Beating the airlines

[dreed]

Rod

Haha... it's really not that bad back here (on my flight currently). Flying this much does have some advantages as to how they treat you and I have nearly 2.5mm FF miles on Alaska alone which makes trips abroad (for fun) a little nicer up front.

Besides, all of this sitting in the back is what pays the bills to complete my 7A soon (waiting on new nose gear/mount) so maybe I can have a ratio more like yours.

dan

[edneff]

As I made my way to Airventure from NYC this year, encountering numerous delays, I could not help wondering why we don't have a viable high speed rail system for the USA...

[lr172]

Originally Posted by DRMA

I think a key to much of the above is ORD. Seems like every time I route through there something gets screwed up. So this year I flew to Air Venture thru DEN both ways, which seem like a strange routing to IAH, but it worked well both ways.

My Grumman Traveler is just a little too slow to fly to OSH from KSGR, but when I get my RV-10 done, look out!

I spent a career in s/w sales, travelling a minimum of once every two weeks, usually more. Being based out of Chicago, I can assure you that ORD is one of the very worst places to travel to or from. They will close for almost no reason and ATC, since the change in the early 2000's (centralized clearance control), is down right frustrating. I can remember one flight to ORD, leaving SFO at 7:00 PM, due into ORD around 1:30 AM. They gave us a 2 hour ground hold sighting weather at ORD. Come on folks- how much traffic saturation were you expecting at 2:00 AM. Near the end, a solid 1/3 of my return flights had a ground hold of at least 30 minutes.

Being a hub for both UA and AA, means you really feel the pain from poor execuation in their operations centers. In my opinion, they are the bulk of the problem seen at ORD. Sure ATC throws them a lot of curve balls, but they just can't seem to find a way to deal with it. If you contrast it to Southwest, it is night and day. They figured it out. That said, they don't have to deal with the inefficiencies of a hub based system. In the above example, we arrived at 3:00 AM and sat on the plane for another 2 hours becuase operations could find someone to move the jet bridge into position at that hour.

Larry

[mike newall]

So think of how I feel.

I arrive at JFK to leave for Manchester England around 7pm. Storms, busy, what do we do ? Well, I load 4 tons extra fuel so I don't need to worry too much. We get loaded, taxi on one, wait around 30 mins in the queue to leave, start the other and go.

Next time, no weather but still busy.....

Get ready to push and ask how many at the hold - 5.... wtf

Now we are packing fuel, get off in 20 mins and get home 1 hour early.

It works both ways, you get delayed but we have to make sensible decisions based on local facts and how much duty time we have and how much gas we want to take.

Anyhow..... retiring at Christmas so I can concentrate on building

[parkerzz313]

dreed, and I just wonder is it possible to make procedure of on-boarding process more comfortable. As well as their service in airports. The one of the most important things for me is the cost of air flight tickets. And when I've discovered this website ( here - https://airbusinessclass.com/ ), I've realized that nary other site can suggest cheaper tickets than this service. That's why I can highly recommend it.

[E. D. Eliot]

We have found Asiana and Luftansa, to be very good. British Airlines ok. Air France the worst. Northwest (are they still in business?) to be unbelievably bad. SW is ok.

[KatanaPilot]

Everyone seems to loves the Middle East Three (Qatar, Emirates and Etihad). These sovereign fund airlines have virtually unlimited resources and are allowed discriminatory hiring practices. So if you are fat, ugly, old - you won't get hired (certainly as a flight attendant).

U.S. airlines are publicly held companies and are required to follow Local, State and Federal rules. They also answer to the stockholders.

So to those that would like to see the ME3 granted fifth freedom rights within the U.S. - I say be careful what you wish for. Same for many of the other flag carriers that are controlled/funded by their respective countries.

And just FYI, Delta and Northwest merged in October 2008 and for the past several years, has been the world's most awarded U.S. flag carrier.

[rocketman1988]

Exactly...

[flyinga]

The American flying public has gotten exactly what we asked for; cheap fares. This of course means cram more seats in the planes, fill all seats, etc.

After deregulation (1978 as I recall) the traveling public bought tickets by price and not service. Several new entrant airlines tried to sell bigger seats, better service and other comforts and they are no longer in business.

[dreed]

I think the flying public deserves some of the blame too. While I wasn't around in 1978 (I was, but was a very little guy), I've got to imagine there were fewer people flying and people were more respectful.

I see people treat the counter folks horribly, rude to flight attendants, other pax etc. People want first class service for SW prices. Lots of huge bags stuff to the brim where they won't fit in an overheard but of course they put their second bag up there too so no one has space. Of course getting out of the aisle so people can pass is not even a thought for many of these folks. Don't get me started on the unloading procedure...

When I talk to the crews they say the folks that fly 1-4 times every couple of years are the worst, while the frequent travelers generally are the most pleasant and least amount of headache- even when they are in the back.

I flew ~100 flights last year and a little over 100K butt in seat miles in the back this year and over 2 million miles in the back over the last 20 years. I'd say for the most part my experiences are good with most of the domestics and international airlines I fly. Alaska is by far (IMO) the best domestic, Delta is getting better again after a period of sucking bad. I avoid UA and American whenever possible because of the crews in back- not getting there on time, etc.

That said- I rarely have big delays on any of them and when we do, it's usually weather or mechanical and that happens to all of us.

PS- I'd prefer to be in the left seat of my plane any day