Air Travel

My last two jobs (and grad school in a foreign land) have meant lots of planes and the “privilege” of attaining top tier status and a million miles in a very short timeframe. I’ve traveled to most of the major airports in the US and Europe, and on most every major airline in the US and Europe. So, as you can imagine, there are some things that have struck me as rather baffling over the years:

1. why people prefer LAX over Orange County. I mean, if there is ANYWAY you can connect through SNA instead of LAX, you’re nuts not to. The airport is easier, the food better, and the…ummm…people watching beyond compare.
2. why ANYONE would choose to go through O’Hare. For anything. You can add Miami as sub-bullet A. At least O’Hare has ways to occupy time (unlike the living hell and constant construction that is MIA), but there’s no more miserable place, and something always goes wrong. Never fails. And for international arrivals at O’Hare, it’s even worse
3. TSA. Do these people actively accomplish anything? Really? Some are wonderfully nice and engaged in their position--and have have no doub they are effective. Others (too many) find their power-fix in their jobs or are more worried about tonight’s 6 reruns of Friends (an actual conversation overheard at a major US airport). I can’t imagine some of these people are effective.
4. Rude travelers. People—there’s NOTHING the gate attendant or anyone can do about your delay. Get over it, roll with the punches. It’s travel. Unless you’re in O’Hare when said trouble hits. Then you can mutter all the curse words you want.
5. Southwest Airlines. However, see ThinkingFool’s strategies for securing high quality seating… http://www.thinkingfool.com/archives/2005/12/how_to_keep_peo_1.php
6. Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. This is for another post...
7. Why I have to remove my shoes and laptop in the US, but not in the UK. But I do in Germany, but not in Italy. It either works, or it doesn't, people. Can we standardize?
8. Small children in business class on transatlantic flights. If you can control them or drug them to sleep, great. Otherwise, perhaps you'd be gracious enough to preserve the quiet so we can sleep?
9. Airline food. It's tolerable in business. Coach is another story. Though for some inexplicable reason, Lady Thinker is a fan of the pizza on westbound AA transatlantic flights