More airport shenanigans...
I have a love/hate relationship with air travel, as most people do nowadays.
It's bad enough that I got violated on my airfare because I had to fly on short notice (nearly twice as much as I would have paid if I bought my ticket an extra week in advance).
But has anyone else experienced the same type of wretchedness that comes with flying today?
In the 2 years after 9/11 that I had to travel by air, I was "randomly searched" by airport security on nearly half of my flights - the locations of such occurences were the following:
-Kansas City
-St. Louis (on the connecting flight from KCI to LaGuardia)
-Ft. Lauderdale
-London
Honestly...the only one that made sense was London. And that was the most blatant example of racial profiling that I had been subjected to - only brown people were pulled aside before getting on that plane.
After the searches died down (have not been subjected to one since London), I then had to deal with delays. The one (and only) time I flew out of Philadelphia, I got delayed after a minor computer glitch awarded us a 40 minute ATC delay, causing me to miss a connecting flight on the smallest airplane ever to Toledo. A three hour delay in Newark meant that I was leaving New Jersey when I was supposed to be landing in Ft. Lauderdale.
But if you manage to get past the security nonsense and your flight takes off on time, you're slammed with something worse altogether - small children.
My sister and I were blessed with a pair of kickers and screamers on our flight up to Jersey last Thursday. Have you ever had the back of your seat kicked by an unruly 2 year old?
You know what's worse than screaming kids? Fighting dogs.
A pair of some type of inbred terriers stuck in the same carrier under a seat...growling, snarling, and making other ungodly noises. For 3 hours. On a plane that smells like poo. That was the trip down to FtL this summer. Here's a punchline:
My sister and I were in the midst of all this nonsense (there was a screaming kid on that plane too), watching videos on VH1 Classic, and this song comes on by some group like Duran Duran or Depeche Mode or something, and the chorus went, "What did I do? What did I do to deserve this?"
That, my friends, is the air traveler's theme in the post 9/11 era.
Oh, by the way, I am putting a challenge out to those idiots of the TSA who think it's ok to let you carry on a 4 ounce bottle of face lotion on a flight out of FtL but won't let you bring it back home out of Newark. That's right, you evil bastard who made me throw out my Neutrogena lotion - you are an evil and bitter man and you owe me 10 bucks. "You need to tell the security agents at Fort Lauderdale that they need to adhere to the standards," my ass!
::sigh::
So, who's ready to book their tickets for Christmas?!?
It's bad enough that I got violated on my airfare because I had to fly on short notice (nearly twice as much as I would have paid if I bought my ticket an extra week in advance).
But has anyone else experienced the same type of wretchedness that comes with flying today?
In the 2 years after 9/11 that I had to travel by air, I was "randomly searched" by airport security on nearly half of my flights - the locations of such occurences were the following:
-Kansas City
-St. Louis (on the connecting flight from KCI to LaGuardia)
-Ft. Lauderdale
-London
Honestly...the only one that made sense was London. And that was the most blatant example of racial profiling that I had been subjected to - only brown people were pulled aside before getting on that plane.
After the searches died down (have not been subjected to one since London), I then had to deal with delays. The one (and only) time I flew out of Philadelphia, I got delayed after a minor computer glitch awarded us a 40 minute ATC delay, causing me to miss a connecting flight on the smallest airplane ever to Toledo. A three hour delay in Newark meant that I was leaving New Jersey when I was supposed to be landing in Ft. Lauderdale.
But if you manage to get past the security nonsense and your flight takes off on time, you're slammed with something worse altogether - small children.
My sister and I were blessed with a pair of kickers and screamers on our flight up to Jersey last Thursday. Have you ever had the back of your seat kicked by an unruly 2 year old?
You know what's worse than screaming kids? Fighting dogs.
A pair of some type of inbred terriers stuck in the same carrier under a seat...growling, snarling, and making other ungodly noises. For 3 hours. On a plane that smells like poo. That was the trip down to FtL this summer. Here's a punchline:
My sister and I were in the midst of all this nonsense (there was a screaming kid on that plane too), watching videos on VH1 Classic, and this song comes on by some group like Duran Duran or Depeche Mode or something, and the chorus went, "What did I do? What did I do to deserve this?"
That, my friends, is the air traveler's theme in the post 9/11 era.
Oh, by the way, I am putting a challenge out to those idiots of the TSA who think it's ok to let you carry on a 4 ounce bottle of face lotion on a flight out of FtL but won't let you bring it back home out of Newark. That's right, you evil bastard who made me throw out my Neutrogena lotion - you are an evil and bitter man and you owe me 10 bucks. "You need to tell the security agents at Fort Lauderdale that they need to adhere to the standards," my ass!
::sigh::
So, who's ready to book their tickets for Christmas?!?
Comments
And if you're flying around Christmas, you might as well pack a parichute. You'll surely rather jump than stay on the plane.