Air travel has changed in my lifetime from a pleasure to a chore. Some of it may be because I am getting older and the newness of the experience has worn off but most of it, I am sure is a result of the change in the experience. I had stopped flying for about ten years. I believe that the major changes in Air Travel can be traced back to 9-11 (hopefully the last time you will see this over-quoted reference will appear in my postings). It wasn’t only the changes in security that occurred, there had been security beforehand and I never felt unsafe. It was the shakeup in the whole industry that changed air travel. Ridership went down so the number of flights were reduced, then as ridership increased more flights were not added, just more seats were filled or more seats were added to existing planes. The number of carriers dropped so consumers were given fewer choices. For me, the final insult came with the removal of shoes. As petty as this might seem, I invite you to ask yourself is this 'where it will stop?'.
You are told to be there two hours in advance of your flight. I am still not sure why since that is just two more hours tacked onto an already long trip. When I arrive at the Airport, I go to the counter, the counterperson directs me to the auto-kiosk where instead of doing it myself another person does all the keying for me, so back to the same counterperson who redoes everything the first person did and off I go, I won't waste my time on the security procedures that we have all been through except to say that I believe the real purpose of the security process is to make the people who are getting on the plane FEEL safer not actually BE safer. So then I wait the many hours until they call the plane which is when everyone leaps to their feet to get in line which makes sense since the first one on the plane is the first one to arrive at their destination (right?). I am in coach because my company is paying and although I was willing to upgrade to business class, it was full. The plane ride is interminable, spent with someone elbow in my ribs.
I speculate that plane rides, especially long ones, are akin to being in jail. You must stay in one uncomfortable place for a very long period of time with very little to do and you can only get up to go to the bathroom. People bring you the food they want to bring you. The fight staff do try to make the intolerable tolerable. (Quick shout out to Saint Sharon on Delta for her excellent coffee service.) We land which is all we really ever wanted when we started. I spend some of my children's inheritance in the coffee shop. European Airport Security has a much more personalized way of making you wait. You stand in line until a security person comes and gets you one person at a time to ask you all the questions to which the answer is, was and always will be NO. Then you go through the life reducing scanner and get your own pat down, my guy was so thorough I was expecting a dinner invitation. Off we go again, blah blah blah, terrible this, awful that, nice flight staff and land again, now India. For the security conscious amongst you, you will laugh at this one, at the end of the jetway, there are people meeting people getting off the plane, now this is before baggage, before immigration and before customs.
I still have to get to the hotel!
You are told to be there two hours in advance of your flight. I am still not sure why since that is just two more hours tacked onto an already long trip. When I arrive at the Airport, I go to the counter, the counterperson directs me to the auto-kiosk where instead of doing it myself another person does all the keying for me, so back to the same counterperson who redoes everything the first person did and off I go, I won't waste my time on the security procedures that we have all been through except to say that I believe the real purpose of the security process is to make the people who are getting on the plane FEEL safer not actually BE safer. So then I wait the many hours until they call the plane which is when everyone leaps to their feet to get in line which makes sense since the first one on the plane is the first one to arrive at their destination (right?). I am in coach because my company is paying and although I was willing to upgrade to business class, it was full. The plane ride is interminable, spent with someone elbow in my ribs.
I speculate that plane rides, especially long ones, are akin to being in jail. You must stay in one uncomfortable place for a very long period of time with very little to do and you can only get up to go to the bathroom. People bring you the food they want to bring you. The fight staff do try to make the intolerable tolerable. (Quick shout out to Saint Sharon on Delta for her excellent coffee service.) We land which is all we really ever wanted when we started. I spend some of my children's inheritance in the coffee shop. European Airport Security has a much more personalized way of making you wait. You stand in line until a security person comes and gets you one person at a time to ask you all the questions to which the answer is, was and always will be NO. Then you go through the life reducing scanner and get your own pat down, my guy was so thorough I was expecting a dinner invitation. Off we go again, blah blah blah, terrible this, awful that, nice flight staff and land again, now India. For the security conscious amongst you, you will laugh at this one, at the end of the jetway, there are people meeting people getting off the plane, now this is before baggage, before immigration and before customs.
I still have to get to the hotel!
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