As I sit here in my seventh hour on standby at the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta-Hartsfield International, there could not be a better time to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of modern air travel. Though many new amenities have been added to both the airplanes and airports, we have seen many of the older, comforting conveniences of the travel experience become compromised by our fight against terrorism and a struggling economy. That being said, the option to travel by air is also one that my generation, and especially the younger folks, take for granted for its overall expediency and savings on gas, room, and rest stop hotels. The travel experience that has arisen as a result of our modern day compromises can work well as long as there is no bad weather or lack of work ethic exhibited by airline and airport employees. Therein lies the problem.
In my experiences, I have encountered virtually every airport scenario; from trips that went off without a hitch, to instances of pure human error and complications with simple itineraries. But let’s take a look at today’s situation, one that is out of the control of the airline I am traveling, but still a scenario that occurs more and more due to a significant reduction in the number of flights airlines are taking in today’s economy. Due to bad weather in Atlanta, a ground stop was put on planes headed to AHI, therefore my flight sat idle for an hour on the tarmac in my departure city of San Antonio, Texas. With an hour between flights, my day was doomed even before takeoff, and when I arrived in Atlanta the plane to my destination, San Juan, Puerto Rico, was already pushing away from the gate. Upon seeking help from the airline, I was placed on standby for a flight eight hours later with no guarantee of reaching the destination I paid good money to reach.
This situation occurs every day across the world, as the reduction in flights has led to more and more standby instead of guaranteed seats. Despite having booked months in advance, a one hour ground stop was capable of ruining mine and the at least 60 or more other people who missed their connections and were not given a real ticket to continue their paired journey. In addition, should I not be given a ticket for the flight to the island, I will be forced to stay overnight and leave in the morning, costing not only a day of my trip, but also causing me to secure reservations on a weekend in Atlanta. I have nothing but love for the city, but for many travelers the lack of backup flights to ensure the arrival of paid customers is cause for much disdain for the airlines and for the respectability of air travel in general.
Add to this the fact that we have no choice but to go through the maze of security checks and long lines at customs because of the awful actions of others, and the traveler who goes through my experience has reason to complain about the nature of the current system. To their credit, the employees of the airline I am traveling on have done everything in their power to rectify the situation, but the bottom lines is that air travel is not the experience that it could and can be. In no other industry can you have a consumer not receive the service they paid a pretty penny for and get by with an “I’m sorry” and a rebooking to an inconvenient time or rerouted through an obscure destination as I was today. To be frank, there doesn’t seem to be a good solution to the problem at the present time. The fact that we depend so heavily on oil to power up our planes has put a stranglehold on tight budgets that could better go towards improving the experience, not cutting down on it at the expense of the consumer.
On the plane is no different. Airlines have moved towards an a la carte system for amenities, leaving much to be desired when compared to the steep cost of flying today. Instead of compensating for a lack of ready planes and pilots to ensure the soundness of itineraries, the airlines, for the most part, have decided that they can easily nickel and dime passengers at 35,000 feet. These growing practices, and the vastly unpopular checked baggage fees, have left the air travel consumer in the precarious position of having no choice but to deal with a shareholder first system of travel.
Though there is no doubt in my mind that the airlines will recover under a greener fueling system and an improving economic outlook, in the meantime the airline consumer is getting an increasingly raw deal. Sure, there have been times where my trips have been run to perfection, but the trend has been towards frustration and delay. More than half the time I have flown in the past two years, I have either faced a long weather related delay, or some other form of inconvenience for which the airlines have no good solution. It’s always something different, and it usually stems from human error in scheduling and delivering upon that itinerary. In our capitalist society, we expect those at the top to represent the best and brightest of their industry. In this department, airline travel has suffered greatly in a post 9/11 world. It should be interesting to see where the quality of air travel goes from here, but there is no doubt that it must improve to an acceptable level of dependability and bang for buck..
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