the airport has been crazy.
so many very late and cancelled flights. the bathroom was broken, so no one could use it, which wasn’t bad for our 2 hour flight, but it was making a 3 hour flight after we got off!
which wasnt that bad, because it was making a 4 hour flight after that one.
who needs bathrooms, i can hold it in for a day lol. Ive gone through like 10 hour drives without having to urinate.
Thats a skill.
Just wait until you get old and we’ll see how long you can go with a bathroom break. 
I recently flew to Rapid City for NAUCC on Northwest Airlines. Everything went fine. No late planes, no lost luggage, check-in was quick and easy, security lines were, uh, tolerable. We flew from Memphis to Minneapolis to Rapid City then followed the route in reverse coming home. No problems.
thats funny. Since the flight plans i looked for could only do Minneapolis, to colorado, to rapid city lol. And yours would have taken me to rapid city easy.
I heard that american airlines is gonna start not carrying reserve fuel on their flights…
are US airlines falling apart?
Delta sure as hell was today. Took me 14 hours to get from Atlanta to Seattle, with nine of those hours being spent in the Atlanta airport. First my 4:50 flight was delayed until 6:15. Then–while I was a few gates down enjoying a coffee because I had plenty of time–a plane miraculously appeared, was loaded without any announcement beyond the immediate gate area, and departed. By the time I returned to the gate at 5:45 to check back in for that 6:15 departure, the plane was gone. There were about 15 of us that were screwed by this, which made the fight for standby seats on the next flight especially vicious. There were only four seats opened, and I was #7 on the list. Same thing was about to happen on the flight after that (last for the day), when I decided to skip trying to work the gate agent and instead go to Delta’s bigger terminal ticketing counter. This is the thing to do, and remember: always be VERY nice to those agents, because most customers are not. They have phenomenal cosmic powers, itty bitty working space, and if you are really nice to them, they can bump you in over other people that are rotting in line at the gate counter. That is why I am now home typing this at 1am, instead of exceeding my quota of “July days spent in Atlanta” by yet another.
this is a very good and general advice! everytime you spot an employee who is harassed by people try to be nice.
I was once rushed to the emergency ward of an hospital … and everything was urgent … so people were anxious and screaming after the doctors and paramedics : since I decided I was not going to die I kept smiling all the time. In the end I heard a medic tell the nurse “this guy is nice: be kind to him” and so I ended in the best “palace room” for the night (though I was not entitled to it). In the morning I heard the manager howling about that but I had a wonderful stay!.
be thankful you still get twice as much luggage allowance as we do.
Somehow, I am not surprised. A couple years ago I went from Memphis to Minneapolis and had to stop in St. Louis along the way.
Yeah. My experience was with Delta. Since they had Gtes 1 and 2 at the airport, they loaded up a jet through a door BETWEEN gates 1 and 2, and we walked out on the tarmac.
all the Delta gates had like people from 4 different destinations waiting around the same gate, laying out on the floor, and when I arrived I saw the same picture.
Increase fuel costs so travel is expensive, take out the planes and you have a bunch of sitting ducks. I think it’s all being done to us on purpose. Make is so people can’t go from place to place, at least not easily. It will get worse, much worse.
p.s. if the picture of a boat is the titanic. That’s too soon man, too soon.
I’m pretty sure that’s not legal. Were there no functioning bathrooms on the plane? Sometimes people have, like, emergencies. Know what I mean? Eww.
Heard as in overheard, or read or heard on a “real” news program? I think there’s reserve fuel and “reserve” fuel. Naturally it would be cost effective to not carry more than you need, cutting down on takeoff weight. But it would be lethal to fly with less than you need, of which I’m sure the FAA requires a percentage beyond what’s expected for a commercial flight. What if you get rerouted, have to circle, etc?
Tom, sorry to hear about your horror story with Delta and Atlanta. Every time I’ve been through there I remember it being a pain. Last time, we were coming back from Mexico and had to collect our luggage for customs. There were apparently very few employees working in that section, and it took forever. What should have been a relaxing stopover with plenty of reserve time (to eat a proper meal) ended in a mad dash to get our bags re-checked and then travel the hundreds of meters to our gate. That airport needs a better way to move people around.
For the moment. Some US carriers are already charging for the second piece of checked baggage, though it may be cheaper than what you’d be paying…
By whom? The airlines are in business to fly people around. That’s what they want to do, but fuel prices have been shooting up. The reason(s) for that are obvious enough. Though there may be plateaus and occasional drops in fuel prices, I think the trend will continue to be up as long as world demand keeps curving upward.
On our trip to Ride The Lobster, we noticed lots of people having luggage problems. It gives me the opinion the airlines are trying to operate with less personnel, which leads to problems like that. One questions if they’re actually saving money in the long run.
Our flights to Rapid City and back (on Frontier; very nice!) went without a hitch. Now it’s the big one; Unicon…
The airlines would lead us to believe they are all going broke. They claim to be hemorraging tremendous amounts of money. All of the airlines cannot be losing money or there would be no airlines.
The government needs to stop subsidizing the airlines. If they are losing money they need to raise ticket prices or go out of business.