Monday, November 12, 2007

Note to American Airlines: When you change the boarding gate for a flight, it’s a good idea to let your passengers know.

I arrived at O’Hare from SFO and was pleased to find out that the gate for my connecting flight was very close. The gate was announced by the purser. I checked it again with the gate agent. And it was on the departure video screen. So I planted myself at the departure gate, powered up my laptop, and started answering email.

A plane arrived, but boarding didn’t start. The boarding time came and went. I finally went to the desk...and found another flight listed there. I rushed to the video monitor to find my flight had moved to another terminal...and it was already boarding. I ran to the gate and asked if an announcement had been made at the original gate. The gate agent shrugged. The person behind me, panting, said she had been at the other gate, too, and no announcement had been made. Again, the gate agent shrugged.

If other companies treated their customers the way the airlines do, they’d be out of business.

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Sunday, August 12, 2007

Boston’s Logan airport needs a better security system.

I was in line today (after having to leave Terminal C and go through security again to make my connection at Terminal B) when a uniformed employee (not TSA) let two people into the line in front of me. I gave her a “What the hell?” look and she said, “They’re in first class.”

I pulled out my boarding pass and showed her that I, too, was in first class.

“Well, you’re in line, aren’t you?” she said. Yeah, but these two passengers were now in line in front of me. And I’d been waiting in line for 15 minutes at that point. And there was no sign or any other indication that first class passengers could get a closer spot.

This is fair? Reconsider your system, Logan.

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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

I must be tired; it’s the only reason I’m so incredibly angry over what happened at the security checkpoint yesterday as I went to board my flight from Calgary to San Francisco.

A little background. I have bad teeth. (Hang in there with me; this is relevant.) I brush and floss like a madman to avoid another root canal, and have four cleanings per year instead of the usual two. I also rinse with a pre-brushing dental rinse (Plax, usually), all of which is designed to keep my teeth reasonably healthy. Now, Plax does not make a bottle that is 3 ounces or under; at least, I haven’t been able to find one. So, in order to be able to rinse before brushing when I travel, I bought a 3-ounce container from The Container Store and pour some Plax into that. That little plastic bottle goes into my Ziploc baggie. I have shown it at least 100 times, including my entries into and out of Canada. This includes my entry into Canada through SFO on Monday, my transfer from Calgary to Regina, and my trip back to Calgary from Regina.

Yet in Calgary, the Canada Air Transport Security Authority officer tossed my bottle of Plax. Why? It was not labeled by the manufacturer. Thumbs down, in this case, to CATSA.

Excuse me? Here is the exact language from the CATSA website:

Passengers will be permitted to bring liquids, gels and aerosols through security screening at Canadian airports provided that the items are packaged in containers with a capacity of 100 ml / 100 grams (3.4 oz) or less, and that the containers fit comfortably in one clear, closed and resealable plastic bag with a capacity of no more than 1 litre (1 quart). The approximate dimensions of a one litre/quart bag are 15.24 cm by 22.86 cm (6 in. by 9 in.) or 20 cm by 17.5 cm (8 in. by 7 in.). One bag per passenger will be permitted.

See anything there about the product needing to be in original manufacturer packaging? No, I didn’t either.

But, hey, I was entering the U.S., so I figured it may be a new regulation from the TSA. But no, here’s the language from the TSA website:

With certain exceptions for prescription and over-the-counter medicines, baby formula and breast milk, and other essential liquids, gels, and aerosols, the following rules apply to all liquids, gels, and aerosols you want to carry through a security checkpoint.

All liquids, gels and aerosols must be in three-ounce or smaller containers. Larger containers that are half-full or toothpaste tubes rolled up are not allowed. Each container must be three ounces or smaller.
All liquids, gels and aerosols must be placed in a single, quart-size, zip-top, clear plastic bag. Gallon size bags or bags that are not zip-top such as fold-over sandwich bags are not allowed. Each traveler can use only one, quart-size, zip-top, clear plastic bag.
Each traveler must remove their quart-sized plastic, zip-top bag from their carry-on and place it in a bin or on the conveyor belt for X-ray screening. X-raying separately will allow TSA security officers to more easily examine the declared items.

Again, not a word about original packaging or labeling being required.

When I tried to ask about this, the CATSA officer dismissed me, just tossed my bottle in the trash, turned around, and walked away. And no, they weren’t busy at security.

I have no objection to security requirements. I have expressed sympathy to TSA officers after hearing them take verbal abuse from passengers for doing their job. Any search of my luggage any security officer wants to conduct is aces with me—after all, if they’re checking me, they’ll check the bad guys, too.

But between the exercise of an arbitrary rule that does not exist (at least, is not communicated) and the rudeness displayed by the CATSA officer, I am still exercised about this a full day later. Protecting my safety is great. Making up rules and behaving like a martinet is not.

Of course, I’ll retract every word if someone can show me a rule or regulation that I missed.

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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

I’ve been booking my flights on Orbitz for a few years, but after this morning, I’m going to become a loyal Expedia user—at least until Expedia screws up the way Orbitz did. Here’s the story.

Yesterday, I had to change my destination of my flight today. It was less than 24 hours before my flight—I called with the change at about 2 p.m. for a flight the next morning at 8:25 a.m. It took a while, but my credit card was charged nearly $300 for the change and I received a confirmation from the Orbitz agent who “helped” me.

I got to the airport early (thank God) only to find out I couldn’t check in at the automated terminal. When I talked to a ticket agent, she spent a confused five minutes with her computer, then told me I had to call Orbitz; they owned the reservation. So I did. What ensued was nearly an hour of frustration punctuated by about eight promises that things owuld only take five-to-10 minutes. Near the end of the call—most of it on hold—I was told I was going to be connected to the American Airlines representative.

“I’m going to miss my flight,” I said.

“You won’t miss your flight,” he promised.

“There’s a line for boarding passes and a security line and we board in 10 minutes,” I said.

“We’ll get you out on the next flight.”

I was put on hold again, then the American rep came on the line.

“Are you the Orbitz rep’s supervisor?” she asked.

“No, I’m the passenger.”

“What? I was waiting to talk to the Orbitz guy’s supervisor.” She had no idea what to do with me. “I’m with a group that works just with travel agents,” she told me. At this point, my flight was boarding in 10 minutes and I had no boarding pass. I went back to the ticket desk and two very helpful American ticket agents worked through the issue and got me my boarding passes. They explained that the original change was entered incorrectly by the Orbitz agent I called yesterday.

This is inexcusable. This should have been done right the first time, or at least caught before I showed up at the airport. If I hadn’t arrived early, I would have been hosed.

American rocks—at least, the two ticket agents who took the time to help me without ever losing their smiles rock. Orbitz, on the other hand, needs some serious attention paid to quality control.

Posted by Shel in • Airports • Online travel services
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Thursday, December 07, 2006

The fact that I have an affinity card with Park ‘N Fly means that it’s in my own self-interest to park there. It doesn’t take much to get free days, and free off-airport parking is something I can always use. It doesn’t mean I like Park ‘N Fly, though. At least, not at San Francisco International Airport.

For a while, I thought it was just bad timing, but after several years, I’ve come to accept that Park ‘N Fly sends its shuttles around to pick up arriving passengers about 50% less frequently than its competitors. I can see two or three shuttles from Park SFO, Anza, PCA, and several other parking lots before one Park ‘N Fly shows up. Coming home from Montreal the other day, I called for pickup (it was after midnight) while I was still in the terminal. “Three to five minutes,” the attendant told me. I got out to the curb and waited 15 minutes and called back. “Thirty seconds,” I was told this time. Five minutes later, the driver showed up.

I sat down and said nothing, but the other guy who’d been waiting was seething. He expressed whaqt I was thinking: “I’ve seen your competitors’ shuttles go by three or four times. What took you so long?” The driver gave a song and dance about a passenger on his last run who had lost his ticket—which tells the drive the row and slot where the passenger parked—so they had to drive around looking for his car.

That may explain the delay on Tuesday night. It doesn’t explain the 75 or 80 other times I’ve waited at the blue-and-white striped curb for Park ‘N Fly to finally get around to making a run.

Maybe it’s not worth the free points. Next time, it’s probably going to be Park SFO for me.

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Wednesday, August 23, 2006

My flight from SFO to Minneapolis-St. Paul yesterday—connecting in Phoenix—included two delayed flights, one delayed at both the departure and arrival end.

I arrived at SFO at 6:30 a.m. for a 9 a.m. flight. It was my first flight since the terrorist arrests in the UK, and having heard tales of long security lines and multiple checkpoints, I decided not to take any chances. As a result, I cleared security in about 20 minutes. The only difference I could see was that TSA agents were yelling, “No gels or liquids” in addition to their usual patter. I couldn’t understand why I was able to buy bottled water at a vendor inside the terminal. Agents for boarding flights were announcing, “If you’ve purchased food or beverages in the terminal, you’ll need to finish them before boarding; they’re not allowed on the plane.” However, nobody checked. It would have been ridiculously easy to slip a bottle of water in a bag and carry it on.

Anyway, had a lot of time to kill before my flight on America West...or is it US Airways...or is it America West? All the signs and announcements proclaim “America West is now US Airways,” but Orbitz pulled up America West fares, I printed my boarding pass from the America West website, and the planes are still America West-branded. The gates all say US Airways, the fllight attendants wear US Airways uniforms, and the video safety announcement is from US Airways. The merger appears to be half-assed.

In any case, at about 8:40, with the plane at the gate, no agents had arrived to board the flight. I toddled on over to another gate and asked. “Oh,” the flight attendant said, “I heard on the radio that flight is delayed, so there are no agents at the gate.”

“Nobody has said anything to the passengers,” I noted.

“Well, that’s because the agents haven’t come to the gate,” she replied. I just stared at her until she said, “I guess we ought to change the time on the board and make an announcement.”

“I guess,” I said.

Fortunately (funny how that makes perfect sense), my flight from Phoenix to Minneapolis was also delayed half an hour. So when we arrived in Minnesota, our gate was occupied. By the time the gate cleared and we could taxi, though, we found we had to spend another 45 minutes sitting there because President Bush, who was in town for some political something-or-other, was ready to leave and Air Force One was getting geared up for departure.

This is my first business trip in a few months. I’d nearly forgotten how much fun it is.

Posted by Shel in • Airports • Planes
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Wednesday, February 15, 2006

I’m sorely tempted to stop making an effort to get to the airport early. Today’s experience at Edmonton International is the source of that temptation.

I had a 7:09 a.m. flight from Edmonton to Chicago O’Hare, connecting at O’Hare to Des Moines, Iowa. It’s about a 30-minute drive from my Edmonton Hotel to the airport, so I did some rough calculations and decided to get up at 3:40 a.m. to pick up a cab at 4:30 and be at the airport by 5 a.m., leaving me better than two hours to get my boarding pass, clear customs, and get through security. Plenty of time.

My time was perfect. The cab pulled up to the curb at the American Departures terminal at 5 a.m. on the nose. I exchanged my Canadian currency for American dollars and got into the United line. And there I stood. Chicago-bound passengers waited and waited without moving as three ticket agents brought Denver-bound passengers to the front of the line. The Denver flight was leaving at around 6:30 and these passengers—I counted about 30 of them in all—had all arrived late, as late as 40 minutes before flight time. It took nearly 40 minutes to clear the Denver passengers, who seemed to just keep trickling in. They were so late that, ultimately, the Denver flight was delayed. The plane for my Chicago flight couldn’t even leave the hangar until after the Denver flight had left; consequently (a highly appropriate word), the Chicago flight was also delayed. I barely made my connection.

I don’t wish a missed flight on anybody. And if a handful of people show up late and get moved to the front of the line, that’s fine, too. Cars don’t start, alarms don’t go off, there are legitimate excuses. That wasn’t the case this morning, when 30 people showed up 40 minutes before an international flight. So I ask you: What’s the motivation to be at the airport on time when you know you can sleep in, arrive late, and be accommodated at the expense of other passengers who did get there on time? If more late arrivers had to wait their turn and missed flights, perhaps more people would get to the airport on time.

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Saturday, February 04, 2006

I’m flying tomorrow morning to Philadelphia from SFO at 8:40 a.m. To be there by 7:30 a.m., I would need to be on a BART train by about 6:15 a.m. Unfortunately, on Sunday, BART’s earliest departure from my station is 8:07 a.m., which would get me to the airport 55 minutes after my plane took off. Note to BART: Even on Sunday, people have places to be earlier than 8 a.m.

So I’m trying to work out transportation. The issue is my son, who is back from the Army and living at home. He’s working and needs a car to get to and from his job; he hasn’t put enough money together yet to buy his own car. If I take my car to the airport for the week, he’s stuck. My wife has to be somewhere fairly early on Sunday; so does my daughter. That leaves Ben, who’ll be working late tonight and in less than tip-top shape to drive me from Concord to SFO.

A cab ride would cost about $120. There is an airport shuttle, the East Bay Connection, but I’ve sworn off them. The last time I took them, they picked me up and then informed me they had five more pickups. I checked my watch. “How long will that take?” “We’ll be on the road to the airport in an hour.” I would have missed my flight, despite the fact that it was the East Bay Connection that asked my departure time and then scheduled the pick-up. When I called to complain, the answer I got was a smarmy, “Well, sir, we are a shared ride service. Fuck East Bay Connection.

The bottom line, though, is that BART goes right to the airport. Now if only they set a Sunday schedule that accommodates its customers, I’d be in good shape.

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Tuesday, July 05, 2005

The security line at Dulles was moving pretty well—slow but steady—until one guy about to pass through the metal detector put up a stiff argument against taking off his shoes. As he stood there, arms flailing, spittle flying from his lips, the rest of us came to a dead halt and waited.

I remarked to Michele that I’d seen this before, more than once. At Oakland about a year ago, I saw a fellow with a European accent verbally assault one of the TSA officers for asking his wife to take her shoes off. When we finally got moving again, I told the same officer that some of us actually appreciated what they did, then asked how often they take that kind of abuse. I was shocked at the answer: Several times an hour. “People throw stuff at me,” he said. “They spit at me.”

Spit at him? Seriously?

First off, you have to wonder what color the sky is on the planet from which these people hail. You can argue the value of the security measures taken at US airports, but the inconvenience is minor and if it deters even one maniac from trying to get a weapon on board, I’m all for it. But I have to wonder if people remember what security was like before TSA took over? Surly, bored, self-important private security workers who would just as soon zap you with a cattle prod as pat you down. I have yet to meet a TSA officer who wasn’t courteous, polite, and professional. The change has been wonderful.

I do have some questions for TSA, though, and these are aimed higher up than the hard-working folks who staff the airport security checkpoints. Here we go…

1. My suitcase and briefcase, the ones I haul all over North America, always contain exactly the same things. So how come one airport sends them through the X-ray with no further check, another airport wipes it with the pad and tests it on the machine, and another opens one bag or the other up to rummage through it? Don’t your people get trained to look for the same things?
2. Why do my suspenders set off the alarm in some airports and not others? Aren’t the machines calibrated the same way?
3. Speaking of suspenders, some officers have me shrug one arm out of the suspenders as a way to minimize the odds of setting off the metal detector. At another airport, I’m told I can’t do that.
4. In one airport, I’m told to put my shoes in one bin and my laptop in another. When I duplicate that requirement in another airport, the TSA officer consolidates my shoes and laptop into one bin.
5. At some airports, you’re required to keep your boarding pass with you when you pass through the metal detector. At others, the TSA folks don’t care.

I understand that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, but I can be better prepared when approaching security if I know what to expect—and with the routine different at every airport, I never know what to expect.

Aside from this minor gripe, though, I have to stand up for the TSA. They’re doing a tough job with good humor and professionalism. Keep that in mind the next time you feel like spitting on one of them.

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Monday, June 13, 2005

I landed at Denver International on a flight from Oakland yesterday and was delighted to find my connecting flight at the very next gate. If you’ve been to the United terminal at Denver, you know you can walk for what seems like miles to get to a connecting gate. Facing no long walk, I thought it would be nice to sit for a bit. There were, however, no open chairs.

There were plenty of chairs not occupied by human beings. But nearly each traveller had put his or her suitcase or briefcase in the seat beside them. And as I stood there obviously looking for a place to sit, not one person offered to move their suitcase to the floor so I might get off my feet.

Does a suitcase need a chair? Is it more comfortable for a briefcase to be seated than it is to rest on the floor? Or are so many travellers so self-centered that they just don’t give a flying rat’s ass about their fellow travellers? I beg you: Keep your bags off the chairs at the gate so other passengers have a place to sit.

Posted by Shel in • Airports
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