Air travel sucks.
Sorry to be so blunt, but it does,
What used to be a fairly reliable means of transportation is now a disaster waiting to happen. I started writing this post on a flight from Detroit to Salt Lake City that was some 2 hours late. The culprit this time was bad weather in the New York area. But there wasn’t another airplane available to use to get my flight on its way. It's hard to believe there wasn't a single available airplane at the Detroit airport. And as bad as it was for those of us waiting for an airplane to arrive, it was even worse for the people in New York who were stuck, on the airplane, as it sat on the tarmac for 2-1/2 hours.
No one can control the weather, but American airlines have a dismal track record of responding to a variety of issues, from insufficient staffing to computer system failures to pile-ups of thousands of pieces of passenger luggage.
Depending on how far in advance I make my flight reservations, I can expect to see as many as five schedule changes. One woman's flights changed 13 times, according to the travel agent we both used to book our group's flights to Tanzania.
Trying to reach an airline representative by phone can result in a wait time of two to five hours.
In-flight service is another area in which airlines are sorely lacking. On a recent early morning business class flight, we were offered bags of potato chips in lieu of something more appropriate for breakfast.
Clearly the airlines have major problems. For the prices they charge ($11,000 for a business class ticket to southern Africa for which I have paid roughly $5,000 for several years), their level of service should be significantly higher.. Rather than spend $11,000 with a US carrier — something I would never do — my travel agent suggested I fly on Qatar Airlines at roughly half the cost. That trip will be next year, connecting in Doha.
Why are there now so many connections in what should be straightforward trips? And why should I have to fly to Los Angeles to get to Charlotte, North Carolina, on the opposite side of the country?
I had a 9-hour layover in Minneapolis on a recent trip to Iceland, and a7-hour layover (it turned out to be closer to 10 hours) on the return trip that had me going to Detroit, then to Salt Lake City, and finally to Albuquerque.
I canceled a planned trip to Portugal because getting there on time to meet my group would have required me to arrive a day early (an extra hotel night to pay for), and an overnight (another hotel stay) in London. It simply wasn't worth the hassle.
I don't know how much more international travel I will do in the future, aside from trips to Africa. The cost in money, time and stress simply isn't worth it.
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