I find that things go wrong with my travel quite often. Airlines fail to ticket reservations. I get put on standby for an earlier flight with the wrong priority. Requests I make don’t get entered. Seat assignments disappear. Names get misspelled on tickets even when I have reservations agents spell them back to me.
These things go wrong and I’m supposed to know what I’m doing. So sometimes I wonder how the average traveler manages to get from one place to another at all. And maybe the answer is, they don’t?
my boyfriend and i planned a trip for the end of the summer months ago. last night we were still trying to decide how we’d get to the airport, when my mom told me that she could take us before work. i told my boyfriend who lives 30 mins from my house to be at my house no later than 6am for my mother to drive us to the airport at 6:15. he promised that he would be there around 5:45.
this morning, he was nowhere to be seen or heard from until around 6:20. he told me that his phone “fell” and he didn’t hear it. by then, my mom had to leave and take just me or she’d be late to work. i told him that he should drive to the airport or get an uber. his mom decides that she will drive him an hour to the airport, since he was too late for my mom to take us.
he gets to the airport a little after me and i check in our bags. we get to the bag drop, and he realizes he does not have his ID. his wallet is at his house which is about an hour from the airport. i tell him that i’m going to continue to TSA and go to the gate. his mom is going back to get his wallet, which will obviously take a while.
i tell him that i’m getting on the flight regardless, and that if he misses it then it’s a result of his own mishaps. he then begins to ask me what to do if he misses it. i tell him that he’s an adult, and should figure out a way to make it to our destination by contacting customer service.
You get to the airport late, and forget your wallet – you’re going to miss your flight and just don’t know what to do.
This is a 24 year old. So I started thinking back to being 21 and taking my first trip to visit family back at home after moving to D.C. for a job after college.
- I genuinely didn’t know how to get to the airport
- I was poor – my first job paid $21,000
- So I had to figure out the bus to the metro (and changing trains)
I mean, I figured it out. I left plenty of time to figure it out, and still wound up cutting it close because the bus wasn’t running on time and there was a delay on the metro.
Thinking back further, in high school and college, I remember needing reassurance. More than once I walked up to what I knew was my gate, boarding pass in hand, and asking a gate agent if everything was in order? Somehow I just assumed things would go wrong in ways that I couldn’t anticipate or comprehend.
Now it’s second nature, of course. It’s muscle memory. I know where things are not just at my home airport, but at a majority of at least medium hub airports in the country. Things go wrong, but I know what things might go wrong and how to check for those things (and I know what I’m facing when they do go wrong).
Travel is a foreign language to most people. It’s overly complicated. There are codes and rules and while they make sense to those who are immersed in them, they’re completely foreign to the median person who flies less than once per year. I like the way that United demystifies flight delays, but surely we can do better.
Part of the problem is a legacy tech stack, and how processes and procedures have been built on top of each other for so long. But part of it is that systems are designed by people who already understand them, rather than starting from the customer.
And part of the problem is that there are things simply outside the control of airlines. They don’t control the airports, they have to get signoff on configurations for the planes, and from the time the plane pushes back from the gate to the time it arrives at a destination it’s following orders from someone else (the FAA ATO – acronyms, natch).
You still do have to show up on time, and bring your ID, the government insists on that. Or do they? You are actually permitted to fly without any ID at all – you just have to answer challenge questions to verify your identity – but the average flyer doesn’t know that. This one might have made their original flight if they did.
The good news is that there are plenty of people along the way who can help. When something goes wrong,
- Stay calm. Be sympathetic. That will endear you more to people who can help.
- Ask anyone you can for help. If one person won’t, ask the next person.
- As complicated as systems are, there are often workarounds – if the person you’re dealing with is so inclined.
By staying positive and personable you’re going to have much greater luck with someone helping you out – and you won’t be baiting anyone into giving you an even worse day.
Boyfriend sounds like a real lose. Time to dump him.
I wonder if airlines or the FAA have ever done a real psychological study of the stresses in air travel. If they did and acted on solid recommendations from it we might have only half the craziness that now happens with passengers.
I used to think that people in leadership positions were smart. I used to think that the average person had reasonable intelligence. I no longer believe this. The average person is a moron. The richest man in the world paid $44B for a company out of sheer hubris and proceeded to trash it completely by losing his source of revenue, then took it a step farther by suing his customers, making it probable that it will never survive. Nearly 50% of Americans are prepared to vote for a twice impeached felon, terrible businessman, pathological liar, who attempted a coup to stay in power and has vowed to wage revenge and end democracy as we know it. More than 50% of Americans believe in sky fairies. The Speaker of the US House has proclaimed his gets his world view from a book of fiction written 2 thousand years ago by ignorant goat herders.
I own my own company. I learned long ago that I have to assume my customer is an idiot and have designed my products with that in mind. They are going to hook up wires backwards. They won’t follow instructions. I used to work in Corporate American, and would be correct in assuming that most CEO’s are complete morons, just fell into the position thru luck and having the gift of gab.
US airlines do some really stupid things. AA is probably the worst offender, I simply cannot understand why their operations teams cannot or will not make things better for everyone. Example, they still have 35 minute connections thru CLT, one of the worst managed hubs in the country. They are unable to predict gate slots in advance (don’t expect them to) but a 35 minute connection from the end of B to the end of E? What idiot thinks this is OK? Most AA travelers today are not the sharpest tools in the shed, they believe that AA must know what they are doing, and they don’t. Have AA ops people ever sat on ones of their own planes coming into CLT to hear the exasperated travelers worried about their connection? Or the stupid announcements from the FA that there are many people with tight connections, please stay seated to allow the poor unfortunate souls that are being impacted by AA Ops poor planning?
And don’t get me started about how dismal our country’s FAA system is. With modernization of the control system, the NYC area could handle 5X times the travel out of combined EWR/LGA/JFK without grinding to a halt in inclement weather. The infrastructure today in from the 1960’s. We could easily end all this drama without compromising passenger safety, but we collectively won’t make the investment to do so.
End of rant 🙂
The post from the girlfriend is very telling. Not knowing how to capitalize, but otherwise writing well.
The boyfriend? Nothing good to say.
Unfortunate series of events that demonstrates these young people are definitely not ready for adulthood.
During my professional career, I visited top schools to recruit engineering grads. So did my wife, but for finance positions. We both worked in high tech.
Latest from about 10 years ago, we both encountered some great people about to graduate, and others who we wondered how they even made it to their senior year. And these were all top schools like NIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Purdue, etc.
I cannot imagine doing this kind of recruiting these days.
There are simply too many with degrees that should not have them. I blame K-12 for relaxing graduation standards, and worse, elimination of standardized testing. Everyone does NOT deserve a degree or a trophy.
There is plenty in life that is complicated and which most people cannot navigate well; examples including health care and any number of financial transactions including buying a house or car.
The problem for air travel is that it has been made available at low fares to the masses and so people expect it should be just like riding the subway – and yet people expect restaurant quality service.
Leaving your ID at home is dumb regardless of where you are going. There is no need to talk about a million flaws in air transportation when the fundamental basis of the article is that someone doesn’t have a routine to remember to take the most basic things they need every time they leave home.
Well, a well thought out and insightful article. Ignorance can be cured…stupidity can’t. Be here at 0545. Don’t forget your wallet. It’s an hour to the airport. The plane ain’t (sic) gonna wait for your sorry butt. And (take all of your preconceived notions out of this remark) they can drive a car and they can vote! What is this world coming to?
The more you travel and the more different kinds of circumstances you have during your air travels, the more you experience and learn about what can go wrong. Absent doing the flying I have done, there is no way I could have learned all that I have learned about air travel as a customer of the airlines.
If I were the young lady, I would run from her beau as fast as possible. But that’s another story. Airline travel today is the pits, and I doubt I will step on another plane in the foreseeable future. I’m closing in on 80 and Amtrak looks inviting…but that sucks to some extent, too. Guess I’ll just sit in the sunroom and watch the plants grow (summer) or the snow fall (winter).
What @Lunacy said X 100.
@ Lunacy . . . speaking of hubris, nice rant on your part. Do your customers know you consider them idiots? I’ll agree that when NYC sneezes, the East Coast catches a cold, but please backup your claim with facts on fixing the ATC, not FAA, in NYC..
The key to get help is indeed to be calm and friendly and understanding of the circumstances of the person who can help you or at least inform you what your options may be. For example, I once missed a “self-connection” across separate tickets and the walk-up fares to get the next available flight from Canada to the US was something like $800 per person in economy class. I didn’t want to eat that kind of expense and so went to the ticketing counter and approached the guy in a friendly manner and explained why it would be great if he could help us. He offered us some kind of family and friends discount, a bereavement fare or something but it brought the cost down to under $300 per person. Plenty of other such circumstances too, like when I showed up to check-in at DCA with United for a trip to Australia but didn’t have an ETA and the ETA didn’t come back fast enough. The check-in guy put in for an ETA and allowed me to fly toward California anyway when I told him that if the ETA doesn’t get approved by the time I arrive at the check-in counter in California then I’ll eat the cost and fly myself home without complaint. I got to make my trip to Australia just because I treated the UA guy the way I would like to be treated myself if I were in their shoes. Lots of such stories. But sometimes, you just have to eat the cost of what went wrong and take it as the cost of being a traveler when a contract with the airline or an insurance company doesn’t cover the circumstances.
I only got stranded a few times and only did United at ORD fail to provide accommodations and food after lying about weather being the cause for the missed connection. As for personal responsibility for having the correct identification on me, I learned that at 17 while traveling solo and interstate by bus before I had a driver’s license or a passport. On that trip I learned to always make sure that your checked luggage is on the transportation with you or it will arrive several days after you arrive.
To train a horse, one offers bribes ( food treats , and petting on the cheek or neck ) for successful behavior .
To train the customer service people , one offers bribes ( smiles , handshakes with a “Benjamin” , and a petting on the shoulder or back ) for successful behavior .
Always worked for me .
@Mike … you didn’t recruit from Cornell ?
@Drrichard … “psychology studies” of stresses in air travel” are nonsense ; I have never experienced any “stresses in air travel” . I learned the advantages of champagne early in life .
@Tim I agree with you that people’s expectations regarding air travel are often flawed. If you buy an economy ticket to fly transcon for $200 or a Frontier ticket for $39, the airline isn’t even breaking with you on the fuel. Tired of internet travel bloggers who snag an ultasaver reward ticket and then complain they aren’t being served real champagne or their order was taken last in the J cabin, even though they pre-ordered a meal.
Ol girl better run far and fast away from her loser BF. Mama is gonna have to hold his hand throughout every situation. Is this what the GF really wants as a partner?
It is amazing how much gets screwed up these days. Last week we had a late inbound flight that almost misconnected. A month ago we had a BP that wasn’t properly scanned which resulted in cancellation of the ongoing journey. None of these are the fault of the passenger and yet the airline’s f- up becomes our problem to solve.
I think you left off an important item which is cross-check and be proactive and as the Boy Scouts say “be prepared”. Garden your reservations monthly (then weekly as ETD approaches). Checkin ASAP to spot any problems. Check the arrival stats for your flights starting a few days in advance to spot recurring issues. Check flight status early and scout alternatives if you spot a problem. A short delay often turns into a long one or a cancel.
I used to get to the airport 1 hour before ETD but I don’t do that anymore. Add a margin of error for unexpected traffic or full parking lots or even 20 minute precheck lines. Even larger margin when you take public transit or rely on others. If you have an absolute can’t miss event take an early flight the day before (assuming work permits).
If your flight is late and you might misconnect start checking out alternative options while you are still on your inbound flight and pay for internet if you need to book a backup. Always let hotels know when you are arriving after 6pm and tell them not to walk you (easy to do now via apps that let you contact the front desk).
And case in point, set backup alarms (phone and clock) and if your boyfriend is a dunce then maybe you need to make a wake call.
None of these methods are fail safe but they will increase your odds of getting where you want to go and sleeping in the room you booked.
I agree with just about everything Lunacy says in his rant…I don’t think One Trippe has a clue. With that being said, I worry far more about the competency of the pilots operating the planes these days AND the air traffic controllers, not to mention the quality of the A&P’s.
Most people have no idea of how to be proactive with travel issues. Instead of getting on the airline’s app and often having multiple options to choose from they will stand in a 100 person deep customer service line with 2 people working. It never ceases to amaze me people that will book a 35 minute connection (often because it’s cheaper) at a large hub airport and become totally dumbfounded when they’re not going to make that connection.
Certainly the right thing to do to be courteous.
Problem is the airlines, collectively, are pathetic. And, they’re so consistently pathetic that even “Jobe” lost patience years ago.
And, they never learn from past mistakes and compound their mistakes with more mistakes.
It’s also hard to remain patient when the employees have lost patience with their employers also.
Flew 4 flights on a major airline last week. 3 of 4 were majorly F’d up. The employees didn’t even try to explain nor provide updates. They were toasted also.
US should be embarrassed by its airline industry.
Ever notice that idiots cause most issues that bring out more idiots defending the idiot’s actions. Face it, he is an imbecile. The die is cast.