The Wonders of Air Travel

This week included a much higher than usual amount of time sitting in airports and on airplanes. Usually I don't notice a lot because I keep my nose in a book when I'm traveling. But this time, the sheer number of hours made me a bit too restless to spend them all escaping in some best-seller paperback.

Most of the observations come from my abortive trip home at the end of the week. Checking in on Thursday evening, I discovered there was an earlier departure I could easily catch. So I asked the agent if I could switch to the earlier flight. She said sure, there were plenty of seats left. But I'd have to pay a change fee of $25.

I asked her, can't I just stand by for an open seat? There's no cost to the airline for me to sit in an otherwise empty seat on the 4:05 flight versus the 5:50 flight, right? She said sorry, can't do it.

The airlines never did this in the past. Apparently while they struggled financially in recent years they began looking around for ways to gouge more dollars from customers while still keeping their fares in line with the competition. So some idiot in a boardroom at Delta said, "let's just charge a fee whenever a passenger makes any itinerary change".

See, business travelers do it all the time. Because things happen to business travelers. Customers make last minute changes. Things come up. Business travelers routinely change their plans. So like the government, the airlines decided to stick it to the business travelers. They can afford it, right?

Anyway, I figured it was likely the client would challenge the change fee and I didn't want to pay it out of my own pocket, so I said,

"Never mind. Just keep me on the same flight."

So I went to the gate and settled in for my 2 hour wait.

The first thing I encountered was a bit of an obstacle course to get to an open seat in the gate area. The facing rows of seats nearest the window by our gate were about 6 feet apart. On the end of the rows were some young black guys. They might have been athletes, because that's the way they were dressed. Their large duffels were piled across the open space between the seats, creating an effective barricade. All the open seats in their row, which was most of them, could only be accessed by those brave intrepid souls willing to climb their barricade.

I was the first. I noticed a couple of women who walked up as if to try walking through to one of the many waiting seats, but they pulled back, either intimidated by the large black men or unsure how to pull their rollaboard suitcases through to the empty seats. I went ahead, stepping over their duffels with a long stride so I could avoid stepping on one.

Another gentleman followed my lead and followed the trail I blazed through the duffel bag mountain. As we reached our seats, I looked over and noticed one of the guys grabbing a duffel and stacking it on top of the others to make the obstacle more intimidating.

Nobody spoke. Nobody else tried to walk through until after the group boarded their flight (that would be the 4:05 they wouldn't let me on without a bribe).

That brings me to the next observation. When they boarded the 4:05, they called first for families with small children, first class, and elite passengers. This also made for an interesting sociological/anthropological field study.

There was a young couple with a wiggly baby, who gathered up their carry-on's and stroller and baby to board the plane just as the announcement for "pre-boarding" was made. My expectation was that they would be brought to the front of the line, because they were the prototype for the purpose of the "pre-boarding" concept.

Actually, they ended up at the back of a rather long boarding line. I watched with fascination as the "elite" passengers jostled for position in the line, while outwardly pretending their position in line was irrelevant to them. I waited to see if anyone in the line would notice the young family struggling to hang onto their active pre-toddler while keeping their carry-on bags and stroller with them. Somebody, anybody, noticing them and offering to let them through toward the front of the boarding line. Or maybe the gate agent, busily working over their computer monitor preparing to board passengers, might look up and notice the young family and invite them to the front of the line.

None of that happened. The "elite" passengers acted as if they were elite people, deserving of special treatment and disdainful of the rabble who couldn't board early like they could. I laughed to myself as I noticed the subtle dance, with passengers casually walking up near the front of the already-formed line to attemt to blend in while others blocked them with their bodies while trying to make it look like they just didn't notice.

I travel so much that I've seen the behavior of many of these folks in first class after they get on the plane. Sometimes they are complete jerks with the flight attendants, demanding to be served first, making silly requests, and even leaving their carry-on bag in the aisle for the flight attendant to stow somewhere.

Trying to think through these behaviors from a more scientific point of view, here are my conclusions. The black guys were making a statement in building their little barricade. Perhaps their attitudes about their minority status drives them to assert some power over others in places like airports, where they enjoy making people uncomfortable and inconvenienced.

The airlines create the "elite" monsters with their frequent flier programs, where they reward frequent fliers with early boarding and first class upgrades. This seems to create an attitude of entitlement, especially among the frequent fliers who are not otherwise wealthy. They perhaps long to be treated as important, and unwittingly become insufferable idiots as they vie to be the most elite of all the elite.

Adding insult to injury, here's what happened that Thursday night. My 5:50 flight was delayed to about 7:50, making it impossible to make my connection. I had to rebook for the first flight out Friday morning. When I went to collect my checked luggage, the agent returned from a rather long search to sheepishly inform me that my bag had been loaded on the 4:05 flight.

My bag didn't have to pay the $25 bribe, so it got home on Thursday night. I didn't get home until Friday night.

Gee thanks, Delta. Service like that, and you're in bankruptcy? I wonder why?