In the last year, I have expanded my driving distance. No, it is not what you think. It has nothing to do with the 1-wood in my golf bag and everything to do with the worst run industry in America -- the airlines. I have resolved to drive to any destinations that involve a flight connection and are inside a radius of a 16-hour car ride from my Connecticut home. After my return flight from Atlanta today, I am thinking of moving that to 18 hours.
What a comedy of errors. There was a little rain in Atlanta, but no wind and the cloud cover was high enough not to be too big a problem. Our plane for the trip to Hartford, CT, was a little late in arriving from New York. Okay, things happen. But it took a half hour to clean the plane once all passengers had disembarked. Then we had to wait another five to 10 minutes for a flight attendant to get through the line at the sandwich place across the corridor. As soon as she arrived, they let the lady in the wheelchair on board, and then the rest of us.
Once everyone was seated and the doors were closed, the pilot made an announcement: "We are just waiting for some paperwork to be filled out properly. It should be just a moment." Just a moment turned into 20 minutes.
Somewhere in the history of the airlines descent into full-blown inefficiency, a decision was made that flight attendants could not help passengers find their seats or sort out the deployment of baggage. I must have missed the landmark liability case. During boarding for every flight I've taken in the last half dozen years, the flight attendants congregate up front in the galley area, shooting the breeze while the rest of us struggle to police our own seating arrangements. The numbering system on the Delta MD-88 today was so screwy an older couple that had secured two aisle seats in row 18 wound up seated diagonally across from each other; row 17 on the right side of the plane is directly opposite row 18 on the left. You can't make this stuff up.
What happens to your baggage on the airlines is so scary that more and more people are pushing the limits on the size of their carry-on baggage. Those fixtures outside the gates, the ones that purport to determine whether your bag is too big to carry on, are worthless. I watched for a half hour and no one used them; I scanned the crowd and it was clear at least a dozen bags would not have fit in the measuring fixture. Forget the gate or flight attendants saying anything about over-sized baggage; they think their only jobs during the boarding process are to scan boarding passes and say hello. We waited for a couple of minutes while some galoot tried to cram his 1 ½-times-the-limit bag into the overhead. After the flight landed, the guy he kept waiting while he struggled to un-wedge his bag from the overhead commented - quite loudly - about boorish people who over-pack their overly large bags. Good for him. They almost exchanged blows.
That is just one of many examples of how uncivilized airline travel has become in the U.S. But there is also a practical, mathematical reason for why I will drive 16 hours from Hartford to wherever in order to avoid anything more complicated than a non-stop flight. Hartford is not a large airport, and non-stop flights to southern destinations are few. If you are going, say, to Myrtle Beach, you have to change in Washington or Charlotte. I live about 40 minutes from the airport, so let's say, with parking the car included, that takes an hour. Given Homeland Security issues, you need to allow at least 90 minutes before your flight. So we are up to 2 ½ hours. The flight to Charlotte, assuming it leaves on time, is about 90 minutes gate to gate. Okay, that's five hours. Then the flight to Myrtle Beach is another hour gate to gate. In the best case, your golf bag will arrive on the baggage carousel and you will get to your rental car about an hour after you land. We have now reached the seven-hour mark. Then there is the hour or so drive to wherever you are staying. Eight hours is not bad compared with the 14-hour drive (if you only stop for gas and drive-thru food).
But consider one leg of the flight is canceled, or you miss your connection because of weather. Or a pilot is stuck in traffic. Or your flight is waiting for another delayed flight to arrive before it can take off with that flight's connecting passengers. Or your bags are lost and you have to spend a couple of hours sorting that out and renting clubs and buying clothing for the following day. Or the freaking paperwork isn't filled out properly. If you have flown any decent amount of time, this has happened to you as it has to me.
I'll see you on the Interstate.
