Airlines suck.
Discuss.
Update: so here’s what happened. We all got on the plane. We taxied to the runway. The captain announced that there was a problem and we were going back to the gate to get it looked at. We taxied back to the gate. The maintenance crew came to look at the problem. The maintenance crew told the captain, who told us, that the problem was that the light that indicated that there could be a problem with the plane was not functioning properly. That’s right — they couldn’t tell if there was a problem with the plane because the “hey there’s a problem with the plane” light wasn’t working. More of an epistemological problem than a metaphysical one, but the result was the same: we all got off the plane and waited for them to find another plane. They found another plane. We all got on the other plane and waited for them to transfer all the baggage from the first plane.
By this time it was 2 AM and we were two hours late. We arrived in Dallas ten minutes too late for me to catch my connection. Luckily there was another flight two hours later, and I did finally arrive home on the same day that I was originally scheduled. It could have been much worse.
Feel free to relate similar stories in the comments.
Perhaps? http://www.moller.com/
Comment by Mark — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 5:12 am
…or http://xo.typepad.com/blog/2007/10/man-builds-his-.html
Comment by Peter Krantz — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 5:39 am
Perhaps? http://www.acecraftusa.com/
Comment by Mark — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 5:55 am
Suck in LAX
Airlines Stuck.
Comment by Hub — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 8:11 am
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!
Comment by Rod Begbie — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 8:58 am
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?
Comment by Owen Williams — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 9:57 am
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.
Comment by Steven Fettig — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 12:35 pm
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.”
Comment by Tyler — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 12:43 pm
EVDO FTW, BTW.
Comment by Mark Jaquith — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 12:50 pm
@Hub: that is the Larry Craig version.
Comment by Logan Williams — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 1:03 pm
I’ve had worse.
Comment by Geoffrey Sneddon — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 1:35 pm
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/
Comment by Turgid Bolk — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 2:02 pm
Red Eyes
Comment by Sam Ruby — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 5:37 pm
Er, this?
Comment by svat — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 6:12 pm
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.
Comment by Brad — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 6:28 pm
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.”
Comment by Charles Miller — Friday, October 26, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
Phil Plait:
And again Phil Plait:
Comment by Aristotle Pagaltzis — Saturday, October 27, 2007 @ 4:02 am
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. :(
Comment by Matt Lee — Saturday, October 27, 2007 @ 10:43 am
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.
Comment by Don Ulrich — Sunday, October 28, 2007 @ 7:59 am
Try the same wait with both your kids (ages two and four) along…
Comment by Anonymous — Sunday, October 28, 2007 @ 7:26 pm
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.
Comment by prairiedock — Monday, October 29, 2007 @ 9:11 am
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.
Comment by Joel — Monday, October 29, 2007 @ 1:22 pm
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.
Comment by Phil Hagelberg — Wednesday, October 31, 2007 @ 7:03 pm
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.
Comment by mackdieselx27 — Wednesday, October 31, 2007 @ 11:31 pm