I couldn't get an upgrade to Business Class--all full--looks like I will have to keep paying for them, at least until Summer is over. With everyone trying to escape the 105+ heat index of Hotlanta the planes are all full.
Last week's flight was seriously unbearable. I was thinking that you just cannot work in coach. I was so squished and could hardly type. So, I made sure I booked an exit row to just have more room for the laptop if nothing else. I got some work done on email and calendar appointments but cannot do the real work that I needed to do as there is a problem with the server, so I'm kind of stuck.
Good time to blog!
The exit row seats, especially when you only have one row of them are ideal, as far as coach goes. The people in front of you can't recline but I have plenty of room for me and my laptop. Which by the way is only a 15 inch laptop but does have an extended battery thing out the back which takes up more space. So, I guess I'm saying that if I can't be in business I'll need to keep booking exit row only.
But I usually get the aisle seat and I'm starting to rethink that. I love having the ability to jump up at the end of the flight and not have to bug anyone when I want to get up, so there are benies for sure, but today I really suffered on the end.
1) EVERYONE and I do mean everyone of all sizes, walked down the aisle the regular way, so each person bumped into me while they were boarding or when they got up for the bathroom. Being constantly bumped is no fun. But seriously people unless you are a pre-pubescent thin as a rail 10 year old girl (aka no hips) you are too big to walk normally. You need to walk kind of sideways, almost like a crab to get down these tiny aisles. And since I'm sitting on the aisle I can see that they are just hitting everyone as they go by. I know it isn't personal but it is so rude. I walk sideways. I have no misconceptions about how I would bump people if I didn't. So, let this be everyone's wake up call: YOU ARE NOT AS NARROW AS YOU THINK! And particularly not as narrow as the sadists who design these airplanes think everyone should be.
2) So, pre-takeoff when I cant work I read my book and listen to the free XM radio. Well today I got tired and put my book down to snooze a bit till they announced I could go online. Just after the sweet few moments of that point where you kinda know you are falling asleep and drifting off to happy land I get touched on the arm by the attendant. I wake up thinking Why the frick are you waking me? I know I did nothing wrong, etc. Well, she's "asking" me to hold the demonstration bag for the security theater demonstration they do. I say "asking" because she didn't give me a choice. Anyway, I look around and wonder why did she wake me to do this? Ask the guy next to me who is awake!! After that of course I couldn't fall back to sleep and now am very tired but not sleepy. Oh well.
Security theater and rude people. That's what airlines are all about nowadays.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Hmmm. Someone's been "reading" my blog
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2010-07-22-airplaneetiquette22_CV_N.htm
And no one asked me for permission or to comment. ;-)
And no one asked me for permission or to comment. ;-)
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Theme change?
Should this blog's theme be changed to "annoying people who travel"? If so, I must include myself! :)
Got great feedback from Nolan that this blog is more about noticing how annoying people are and hopefully trying to minimize your annoying self when traveling.
I must admit that since I am not carrier hopping or shopping anymore it is really the Delta and AirTran show and I guess I've said all there is to say for you all to think about when buying tix.
For those of you who haven't read those old posts and won't but want to know the bottom-line: I only fly Delta because they fly a lot of places overseas and I want to use my FFmiles for that, particularly on AirFrance--cause it RULES.
However, it is a lot of hassle, rudeness and drudgery every week for months or years to rack up those points for your once every few year's vacation overseas, so just weigh that into your decision.
Hasta for now. Don't forget--comments on posts are strongly encouraged.
thanks new readers!
Got great feedback from Nolan that this blog is more about noticing how annoying people are and hopefully trying to minimize your annoying self when traveling.
I must admit that since I am not carrier hopping or shopping anymore it is really the Delta and AirTran show and I guess I've said all there is to say for you all to think about when buying tix.
For those of you who haven't read those old posts and won't but want to know the bottom-line: I only fly Delta because they fly a lot of places overseas and I want to use my FFmiles for that, particularly on AirFrance--cause it RULES.
However, it is a lot of hassle, rudeness and drudgery every week for months or years to rack up those points for your once every few year's vacation overseas, so just weigh that into your decision.
Hasta for now. Don't forget--comments on posts are strongly encouraged.
thanks new readers!
Monday, July 19, 2010
FYI--lost and found pix
I took some pix of the Denver Airport but somehow lost them so will re-shoot this week. Now that this is published I'm a bit more motivated to get to the airport early, though I'm loathe to be there one minute longer than I need to in general. :)
(ahem Miss Mary--1.5 hr wait!) Wish I knew my pix were lost then.
UPDATE: found em! Here ya go!
This is my FAVE sign in all of DIA. I want to know where to pick my enemies up.
(ahem Miss Mary--1.5 hr wait!) Wish I knew my pix were lost then.
UPDATE: found em! Here ya go!
Sunday, July 18, 2010
TURN OFF YOUR SCREENS
This is a command and a plea to people on flights with the in seat screens:
IF YOU ARE NOT WATCHING THE TELEVISION, TURN THE DAMN THING OFF!!!
I do not understand people at all. On my last Delta flight the in board tv/movie/games service would not reboot (bad for Linux) and no one could figure it out.
So, of course I turned off my screen. I looked all around me and even when I went to the bathroom approximately 98.5% of people let their screens keep flickering every of couple of seconds through Delta's adds.
Only after I had my screen off and my neighbors were having difficulty sleeping did they think to copy me and turn theirs off too. I think I saw 3 others total off and those 3 had no influence on their neighbors either.
WTF is up with people? Why would people want to see this flicker every couple of seconds for 2.5 hours? Could they really not have seen the power button? Could they not have been bothered by it? How could they ignore it, truly ignore it, for 2.5 hours? Could they be so clueless and unimaginative to try to find a power button?
I've seen idiocy on Frontier for the same thing except Frontier doesn't have a power button. The user there has to figure out to lower the brightness level down to 0.
So, is it me or are Delta customers imbeciles?
IF YOU ARE NOT WATCHING THE TELEVISION, TURN THE DAMN THING OFF!!!
I do not understand people at all. On my last Delta flight the in board tv/movie/games service would not reboot (bad for Linux) and no one could figure it out.
So, of course I turned off my screen. I looked all around me and even when I went to the bathroom approximately 98.5% of people let their screens keep flickering every of couple of seconds through Delta's adds.
Only after I had my screen off and my neighbors were having difficulty sleeping did they think to copy me and turn theirs off too. I think I saw 3 others total off and those 3 had no influence on their neighbors either.
WTF is up with people? Why would people want to see this flicker every couple of seconds for 2.5 hours? Could they really not have seen the power button? Could they not have been bothered by it? How could they ignore it, truly ignore it, for 2.5 hours? Could they be so clueless and unimaginative to try to find a power button?
I've seen idiocy on Frontier for the same thing except Frontier doesn't have a power button. The user there has to figure out to lower the brightness level down to 0.
So, is it me or are Delta customers imbeciles?
Recent Delta Flights
Even though I am elite on AT, I keep trying to fly Delta 1x per month to keep my points up and it looks like I'll get Silver Medallion after next flight, though, besides for free bags, there is not much reason. Silver gets you nada, esp in ATL.
So, last week I was on Delta both ways and both were interesting.
Crew to Den were all based in Detroit. At least one if not several had some sort of accent, kind of hard to discern but I settled on French. I sat in the exit row and instead of the attendant quizzing each row individually (there were 4 rows total) about the willing and able to assist stuff, the guy asked us all at once and basically only listened to row nearest him and took off.
Then, for descent, they announced that we'd be landing shortly but never came around after that to get trash, make sure that all seats and tray tables were up, appliances off, etc. There were a bunch of us who looked around as were were about to land like "OMG, I could have kept my table and seat down and my IPod on the whole time and they wouldn't know!" The crew totally didn't care which was amazing. That or they all thought someone else was doing the work. Maybe they were all on strike mid-flight.
For the return to ATL flight again the attendants were Detroit based (no discernible accents this time) and though not as lackadaisical they too did not feel they were the Nazi enforcers that most attendants do nowadays, particularly Delta employees.
Two theories on this:
1) The Detroit crew really has different standards or work ethic. If so, why? What is it about Detroit that makes them so casual? Could it be that since ATL is homebase they get more training here? Could it be that Detroit just realizes that there are bigger fish to fry? Maybe since their economy has been in the tank for so long their priorities have totally changed/reset? Could it be that Detroit is really more the norm and that just ATL staff are evil because living in ATL sucks so much and it just gives everyone a nasty attitude?
2) While 1 has a lot of interesting regional and cultural implications that hopefully are worth talking about, I think my 2nd idea is more likely: Attendants work by seniority which means that maybe it is a different level of seniority working this summer. As mentioned in past blogs the vibe on delta flights sucks as their are so many medallion members that they expect a lot and have a bitchy entitled attitude. Well, that has actually been reduced this summer. I don't know why but maybe just having more leisure travelers on board has changed the vibe. Security has sucked more everywhere as no one is enforcing the expert lane and there are just too many people who have no idea how to travel going through security so the vibe there sucks but on board it has actually been very nice. So, I think that the less senior attendants are working and are just happy to get hours and because there is no "I DESERVE THE WORLD" attitude on board the attendants are actually being more patient and helpful. So, the really interesting socio-cultural question in this one is why would the more senior attendants all have bad attitudes? Burnt out? Overdue to retire or use those great benies for a nice trip of their own?
So, last week I was on Delta both ways and both were interesting.
Crew to Den were all based in Detroit. At least one if not several had some sort of accent, kind of hard to discern but I settled on French. I sat in the exit row and instead of the attendant quizzing each row individually (there were 4 rows total) about the willing and able to assist stuff, the guy asked us all at once and basically only listened to row nearest him and took off.
Then, for descent, they announced that we'd be landing shortly but never came around after that to get trash, make sure that all seats and tray tables were up, appliances off, etc. There were a bunch of us who looked around as were were about to land like "OMG, I could have kept my table and seat down and my IPod on the whole time and they wouldn't know!" The crew totally didn't care which was amazing. That or they all thought someone else was doing the work. Maybe they were all on strike mid-flight.
For the return to ATL flight again the attendants were Detroit based (no discernible accents this time) and though not as lackadaisical they too did not feel they were the Nazi enforcers that most attendants do nowadays, particularly Delta employees.
Two theories on this:
1) The Detroit crew really has different standards or work ethic. If so, why? What is it about Detroit that makes them so casual? Could it be that since ATL is homebase they get more training here? Could it be that Detroit just realizes that there are bigger fish to fry? Maybe since their economy has been in the tank for so long their priorities have totally changed/reset? Could it be that Detroit is really more the norm and that just ATL staff are evil because living in ATL sucks so much and it just gives everyone a nasty attitude?
2) While 1 has a lot of interesting regional and cultural implications that hopefully are worth talking about, I think my 2nd idea is more likely: Attendants work by seniority which means that maybe it is a different level of seniority working this summer. As mentioned in past blogs the vibe on delta flights sucks as their are so many medallion members that they expect a lot and have a bitchy entitled attitude. Well, that has actually been reduced this summer. I don't know why but maybe just having more leisure travelers on board has changed the vibe. Security has sucked more everywhere as no one is enforcing the expert lane and there are just too many people who have no idea how to travel going through security so the vibe there sucks but on board it has actually been very nice. So, I think that the less senior attendants are working and are just happy to get hours and because there is no "I DESERVE THE WORLD" attitude on board the attendants are actually being more patient and helpful. So, the really interesting socio-cultural question in this one is why would the more senior attendants all have bad attitudes? Burnt out? Overdue to retire or use those great benies for a nice trip of their own?
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