Airline travel - the good, the bad and the ugly of flying in the 21st century

Delta Airlines - Parked planes, tails out;  photo credit-Delta Airlines

Air travel today is such a mixed emotion that it colors every other form and function of travel. Good, bad and ugly describe every flight, every attempt to go from one place to another in an airplane.  Take for example the last booked flights your Seattle Travel Industry Examiner has been taking. 

The Ugly:  In an aborted and futile attempt to go on a cruise of the Western Caribbean for the Valentine Day week, Delta managed to cancel a 767 flight full of prospective cruisers, departing from Seattle, on Friday night before the Saturday cruise departure from Ft. Lauderdale.  The response of the counter agent was bored and prefunctive - no working to help us make the connection by routing us to Los Angeles or Houston to connect on to Ft. Lauderdale.  He merely repeated, like a parrot, that there were no seats and no flights leaving Seattle that evening. Then he printed out new tickets for our itinerary to Ft. Lauderdale for Sunday night getting into the Ft. Lauderdale area on Monday - two days after the cruise ship had left port.  Obviously if  we were going to join our cruise, Ft. Lauderdale was not where we were going to need to go. Frustration was bountiful and tempers turned nasty. 

The Bad:  While we did manage an alternative airline for the trip to Grand Cayman to pick up our cruise, we had paid for 3 bags ($78) to be on the non-existent, aborted flight on Delta.  That still has to be rectified and credited back to the charge card, And we had to return on Delta from Ft. Lauderdale when the ship came back into dock at the end of the cruise.  Ft. Lauderdale is an older airport with limited facilities compared to most airports today.  While all airlines recommend you arrive at your departure airport at least 2 hours prior to departure, at this airport arriving earlier than 2 hours means a long stand in line outside, regardless of the weather, to be checked in by a skycap.  If you want to check in at one of the kiosks inside, you have to be under 2 hours prior to your flight.,  And after standing in line and having your bags weighed and proving you paid for them on-line, the skycap reminds you that gratuities are accepted as he stands there with his hand out.  Your choice is to have your bags sent to your destination by paying the "gratuity" or by not paying the bribe, risk having the bags sent to Hell (btw, Hell is a zipcode located on Grand Cayman- which thanks to Delta we missed sending our postcards from).

 So after all that, you may ask, what is the good?

The Good:  The good is in-flight internet.  GoGoInFlight is encouraging people's participation in Wi-Fi on board by playing a little game where everyone wins, be it a fully free in-flight internet connection (which is what the Seattle Travel Industry Examiner won) or a deep discount on the fee.  So this is being written from 30,000 feet + as we speed across the continent from Atlanta.  Now one can write about their experiences even as they fly across the night sky,  No more writing and saving the words for publishing an article later.  Now one can be writing real time, even if it is to complain about the lack of customer service (the oxymoron of air travel) as one travels. One can peruse the internet and download pictures, upload articles, and generally do anything you can do from your home computer.  The netbook is the perfect travel companion for this kind of effort with its compact footprint, while light and easy to transit TSA lines.  Life is always good when we remain connected. 

GoGoInFlight is helping us stay connected to family and friends in Seattle, letting them know the status of our flight home so that we could be picked up at the SEA-TAC airport in a timely fashion.  If there is anything either a resident of Seattle or a visitor coming to Seattle needs to know before their arrival, they can now connect to the Internet and do their research even as they travel towards their destination.

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