No More Planes

Several weeks ago I went to Chicago to see some friends and judge my law school's Moot Court competition. I don't typically take flights at 6 a.m., but the ticket was only $40, so I went for it. My night-person ass managed to get up at 4 a.m. and drive to the airport. There was nothing remarkable about security or boarding at that hour. Next stop: Chicago!

Unfortunately, fog in Chicago prevented us from landing. We held around Midway airport for an hour or so, and then had to divert to Columbus, OH to refuel. By now it was noonish, so I just hung out at the wine bar with soup and champagne while awaiting further instructions.

The flight ended up getting cancelled, and immediately a gigantic line formed as every person on that flight had to rebook through the single agent available at the gate.

I don't do lines. I stayed at the wine bar waiting for the line to diminish. Meanwhile, I also used the telephone - what a concept - in hopes that I could get my situation fixed without having to deal with the gate agent at all.

Well, it turns out that in this particular situation, the folks on the phone were unable to help. I was told that the only option was to rebook through a gate agent at Columbus airport.
Dammit. More flights had been cancelled and the lines were just getting longer. I decided to try my luck outside of security, at the main check-in counter, where surely the airline would have more customer service agents, right?

There were two customer service agents handling rebookings, and four handling bag drop-off. The line for rebookings was outrageous here too, while there was no queue at all for bag drop. Three bag drop agents were sitting idle while the rebooking lines got longer and longer and the people got angrier and angrier. One lady side-eyed me when she heard me say "I just want to fucking go home" to my husband on the phone, and when I confronted her, she informed me that she didn't appreciate my use of the "F-word." I made sure to amplify my volume the next time I said it.

The line moved slowly and most of the agents seemed to be of minimal competence - fine examples of the failure of customer service when agents aren't able to use their own judgment. Fortunately, once I got to the front, I discovered that there was one competent agent who called me to the front and helped me while the family that she was also helping figured something out on the telephone. We got me on a flight to Chicago the next afternoon, but I was stuck in Columbus for the night. So much for my $40 plane ticket.

But Dirty Frank's Hot Dog Palace made my
night in Columbus quite pleasant.

Earlier in the year, I'd begun to sour on air travel when a flight attendant refused to give me cookies, even though he gave them to the guy on the aisle. I later learned that the guy on the aisle had traded his pretzels for cookies. I wasn't made aware that that was an option. I don't even like pretzels. After that flight, I declared that I would no longer fly any airline other than the one single airline I trusted.

And yet it was the one single airline that I trusted that stuck me in Columbus. That was the most frustrating part of all - I expected better from that airline, but they turned out to be just as shitty as the others.

I want to emphasize that I don't wish to malign most of the men and women doing the work. The problems are not their faults. The faults are in organization and culture and that MF that I really hate, "policy."

The insult they added to my injury happened on my way home. I was so over this whole trip, so I decided to bust out my $40 to upgrade. There were seats available and I was begging to give them money, so imagine my surprise when I was informed that upgrading me was impossible, apparently because there were too many changes on the front end of my ticket. Yes, the changes that were in no way my fault. It turns out this is a known glitch - it had happened to my sister before - and I find it incomprehensible that this airline, whom I trusted and admired, hadn't done anything to fix it and were completely uninterested in talking to me about a workaround.

That's why I'm (almost) done with air travel. I will take one more round-trip flight on credit card points to see a show in New York City, and I will use a voucher to take a one-way flight to return to Colorado from a road trip so that I can catch a show at Red Rocks.

I plan to go to Japan in fall 2019 for the Rugby World Cup, and I am beginning to look at ways to get there that don't involve taking a commercial airline. I'm learning about traveling on cargo ships; my friends who have done so have very mixed reactions. I'll update my progress toward that goal on this blog. Watch this space!