Trip Commentary

First, a general comment: all 4 flights were booked to capacity. Not one empty seat on any flight. Sardines-in-a-Can syndrome is the new business model, accompanied by news articles in the on-board magazines about how expensive it is to operate an airline. And, as a matter of fact, the day of my return flight is the same day that my airline company announced that it was filing for bankruptcy protection.

Commenting on arrivals/departures: arriving early at a gate means that your plane filled with anxious flyers who want to deplane sits on the tarmac because all the gates are already filled with other anxious flyers who want to push back from the same gate your plane is trying to occupy. The joy at hearing the captain announce that we're 20 minutes early evaporates instantly.

Commenting on baggage fees: the way to avoid the $25 bag fee charged by American Airlines appears to be to stack up as much luggage as you can, breeze confidently through all the alleged screening lines, including the little stand that informs the traveler that all carry-on bags have to fit between the metal bars, then go to the head of the line of passengers wanting to board and feign ignorance when told that you cannot possibly carry all that luggage on board -- and must gate check it. See, using this little trick, you get to check your baggage BUT you don't have to pay the checked baggage fee!! Voila: not only does the savvy traveler get to fly the bags free, but they get to carry on several huge, bulky items, including over-sized duffel bags stuffed with all their worldly possessions.

How did I learn this little trick? Because I cannot lift my bag (which legally fits inside an overhead compartment, by the way) into said overhead compartment, I checked it when I checked in and was shocked to find I had to pay the $25 fee to check my one lonely, legal-sized carry-on bag. When I questioned the "free bag" idea, the clerk smiled and charged my credit card. After talking to seasoned flyers and paying attention to what all the scofflaws were doing, I followed suit and carried my bag to the gate on the trip home. Being in Group 4 for boarding, it is obvious that there will be no overhead bin space left for me upon my boarding, so I went brazenly to the gate and requested a gate check for my bag. Mission accomplished with no fee -- and my bag made it off the plane quicker than I at my destination.

Commenting on boarding: why on earth does first class board first? So we peasants in the cheaper seats can file past the elite, bumping their elbows, staring at them to see if we recognize "anyone" worth recognizing? Has no one thought about boarding from the back to the front? Or from the window seats to the middle seats, and then to the aisle seats? I was the middle on the way to, so moved the arm rests up and out of the way so I could get out when the other row sharers arrived. It amused me to see how quickly the arms came back down after they had claimed their spaces; I usually leave the arms up so we all have more elbow room. On the way coming back, I was the aisle, so I was the person bumped by every single person who walked down the aisle and back, as well as that damned beverage cart that also blocks in 8 rows of passengers at a time and will NOT be moved to accommodate anyone who has to go to the bathroom or deal with a child's dirty diaper.

Commenting on passengers: I recently read about the parents who are complaining about the "kiddie ghettoes" created at the back of planes when young children and their parents are forced to sit in the last rows to minimize the disruption to other passengers. On the flight to my destination, there were a few children; on the two legs returning home, the first leg surrounded me with a total of 5 lively, squirming, babbling, kicking children who threw snacks on the floor, screamed when they dropped their toys, leaned over the top of the seat where they were being held by a parent and reached out for the hapless traveler seated behind them. One child, noticing that I had "nothing" to do, handed me his storybook and demanded that I read him a story. When I politely refused, he complained to his mother, who was absorbed in her own book and ignored him. When he again handed me his book and told me to read to him, I told him to tell his mother to read as she seems to enjoy reading.

But my favorite mom was seated behind me on the way home, the selfish bitch mom who is used to the world accommodating her needs. After being interrupted by her very young female child (probably 4 years of age) who had to go potty, the mother told her to wait until she was done with her conversation, assuring the child that it's rude to interrupt mommy when she's talking on the phone (we had not yet departed). Of course, the child had to go potty, so the war began between taking care of a child's needs and making mommie happy. It escalated when the child wanted to play with mommie's I-Pad, but mommie screamed at her, loudly and quite suddenly, "No! No! No! That's NOT the way MOMMIE plays that game! Give me MY I-Pad. If you can't play the game the right way, you can't play it at all!"

Now, let's not get into the discussion about the appropriateness of entertaining a child with an I-Pad and focus on the lesson mommie teaches the daughter, a lesson that came back to mommie not too much later when the child changed the language on the I-Pad and mommie goes beserk. After mommie's tantrum, she demands of the child to explain why she changed the language. The child's answer was simple: because that's the way she likes HER I-Pad, so DON'T TOUCH IT!! "Leave it alone, mommie," the daughter told her when mommie tried to grab it from her.

Commenting on common courtesy: at the beginning of the last flight, the woman seated across from me, a woman who obviously does not have children (or maybe she had children but abused them viciously), threw her I-Phone onto the floor in a rage because the "damned thing" wouldn't keep its charge, then it dropped her call, and then it connected, but she couldn't hear the party on the receiving end of the call. She retrieved it in a profanity-laced rant, then started making derogatory comments about parents who bring children onto a plane before she realized the little ones were watching her actions and listening to her very, very closely.

At the end of the flight, she jumped up before the seat belt sign was turned off and started retrieving her personal items from a bin stuffed with her belongings (is there not one single airline employee anywhere who enforces the size and quantity requirements for carry-ons?). Swinging her first bag down from the bin, she hit me with it. When I spoke up and told her to be more careful, she turned toward me and told me to "watch it" because she had to get her luggage out of the bin and she had to get off the plane because she was at her limit with the crap she had to put up with on this plane.

Yeah, I stood up and intimidated her with my size, but after staring her down, I offered to help her retrieve her belongings so we all could get off the plane in a safe and orderly manner. Then, when I had her blocked behind me, hemmed in with her half-dozen bags, I directed the family with the 3 kids to gather all their belongings and go out ahead of us, including the fuming volcano behind me. They almost argued with me, but they had heard the constant string of comments about their children, so took advantage of my kindness to round up the troops and deplane.

Commenting on the travel experience, sometimes, you don't get what you want, but other times you get what you deserve.