13 Comments

  1. The crowd at the gate. I mean, it’s perfectly clear what zone or whatever you’re in. And still, people in the LAST group will cluster around the gate with their luggage, forcing everyone who has an earlier group or zone to wind around them like Pac-Man dodging ghosts.

    And holy crap, check bags. You don’t want to pay? Sign up for the airline’s credit card. Pay it off as soon as the bill arrives. It’s my full intention to never use an overhead bin again as long as I live.

      • Early bird gets the worm but second mouse gets the cheese…..

        Just learned (maybe mentioned already) within last few years that most of those sayings have two parts…

         

        Jack of all trades but master of none

         

        Having a brain block on any more right now…

  2. The last time I flew internationally I was chaperoning my kid’s school trip to Europe, one of those classic package trips of three cities in 11 days.

    Coming back into the US I got selected out of the group for extra screening, except instead of normal questions like “did you buy anything expensive?” or “did you spend any time with anyone who wasn’t an American?” they started asking weird stuff like “what are your hobbies?” and “what do like to do with your free time?”

    Obviously some consultant had sold someone a security program where asking questions out of left field and looking for certain reactions would supposedly correlate with higher security risks.

    Except I can guarantee the supposed science behind it was even worse than what you get with polygraphs, which are wildly unreliable. It’s just a big hassle after a long flight that is no more reliable than random bag checks.

    • Questions:

      1) Are you a terrorist?

      2) Are you a terrorist?

      3) Is that an AK-47 or are you unhappy to see me?

      4) Are you a terrorist?

      5) Do you like making bombs and IEDs in your spare time?

      6) Are you a terrorist?

      7) Do you hang out at Radio Shack?

  3. Where we live, the main airport choices are a small regional 1.5 hours away and Charlotte airport, which is 3 hours away.  Nothing seems to fly straight to either.  My wife is coming back from a math conference at Berkeley tonight.  She left San Francisco at 5am and will probably get home at midnight.

    One thing about living in a big city: at least in Chicago you had O’Hare and Midway and both flew everywhere and everywhere flew there.

  5. I haven’t flown in so long that a driver’s license was all the ID one needed to get into Canada. I really should get around to getting a passport.

  6. People who knowingly book flights with short connection times and then act shocked when they miss the connecting flight.

    Listen, we’ve all had delayed flights. I’ve missed a connection thanks to the flight being 15 minutes late leaving St Louis and Charlotte being so fucking backed up that we were on the tarmac for over 30 minutes.

    But I’ve also known people who book with a 25 minute layover between connections and be shocked they didn’t make it. You know, because it takes 5-10 minutes to get off the plane you’re on, and they close the gates 15 minutes before the departure time. So even if you magically are only going one gate away from your arriving flight, the odds are still high you ain’t making that flight.

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