American Airlines Sucks...

Every airline I've flown on sucks, but Southwest Airlines sucks the least of all of them. As a matter of fact, I don't think I can honestly say that SWA sucks at all. I've never had any serious issues or problems flying SWA with just a couple of exceptions, but they were either weather related or due to me booking my connecting flights too close together. Neither were things I could necessarily blame on the airline itself.

On the other hand, American, like many of the other airlines, has determined that your bags are no different than you and you should be charged a fee to allow your bags to travel in the belly of the plane. So, on a recent trip from Hartford, CT, to Shreveport, LA, my fiance and I were charged not only $1,300 for the two of us to fly, but another $100 for the roundtrip travel of our two bags.

Apparently, you can't always get your seats assigned when you book your flight(s) on American and it seems that this problem is mostly due to the airline overbooking flights. When we checked in our bags at the Bradley International airport, we asked if we could get two seats together. Nope. The flight was oversold and we were told that we'll be lucky if we're able to even get on the flight unless someone agrees to give up their seats in exchange for an airline voucher. Sitting on pins and needles while waiting to board, we received the good news that we would have the pleasure of boarding American's flight to DFW. Of course, the bad news was we would have to sit next to who-knows-who for four hours. We accepted the offer even though we both would be in "B" (middle) seats on different rows.

Now I'm a pretty easy-going person and can pretty much carry on a conversation with just about anybody, but I do have my moments of "I'm going to read a magazine and plug in my iPod and you just go about your own business." This was one of those moments. Unfortunately, my seatmates didn't know this unspoken arrangement. Mr. Windowseat guy wanted to know where I was going and why (the purpose of our trip was to attend my parents' 50th wedding anniversary party) forcing me to take the ear buds out so I could hear what he was asking me. Mr. Aisleseat guy seemed to suffer from some affliction that caused his body to twitch uncontrollably. At first, I thought it might be Tourette's syndrome and was looking forward to being entertained by the moments when he would curse out loud or say something nasty and offend the other passengers. I was disappointed when neither of these things happened.

While the plane was still being boarded, my fiance approached and asked, "Craig, do either one of these guys want to change seats with me?" Mr. Aisleseat guy looked at her funny until he realized she was talking to me; apparently, his name was Craig, too. This little factoid brought on another conversation I didn't want to have. But more importantly, neither one of my seatmates wanted to exchange their aisle or window seat for the middle seat she was in. I can't blame them. But being the gentleman I was raised to be, I would've volunteered if I knew that a couple wasn't sitting together. Of course, I would've made them buy me several cocktails as repayment for my graciousness, but I would've changed seats.

One thing I've learned about living in New England for a few, short months is not many people are raised to be a gentleman. The feminist movement has immasculated men to the point whereby men make women feel inferior if they open the door for a woman or stand when they enter the room or call them "Miss" or "M'aam". It's seen as disrespectful. I couldn't disagree more. So, if you're reading this and you're a woman and your offended by this gentlemanly behavior, then you know nothing about being respected. But that's another blog entry at a later time.

Back to the flight...

So, after giving my life story in seven minutes or less, I decided I really wanted to read my latest issue of "Wired" magazine, turn up the iPod as loud as I could and ignore my seatmates. They finally got the not-so-subtle hint and began reading on their own. But not for long. After a few minutes, they decided they still had some interesting bits of information to share with each other. I have no idea what they were talking about because I couldn't hear them over the din of my iTunes, but it had to be important because they kept getting closer and closer to each other in order to hear themselves over the cabin noise level.

It's one thing to carry on a conversation with someone who's two seats over from you, but it's an entirely different thing to do so when it's in front of someone else's face and one of the participants in the conversation is jerking around the whole time. I'm not kidding...these two guys' faces were not more than 14" from each other and less than that in front of MY face. And one of them is spazzing out with his hands flailing around and his head jerking from side to side. I kept thinking if I waited long enough, Ashton Kutcher and his video crew would come hopping down the aisle and laughing how I just got "Punked".

With every seat on the plane occupied, I had no where to go. I'm not sure if it was one of my seatmates, but someone in the general vicinity thought it was a good time to let the rest of us passengers know that he/she had eaten about a dozen bad eggs for breakfast before the flight. Although my seatmates never missed a beat in their conversation, I was awoken from my iTunes-induced slumber by the odor and said aloud, "Holy shit!". They both looked at me and said, "It wasn't me". After a quick survey of the cabin, I knew it was the fat bastard two rows up when I spotted his head bobbing up and down as he giggled at my exclamation. Ashton still didn't show up.

I've also observed in my flying adventures that when it's time to deplane, the slowest, most sloth-like creatures in the world are the ones who sit in the front of the plane. They're also the ones who can never seem to find their carry-on luggage because the flight attendants seem to play some kind of sick game of rearranging the overhead bins while no one's looking. This is the reason I only bring my camera bag and briefcase on the plane. The camera bag goes in the overhead bin and the briefcase goes under the seat in front of me. My camera bag weighs more than most people would expect a backpack looking contraption should, so if anyone tries to pull it out, it usually conks someone in the head and knocks them out. This must be one of the reasons the airlines overbook their flights; they know some idiot is going to bring something heavy on the plane which will fall on someone else and allow a seat to open up.

When we finally arrived at DFW and taxied to our arrival gate, our flight attendant began making announcements about gate information for connecting flights. I can only guess that they're supplied with a list of passengers and where their ultimate destination is and this is how they know which gates are relevant to the passengers. Shreveport didn't make the list. It must be so low on the flight-worthy list that they don't even bother mentioning it. When we got off the plane, we had to check the display in the terminal to find out which gate our flight to Shreveport was departing. We arrived at Terminal D, but were departing from Terminal B.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of making a connection at DFW, Terminal D is the newest terminal and has some pretty decent restaurants, bars and shopping. Terminal B is a different story. Instead of having the choice of a steak at "Cool River" or a burger at "Fuddruckers" like in Terminal D, you're choices go downhill pretty quickly once you take the train over to Terminal B. McDonald's and TGI Friday's are the most upscale you can get in Terminal B. Oh sure, there's a Starbucks and the usual newstands, but that's about it. So, instead of grabbing a bite to eat, we decided to have a liquid lunch instead. Afterall, we had two hours to kill and it's only an hour flight from DFW to Shreveport. That Stella Artois should tasted good after a four hour flight and the aroma seemed to neutralize the nose-hair burning smell of one of my fellow passenger's farts.

Shreveport has to be the most ridiculously difficult city to travel to from ANYWHERE. Regardless of where you're flying from, if you're destination is Shreveport, you're going to get stuck in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Nashville or a multitude of other cities the airlines deem more flight-worthy than Shreveport. I can only guess that all the Hollywood types who fly into Shreveport are doing so on private aircraft. Surely they aren't flying commercial flights, right?

As a kid growing up in Shreveport, I remember when the "new" airport opened up and had all the modern conveniences available for airline travel. This was back when Braniff was still an airline and Delta, Royale Air and a couple of other regional carriers served the Shreveport area. After an extensive remodeling of the airport several years ago, the airport is still a dump. It has to be the ONLY airport in the entire country which still requires you to open your trunk for an "inspection" by the TSA prior to entering the airport grounds...seriously. The process is simple: you pull up, a guard gets out of his hut, asks you to open your trunk and then provides a thorough 1.3 second inspection of the contents in your trunk. Really. No joke. I mean, if the Taliban really wanted to blow up a US airport, Shreveport's would not be an ideal target to make a statement about how vunerable we all are to an attack. First, because you would only cause minimal casualties and, second, because you would only disrupt a few flights a day.

So after passing the rigorous car inspection, we go to the ticket counter to check our bags. Being the naive American Airline passenger that I am, I was completely unaware that you pay AGAIN to ship your bag back to your place of origin. Twenty-five bucks for each bag, each way. Did I miss the fine print somewhere? I mean, I bought a round-trip ticket. Why the hell wouldn't they just charge me for a round-trip ticket for my freakin' baggage? Do people really load up a suitcase, fly somewhere and then return with NO baggage? It didn't make a bit a sense, but then I began to think that maybe I missed something in the news saying the federal government had taken over the airlines. THAT would've made more sense. But then I remembered that, no, the Fed hasn't taken over the airlines...yet.

I even thought about just calling a friend to come pick up the bags and FedEx them to me. Surely it wouldn't have cost $100 to send my bags the day before AND have them delivered right to the front door! The more I think about the idea, the more I think I'll consider doing that if I end up having to fly anything but Southwest. That'll show them.

Arriving at DFW to await our connection back to Hartford, we thought it would be prudent to go straight to the departure gate to see if we could get our seats assigned (yep, once again, our return flight didn't indicate seat assignments on our tickets). Seeing the gate area was pretty packed, I said a silent F-bomb and knew it was about to get even more interesting that the rest of the trip. If you guessed that our flight was oversold and we couldn't be guaranteed seats, much less be able to sit together, you're one smart sumbitch! Either you're smart or you've had the distinct priviledge of flying on American.

The gate attendant was a middle-aged, probably a long-time employee (you can tell because they're usually wrinkled up pretty good, bad hair and an attitude to match) and probably ticked off at her cat for pissing on the couch again. You get the point. With the attitude of someone who hasn't had a man in her life for a couple of decades, she informed us we were the luckiest people in the world...if we get on the flight. And guess what? It's the only direct flight from DFW for the day! The news was like getting another fresh whiff of that egg fart on the previous flight. Just kind of hits you in the face and then lingers while you try to figure out what just happened and who did it.

This charming woman then asked if we were interested in giving up the seats we supposedly didn't have in exchange for a couple of vouchers. After asking if they were transferrable to others (my kids in Houston), she informed us that they were indeed AND they would be good for any flight. Knowing that I could use these for my kids to visit for Spring Break in a few weeks, I started to see some light at the end of this travel tunnel. Thinking the value might be comparable to what our tickets costs, I asked the inevitable, "How much are the vouchers?" Three hundred bucks was the response. Are you kidding me? Where the hell can you fly on American for $300? From Houston to Waco? Why, yes you can, but you still have to pay $25 per bag and per flight to have your bags possibly show up. Arrrrrrrrrggggggggg! She told us to come back to the counter in a hour so we could find out if we were "worthy" of traveling on their airplane.

Then it hit me. This is why people go biserk on a flight! I mean, I could have literally choked someone to death I was so PO'd! I felt violated! I felt taken advantage of! I felt like an alter boy!

We bought a couple of overpriced burgers, fries and a drink and decided that if we couldn't get on the flight, we'd at least try to stay with some friends who lived in North Dallas. But the airline managed to find a couple of suckers to take them up on the voucher exchange and we were also able to get seats together. It's not like we talked the whole way back or held hands the whole time. Karen slept for about three hours and 32 minutes of the three hour and 40 minute trip. I finally got to finish my "Wired" issue and slept a little. I had forgotten how exhausting it is to deal with incompetence, but it's like riding a bike and you pedal to the nearest bar to forget the whole ordeal.

I can't wait to forget about this one. One thing I will always remember...if Southwest doesn't fly there, I probably don't need to go there.