Board By Rows, Please
by Judd WileyMay 19th, 2008, 10:50 pm
Missing your connecting flight is its own special category of commuter outrage. Unlike traffic and subway delays, it can lead to days of misery and wretchedness.
Here’s the classic nightmare scenario. You arrive at your gate one minute late, and they’ve already finished boarded and shoved off. There isn’t another flight until the next day because you’re heading to a less-traveled destination. You have to stay in some nasty, pathetic, rat-infested airport hotel with hordes of pasty-faced salesmen and middle managers.
We’ve all been there, and felt the frustration, hopelessness, and despair.
What makes missing your connection even worse is the fact that, more often than not, it’s the fault of some sluggish, stupid individual whose complete lack of competence at his chosen career gobbled up the precious minutes you needed to make your connecting flight and upset the delicate equilibrium that would’ve brought you home on time.
I was once stranded in New York for 18 hours. I had arrived on an international flight, and because of the stupid 9/11 rules had to go through customs, pick up my bags, and then re-check everything before getting on my connecting flight. Everything went well, except for the fact that the dim-witted bag throwers took 45 minutes to move the luggage from the first plane to the second plane. Either that or the TSA thieves were grabbing fistfuls of cigars and loose cash. Either way, I arrived at the gate of my connecting flight 20 minutes late and couldn’t get a seat on another flight until 18 hours later.
Still, there are ways to mitigate these risks.
Some are not that complicated. Here’s an example - boarding by rows, versus boarding the whole plane at once. Any idiot knows that if you board all rows at once, the odds are high that some old lady in Row 3 will spend five minutes standing in the aisle arranging her luggage in the overhead rack, while the other 99 passengers wait behind her.
If you board Rows 20-25 first, 25-20 second, and so on, you’ve dramatically decreased your chances of creating a traffic jam. Simple, logical, efficient. So why the hell don’t they do this more often?
Today, I flew JetBlue from Syracuse to JFK to Dulles. In Syracuse, we boarded by rows, which took 10 minutes. At JFK, we boarded the whole plane at once, which took 35 minutes. Why did it have to be like this? Why did I have to give up 25 minutes of my life – it was the same size plane and we left 25 minutes late – because some knuckle dragger didn’t get the no-brainer memo explaining how to board by rows.
Luckily, Dulles was my final destination. The man sitting next to me was not so fortunate. His connecting flight to North Carolina was scheduled to leave 10 minutes after we touched down in Dulles. I’ve never seen a more furious, nerve-wracked, helpless individual in my entire life. He looked like he was about to tear the face off the stewardess when she asked him if he’d prefer chips or cookies.
I don’t blame him. As I said earlier, missing a connecting flight is its own special category of commuter outrage.
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Posted in Airlines, Airports, Uncategorized Rage |
So we meet again! Hiss Kaag back on the block to chat up this special level of stupidity.
Airlines are an MF boondoggle (check the lexicon if you are unfamiliar).
The net net is that On Time metrics are not calculated through multiple connection flights.
As long as you leave on time, the airline considers their OTD metric (On Time Departure) satisfied and stops tracking your flight for the sake of measuring their performance.
MORONS.
All the more reason I need more money to buy a plane and sail over the animals that must pack themselves into a 40 year old MD-80 with poo stained seats and 400 pound flight attendants who look like they just left their first Alcohol Anonymous meeting.
But I have pity on flight attendants. They’re the ones who failed out of beauty college!! Can you imagine??? Just remember that the next time you’re asked to put your head rest down for landing; This idiot can not operate a pair of scissors so now they have become a flight attendant.
G-d Bless.
SEE YOU AT IHOP.
Mr Kaag
Mr. Kaag,
Since you’re a regular commentator on the site, I’ve read all your posts.
I sense not only that you harbor a seething hatred for stupidity, as do we, but also that you probably do not work at IHOP.
I think you should run the airlines. You should start by deploying the oxygen for no reason at high altitude and laughing maniacally over the intercom.
Then you should buzz the control tower to wake up the sleeping air traffic controllers who are nearly causing accidents.
You should finish up the day by landing your plane and rolling directly to the parking lot to deposite your passengers by opening all the doors and deploying the plastic inflatable emergency ramps.
No doubt Lewis. No friggin doubt!
My airline would refuse to offer belt extenders to the man-animals who are so fat, that standard seat belts can not wrap around their fat carcasses.
Belt extenders are the last bastion of a country where we now accommodate lard infested humans too much!
Keep force feeding KFC boneless wings into your pie hole looser, right to the point where your BMI (Body Mass Index) indicates you are clinically obese! You can do it!
Hey, if you’re fat enough, you can become a flight attendant or better yet, a TSA screener. Read my post on the subject.
G-d Bless.
SEE YOU AT IHOP.
Mr. kaag