Relax- Introducing No Stress Travel
There's temporary good news for flight attendants and travelers. We're in the middle of what is the busiest traveling season of the year. Traditionally, people are full of that holiday cheer and fly all over the country to remind themselves why they only visit certain relatives once a year.
Those visits are going to be a lot friendlier this year for two reasons.
The first (and most sentimental) reason: when people are tight on money they start to remember the important things in life. Even if your family has a few annoying habits and Cousin Bob eats all the cookies every year, they still love you. Love is always better than money. People are starting to remember that.
The second reason those visits are a little better this year: Travel is stress-free. That's not just because the flight attendants are so nice and accommodating (even though we are), it's because there's no hassle in the airports anymore.
Flying is cheaper because the airlines are trying to attract customers and airports and airplanes are empty. No one is getting stuck between two large passengers so they can spread out. On the other side, the larger passengers don't have to endure the nasty looks or embarrassing comments of people next to them. The airplanes are only half full.
I flew 6 legs in the past two days, each on an Airbus 319 with a capacity of 120 people. The passenger load on each leg was- 62, 54, 45, 40, 42, and 70%.
Even better than that, there are less planes in the air right now which I'm told makes routing easier and more direct for the pilots (pilots, correct me if I'm wrong about that. That's what I was told by a gate agent and they aren't known for their aviation knowledge).
My trip was 4 legs yesterday. Houston to Chicago to Minneapolis to Chicago and home to Washington National. It was snowing in both Chicago and Minneapolis.
Based on my experience, when I saw the weather report I was sure that at least one of those flights was going to cancel. The weather in Chicago has been known to screw up flights all over the country.
But nothing cancelled. At least, none of my flight did. One earlier flight to Washington did cancel- more about that in a second. All of our flights went out without a hitch. We took minor delays for de-icing, but everything arrived within 20 minutes of the scheduled time.
It was great for passengers. There was no complaining, no missed connections, no harassed airline employees.
I mentioned that an earlier flight to Washington National had cancelled.
It did. But our airline offers almost hourly flights from Chicago to Washington and since most people arrive at the airport early anyway, most were able to get on the earlier flight. Those that didn't make the earlier flight, made the next flight. Every passenger that was booked on the cancelled Washington flight got to D.C., most of them before they expected to.
Our passenger load actually went down because even with people being rebooked on the flight before ours, there was still space for anyone who was already at the airport to catch it. It still left with empty seats.
The overselling problems of the past have all but dissapeared.
That sounds great!
Trust me, it isn't- not for either of us.
People have started to think of airlines as expensive cabs. It's easy to catch a cab. Just wave it down. If the cabby passes you, you swear at his tail lights and flag the next one.
What happens when there's only one cab a day?
Besides leaving thousands of cabbies out of work, the passengers have to find another way to get where they're going.
When airplanes don't make money over a long enough period of time they get parked. The airlines are going to resort to this if they have to.
If they can't fill two airplanes, they're going to park one of them and charge double for the one that still flies. If you don't get on the one that flies that day, try again tomorrow- and good luck because it's sold out.
Ticket prices are going to go up. The number of flights are going to continue to go down. And the people who are cheerily enjoying their family visits this year, will be sitting around in their living rooms next year, talking to their sisters and cousins on Skype.
What's the Ugly?
Oh that...
When I showed up for work at Washington National Airport early on Monday morning, I was greeted by a surprise.
Actually, I almost slipped on a surprise.
After passing through security (which is surprisingly painless at National) I caught a whiff of a smell. Not an aroma, not a pleasant scent- a foul "I hope that's not what I think it is," smell.
Someone had defecated in the hallway.
A very disgusted janitor was in the process of cleaning it up as I walked by, giving it a wide berth.
There was a tall black man in an expensive suit walking next to me.
Sniff "What's that smell?" he asked. "It smells like... shit."
"Uhh. I think that's what it is," I said pointing to the brown, liquid puddle. It was under a yellow caution sign with a picture of someone slipping. Now there's something you don't want to slip in for reasons other than hurting your back.
A final tidbit of news that's important to this blog
For those of you who don't like to see, or don't care at all about the occasional posts about writing, they're promptly going to stop.
Well- they're going to stop being posted here.
This blog is now fully dedicated to flying. My other website, The Creative Writer's Desk is in the process of a major overhaul and it's getting a whole lot bloggier. It's the only place I'm going to post about writing.
The Writing in the Sky is now going to be 100% about my travels and travel concerns.
If you want to subscribe to the Creative Writer's Desk, and keep getting those posts, you can do so here.
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