On the Contrary

On my consulting travels I had to fly to Oklahoma City Monday morning and return Tuesday night.  It was another awakening in hell.  Not Oklahoma City, which I didn’t get a chance to see much of, but inside the hollow aluminum tube of torture called coach.  First I can’t figure out why the airlines are loosing so much money.  All the flights I am on are always full or overbooked and if the issue is cost of jet fuel, raise the ticket prices.  Thanks to farsighted thinking by our government leaders and the stupidity of thinking the market place will solve all problems, we have no alternatives.

So I have a 1:00 pm Central Time meeting in Oklahoma City so I get up at 3 am to catch a 6 am flight (PST).  I get to the airport plenty earlier and with the tight connections and the new restrictions on checked baggage I just have carry-on.  Now If you are only going to have carry-on you have to plan your shaving kit and take all the gels and liquids not to exceed 3.5 oz in a 1 quart baggie to be put in the x-ray machine separate from you other bags, computer, and shoes.  Then you need to put that baggie somewhere convenient so while you strip naked at the security screening, you can quickly find that and separate it out.  As luck would have it, when I got my ticket out of the ticket kiosk (no checked baggage) there was no seat assignment.  Of course the flight was over booked and they were looking for volunteers.  Now think about this.  You can’t go get coffee or make that last stop at the restroom because you have to be there when they finally call your name for a seat: center seat of course.  Do they plan this stuff?

The rest of the trip out was fairly uneventful except that you are flying coach smashed into the center seat with you knees touching the seat in front of you, praying that the guy/gal in front of you doesn’t recline his/her seat, and if you try to bend over to reach your bag under the seat in front of you, you can’t quite make it because your head is smashed against the seat in front of you.  If I had been Osama bin Laden’s driver I would have spilled my guts at this point.  No need for water boarding.   Much like that poor guy, I would have told you anything you wanted to hear.

Return flight started out well as the flight out of Oklahoma City was on time and not fully booked.  The people in Oklahoma City I found to be really polite and friendly and the gate agent looked at my seating assignment and said, “We can do better than this” and reassigned me to “Economy Plus”.  I liked his attitude.  Well it added about 6 inches to my knee room and made the whole flight a very different experience with plenty of room for my knees (I am only 6’ so this is not asking much), easy access to my bag under the seat, and no fear the person in front of me will recline.  Good start, but I think it was a set up.

Connecting in Denver, once again I was shoved back to coach with the peasant class, but at least I had a window seat which makes sleeping easier.  That’s when the games began.  Never, never, never schedule the last flight out of Denver to your destination (mine was Sacramento) because that is the flight they will delay to accommodate connecting late passengers or any other schedule glitch.  So sure enough, after a gate change, plane change, seating assignment change, and an almost 2 hour delay we were about to depart.  But there was hope!  The center seat was unoccupied and all the passengers had boarded.  But just before push back they open the door and a lady entered and of course it was the center seat.  Worse, she like about half the flyers around me who had not seen the lean side of 250 pounds for a long time.  Good thing I was in a window seat because about half of my seat toward the aisle was taken up by my seatmate.  About half way through the flight I thought about ripping the emergency door open and jumping out.

Upon arrival, and you know you are dying to get off, breath decent air, go to the restroom and get in your car and be free, the lady on the aisle seat decided she needed a wheel chair so the whole plane had to wait until she was accommodated.  Now I don’t think these are random events.  I think they are carefully planned and coordinated and then at crew parties they show videos of your facial expression and die laughing.  It is what we get when we have let them monopolize our only way to travel.  High speed rail anyone?