Airline Travel (sucks)

The Captain had to hit the road this week and I thought I would share with you the wonders of modern airline travel.

Initially I was scheduled to fly out of TN on Monday at 0600 go through Cincinnati and end up in Washington DC at 0956 for two days. My phone rang at 0302 on Monday with an automated recording saying that my flight had been moved back one hour, and that I would arrive in DC about 40 minutes later. Great, I hopped back into bed for an extra bit of sleep. 0502 my phone rings again with a recording saying that my flight will be leaving at 0600, OH CRAP!, which is great since I live 30 mins from the airport. I scramble through the shower, get dressed and get to the airport at 0545. The ticket lady was pleasant and called the gate and I made my flight. Wow, I thought, that was ridiculous. I understand the first call, but you can't do that "never mind" or "psyche" crap after you make a decision. ANYWAY!
I spend my two days on-site in DC and prepare to fly to my second stop in Michigan. I am scheduled to leave at 0645 am Wednesday morning from DC. Guess what? My phone rings at 0400, I cannot fly out until 1100 arriving in Michigan at 1645. I called the airline and told them this was not acceptable as I was traveling on business and had appointments to keep. After about 20 minutes they got me on a 0730 on a different airline, arriving in Michigan about 1 hr later than planned. Fortunately I was packed and ready and headed to the airport taking the first metro I could to get there. I arrived at Washington National at about 0645 and went to the main concourse, unable to find the airline I needed to check in. I asked a porter and he said "That's in terminal A." with his best "you are a dumbass" sneer. What the hell is Terminal A? I went outside got on a bus and spent 8 minutes getting to Terminal A. I ran in and tried to check in with the automated thing. The auto check-in said I was within 25 minutes of departure time so please talk to the agent. I asked Lulu, not making that up, for some help. She smiled and began typing on her weird keyboard. TEN MINUTES LATER she hands me a boarding pass for a 0935 flight to Detroit (not my final destination) and said something I did not understand. Lulu's english was very poor. I told her I still had 15 minutes and needed to get on the 0730 flight for which I was booked. She smiled and nodded saying the boarding pass was just to get through security. I have never heard of that but thought great and sprinted down to security. I put my laptop in one separate bin, my shoes in another, my jacket in another, and my toiletries (in their clear Ziploc) in yet another. Stood in the puffer, got wanded, walked through the metal detector and started getting dressed and packed again. I got to the gate at 0720, there was no one in line at security, and saw the plane was already pushed back. I asked the lady at the gate why the plane pushed back early and she said it wasn't early. I asked her what time it was and she said 0720, I said what time is this plane supposed to leave and she said 0730. I informed her that would be known as early. She shrugged and walked away. I called the 1-800 number for the airline and got some dude who informed me that he was an idiot and mostly useless. I got another person who found out that not only had Lulu screwed me over by not knowing our language but she had booked me only to Detroit, and not my final destination. He got everything fixed up for me but never apologized for my inconvenience. I spent the next two hours, no Internet access, calling my boss, client, wife, hotel, and rental car company to update and adjust arrival times.

Beyond the airlines screwing me, the whole security screening process is crap. You can only have tiny little containers of toothpaste, shampoo, and other stuff and they have to be in a Ziploc. We do all of this because we don't want to single out Middle Eastern people as the ONLY PEOPLE who ever hijack airplanes. Stupid!

I am very much looking forward to Friday evenings flight home. I am debating turning my phone off and just showing up at the airport as scheduled. I also purposely did not yet name the Airlines as I plan to make them buy me a nice HDTV to make up for their 100% failure rate this week. If they won't give me the hookup I'll post the names Monday.