendly Skies

My wife left today for Ireland. No, she didn't leave me (yet). She's going for work for about two weeks. Am I sad? Sure. She's my best friend, so it's tough when I'm not really going to hear from her for a while. However, the Gods of Travel are not going to let this day go smoothly for either of us. Let's start with me.
After I dropped her off at the airport, I started back home with a long "honey-do" list. If you don't know what that is, then you're very lucky. Essentially it is a list given from one spouse to the other of things that should be done. Mostly women give them to men. In this case, both of us created the list for me. Anyway, my wife and I are known for usually forgetting something when traveling. Not anything large, mind you, but something that we invariably need at some point. When we went on our honeymoon to
Saint Lucia, we forgot our electrical adapter which meant we could not recharge our video camera. Luckily, we went to the city near where we were staying and were able to buy one. Just about every trip we've ever taken, either together or on our own, we usually forget something. Thus, there we were on the way to the airport making sure she had everything. I dropped her off and started back. However, once on 55, I noticed a small black object in the cup holder. Sure enough, my wife had forgotten her cell phone. She needed it in order to coordinate meeting her travel companion. So, I made a quick u-turn and started back. This is where the miracle of modern airports comes in to play, and by miracle, I mean Hell on Earth.
I made my way to the
Northwest Airlines desk and asked for help. Jules, the woman behind the desk, tried to pass me off at first. I, however, wasn't having it. So she called the gate. Gordon, the attendant at the gate, took her phone call, understood the instructions, and put the phone down. For ten minutes, Jules sat on the phone and listened to Gordon talk to a customer. Apparently he was flirting. With no other recourse, she sent me to a "Red Jacket." These are the people who stand in front of the check-in area and tell you what to do or where to go. Mary, the head "Red Jacket" of this area, got on her walkie and called down to the gate. Luckily, Yuko, another 'Red Jacket" took the call and came to meet me. I was able to pass on the phone and get it to my wife. Crisis averted. However, as easy as it was on MY end, it was much harder for my wife and her TC (travel companion).
TC was coming from
the Kansas City Airport and would meet Caroline (my lovely wife) at the Philadelphia Airport. When she arrived at the check-in counter, she was told that her ticket did not exist (even though she had the printout in her hand). Thus began a horrible 45 minutes for TC as she worked to get on the plane. Meanwhile, my wife had gotten on her plane only to be delayed due to a passenger fainting. The passenger was half awake and kept saying, "Don't you take me off this plane." However, under FAA rules, the passenger has to get off and prove that they can fly now. Finally, after 25 minutes, the flight is under way. Now, Northwest has decided that they have to save money, because they are SO far in the hole right now. Instead of raising ticket prices or something reasonable, they cut all free food, pillows, and blankets from their flights. If you want the small bag of pretzels now, you have to pay two bucks. That's annoying, but that's for another post all together.
At 4:20 PM Eastern Time (yes, that's funny, you stoners) my wife landed in Philadelphia, and the horror began. See, Philly's airport is really complicated. See, there are seven terminals with the A Terminal broken into East and West. This is the story that my wife related to me:
I landed here and immediately knew something was wrong. All the lines to get to the other terminals were huge. It turns out that several of the x-ray machines are broken, because the air conditioners above them broke and drained down. Thus the machines are all shorted out. So the airport is unbearably hot and has huge lines to get around. After an hour, I was able to get to A West, but they didn't like how my ticket looked (Apparently Philadelphia frowns on airlines printing tickets for each other). So I had to go over to A East to reprint the boarding pass, but when I got there, they told me that the boarding pass was fine. So I returned to security to go to my gate. They stopped me again and told me to go back. So now I return to the counter again and tell them that security sent me AGAIN. Their response? "Those idiots." They then sent me back with a note. A NOTE! I felt like it was high school again.
Having just talked to her only minutes ago, I know that TC made it, and they are sitting together stewing and waiting to board the plane. My wife is ready to sleep away her anger and wake up refreshed for her irish morning.
Without going off on a rant, this is part of the overall problem with traveling now. Security doesn't talk to the gates, the gates don't talk to the front desks, and the counters don't talk to security. Remember when I talked about how
miscommunication is one of, if not the biggest, problems with society? This helps prove it. They don't talk to each other. Security really doesn't care about the passengers. The overall problem with flying now is that whereas it used to be this luxury where pilots were gods, and the passengers got all gussied up, now flying is almost like taking a bus. Everyone's rude, it's overexpensive for little quality, and the airports are way too crowded now. I can only hope that the maintenance workers aren't upset about losing their pensions or being laid off and take it out on the passengers by doing shoddy work on the planes. Look at what happened here in Minnesota where two planes on the ground hit each other. Is it coincedence that this happened not long after Northwest announced it would be cutting more jobs? I don't know. All I know is that I hope the rest of my wife's flights go smoothly. I also hope that my upcoming flights go smoothly as well. Who knows, maybe I will have an experience next week that rivals what happened to my wife today. I don't want to, but you never know.

No comments: