Perhaps? http://www.moller.com/
— Mark 
Perhaps? http://www.acecraftusa.com/
— Mark
Suck in LAX
Airlines Stuck.
— Hub
Take this time to sign up for Dopplr – http://dopplr.com/
Then next time you’re stuck at LAX, you can see if anyone you know is there too!
Why do they make you buy a 24-hour wifi access code? Who really expects to spend 24 hours in an airport? Why don’t they just admit they’re charging you 8$ for 2 hours of wifi, since that’s about all you’ll use?
Just hearing the word ‘airlines’ makes my blood boil. Horrible customer service, complete lack of communication, and a general attitude of ‘take-it-or-leave-it.’ Yes, they have many regulatory obstacles to overcome, the least of which is customers irritated by long TSA lines, but most of the problems are faults of their own in my opinion. In the five times I’ve flown since May, I’ve been delayed three times because of no crew. The other two times, up until 5 minutes before the flight was supposed to take off, we still hadn’t boarded the plane and they provided no explanation for what was going on. Then, when you *do* ask a question about arrival, etc. they look at you like you have no business knowing or asking for that information.
I think it’s the general lack of communication that’s most irritating. It’s impossible to ever know what’s really going on in an airport because absolutely no one will tell you the truth. “The pilot was wasted so we’re having to wait for a backup.”
— Tyler
EVDO FTW, BTW.
@Hub: that is the Larry Craig version.
Freakonomics recently discussed the problems and future of the airline industry: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/what-will-us-air-travel-look-like-in-ten-years-a-freakonomics-quorum/
— Turgid Bolk
— Sam Ruby
Er, this?
— svat
One time I was stuck at a gate in SeaTac for almost two hours. I missed my connection in Vegas by less than 10 minutes and had to stay in a hotel out in the middle of the desert from 1am – 5am before trying to get on the 6am flight. I got to Austin over 12 hours late.
It turns out that the reason the plane was delayed in Seattle was that the video system that they display the fun safety video on wasn’t working properly. So they took two hours to try to fix it and were unsuccessful. Seriously.
— Brad
I used to work in an airport. Every so often a plane is going to come back to the terminal, everyone’s going to get off and wait for another plane. Of course, it always seemed to happen to the same two airlines, and eventually both airlines had their landing privileges revoked for that airport. (One of those airlines was Garuda)
Sometimes it’s more worrying when they do take off. Like the time my mother was on a plane coming into land, and the head steward announced: “If you see the flight attendants wandering around the cabins looking out the window, don’t worry. They’re just making sure the flaps on the wings are working.”
Or the time I was sitting on the plane, about to go to Perth for my brother’s wedding. It was about an hour minutes after our scheduled departure time. I assumed this was for the normal reason — someone hadn’t boarded and they were having to fish out the guy’s luggage from the hold — when the pilot cheerily piped up on the intercom:
“Hi there. As you might have noticed, we’re a little late taking off today. What happened was that we were running through our pre-flight checks and discovered that one engine wouldn’t run properly in reverse. We waited half an hour for a replacement part, but when they brought it out it didn’t fit. Luckily, Perth airport has a pretty long runway, so we won’t need the reverse thrust to land, so we’ve just getting clearance to take off now.”
NASA started a long-term program to interview pilots about safety issues they personally had experienced (scary landings, near hits, that sort of thing), and evidently the results were so harrowing that NASA officials closed the investigation and wouldn’t release the results.
And again Phil Plait:
In my earlier post about a NASA official’s refusal to release important data on airline safety, there was some confusion in the comments over what’s going on.
NASA commissioned a study to investigate airline safety incidents. Evidently, the results made it clear that accidents and near-accidents are far more common — twice as common, in some cases — as other studies have shown. When pressed on this, a NASA official, Associate Administrator of Institutions and Management Thomas S. Luedtke, refused to release the data, saying it would undermine public confidence in the airline industry.
It really is this simple. He said this very clearly.
Similar crap recently in San Francisco, going to Boston. Plane actually took off, a little shaky in the air, we land due to an apparent ‘hole in the door’ – told to call American Airlines and get on another flight. Eventually get through, and put on a flight six hours later. :(
— Matt Lee
Is it because we pay more for an airline ticket that the same problems
that affect any mass transit system can’t happen with planes. We conjure
a notion that since we paid so much things should be better. The laws of nature should not apply. That is naive. Bus, truck, subway,or plane there is no difference.
Try the same wait with both your kids (ages two and four) along…
— Anonymous
If this is the worst thing that’s happened to you while flying, you’re leading a charmed life. The airlines, and the whole air transportation system, do indeed suck, but its not because they postponed a flight on account of a malfunctioning warning light. You *want* them to do that: better they should know about a mechanical problem in the air while there’s still some possibility of palliative action than not to know.
No, it’s the human-caused trials of the system that make it difficult to bear: the plane configurations designed for sardines, the seats which have no working reading light or audio jack which they’ve known about for at least 6 flights so far but nobody has done anything about, the airlines falling all over themselves to sell a ticket for $1 less while they cut out food and entertainment and blankets and pillows, their stringing you along 15 minutes at a time when its obvious to everyone that the flight will eventually be cancelled because the plane you’ll be flying on hasn’t left the *last* airport yet and isn’t going to, the cancellations for no better reason than that a flight is less than half full and blaming it on unspecified ‘mechanical problems’, the luggage which arrives at the airport in tatters, the 5 hours sitting on the tarmac without water or functioning bathrooms, the ridiculously formulaic and over-rigid search procedures at the security gates, the delays caused by everybody trying to take off at 8am or land at 5pm.
Etc.
You can thank Ronald Reagan for virtually all these problems. But the airlines’ opposition to a passenger bill of rights, which would solve some of these problems by removing the competitive pressures which cause the lemmings to behave as they do, is imbecilic.
— prairiedock
That’s right, folks. Next time you can’t get a pillow on your hour-long flight, stop hating George W. Bush just long enough to remember that other worst person in the history of the world, Ronald Wilson Reagan.
— Joel
I used to think LAX was the worst international airport I’d been to outside the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Unfortunately that’s no longer true; the TSA’s long arm has made me wish I were flying out of Aman, Jordan instead.
On an unrelated note, you should register diveintomarx.org as a redirect to this site. I find my finger slipping for some reason.
Nearly lost a connecting flight because a certain airline (think triangle) couldn’t find someone to wash the plane. I made it to the connection; my luggage didn’t. I ended up waiting for the next flight to arrive two hours later in order to get my luggage back.
— mackdieselx27