Just how bad is airline service

[bmg88201]

Maybe my flight is delayed or cancelled, maybe not. Maybe my bags arrive, maybe not. Now days, I got better odds in Vegas.

Also, It is my belief that when you go through TSA screening, at that moment you give up all civil rights.

 

[oldtimer 66]

This is right after 911 maybe 2 weeks, I can't remember exactly. I was going to Vancouver I think thru Salt Lake City or maybe Seattle or Calgary. The Alaska Air to Vancouver was a 737. There was me and 2 other passengers. The other connection flights were equally no passengers maybe 20 people max on any of the flights. The air ports were a ghost town. Another time for my trips to Mexico I would always take the earliest flights possible. There were others in our group that couldn't get there butts out of bed. They then would leave noonish and 9 times out of 10 they would have connection problems and delays. And that's all you heard about from them how bad the airlines were. That was there own fault. I did make one major mistake and that was getting my wife and her sister first class to Phoenix with frequent flier miles years ago. My wife has never been in coach since. TaDa.

 

[kenmbz]

I always try for late morning flights, so I arrive in decent shape and get plenty of choices still for flights out if any cancels.

I hated doing red eyes and early mornings. Made for miserable travel even if the airlines were doing great.

Traveling long flights to asia and africa would have been miserable

 

[JethroB]

I hope they had the correct type of travel insurance.

Nope. My eyes bugged out at the quoted cost AND when my dad said to me “boy it doesn’t matter just get your mom and me home”. Okayyy dad.

 

[MossRoad]

Allegiant . When my folks were still snowbirding in the Clearwater FL area I tried them out of Belleville IL. A one horse airport with probably one flight a day? We take off and before we get to cruising altitude I see a steward carrying a fire extensisher. There was a slight haze in the air or maybe just an odor?? This is not good. Well the captain announce we are returning. Since TSA had gone home they told us if we depart the terminal we can't get back in. They had called a mechanic in. We wait, the snack machine gets cleaned out. Mechanic arrives...numerous run ups and it is finally determined they accidentally got de-icing into the engines. So I get to Clearwater after dark and get the shuttle cab to my folks place. I was watching airplane crash videos on YT and recall Allegient had a crash due to sloppy/cost cutting maintenance. Nice to know after the fact.

I found this one a bit amusing.... (since no one was injured).

• On July 23, 2015, an Allegiant aircraft attempted to fly to Hector International Airport in Fargo, North Dakota, which was at the time within a temporary flight restriction due to a rehearsal by the Blue Angelsflight team for an upcoming air show.[96] The pilots then declared a fuel emergency, stating, "Yeah, listen, we're bingo [empty] fuel here in about probably three to four minutes and I got to come in and land." The pilots were scolded by the airport's tower, who said, "Your company...should have been aware of this for a number of months," regarding the airspace restrictions. The pilots flying the aircraft were, at the time, the airline's vice president of flight operations and its director of flight safety.[97]

 

[Oaktree]

I preferred flying on those little planes! 17 passengers or so...very quick to load and unload passengers and get underway. Not having to wait for 300 people to stash their baggage and get settled in.

You can have 'em! The job I had in the 70s-mid 80s required considerable travel, and most of that time the airport for the city I worked in wasn't serviced by any "real" airlines, only a couple commuter lines. I get motion sickness quite easily, and every time one of those small planes so much as flew over someone's backyard BBQ you felt turbulence. Even though it was a relatively short flight to Boston, many a time I was at the verge of needing a barf bag.
No thanks. I took my chances with Boston drivers and drove to Logan.

 

[riptides]

I get motion sickness quite easily, and every time one of those small planes so much as flew over someone's backyard BBQ you felt turbulence.

So true. So funny. The plane, not the sickness.

Puddle jumpers comes to mind.

 

[Joel/ak]

Allegiant . When my folks were still snowbirding in the Clearwater FL area I tried them out of Belleville IL. A one horse airport with probably one flight a day? We take off and before we get to cruising altitude I see a steward carrying a fire extensisher. There was a slight haze in the air or maybe just an odor?? This is not good. Well the captain announce we are returning. Since TSA had gone home they told us if we depart the terminal we can't get back in. They had called a mechanic in. We wait, the snack machine gets cleaned out. Mechanic arrives...numerous run ups and it is finally determined they accidentally got de-icing into the engines. So I get to Clearwater after dark and get the shuttle cab to my folks place. I was watching airplane crash videos on YT and recall Allegient had a crash due to sloppy/cost cutting maintenance. Nice to know after the fact.

When a cargo 747's flight crew were being Dicks to the ground crew (happens alot) the crew deicing would shoot the glycol into the APU intake. You would see the cockpit windows open and smoke would roll out.

I laugh at it everytime I saw it.

I've gotten into it with flight crews more than once

 

[SwingOak]

Over the last few years I've been sticking with United. Delta has usually been the better airline, but I've had a bunch of flight credits from the pandemic I needed to use up. Lately, there seems to be a lot of canceled Delta flights in and out of my local airport, so I think I'll stick with United for now.

Best advice I ever got on travel was this - stick with one airline, one hotel, and one car rental company. They all will bend over backwards to help a loyal customer, not so much the person who isn't.

 

[dodge man]

Not really related but I’ll tell the story. We had a job our Chicago area office had and I drove up with our GPS system. This was right after 911. They needed a building location and elevation that was in the flight path of O‘hare even though it was going to be one story high. I setup our base on a known GPS point off the end of a runway at O’hare outside the fence, the heavies were coming in right over my head. I stayed with the base while my helper went to shoot the building. A van comes rolling up to me. I figure they are security and I’m in big trouble. Turns out O’hare has a full time survey crew and they were just curious what I was doing.