Air travel

What the heck is up with air travel these days?
Every plane is full - often with fat smelly men in sweat pants, like they came to the airport straight from the marathon. And yet NONE of these planes seem to get anywhere on time.
I don't know what the problem is, but I'm sure Obama will fix it.

We dropped off our oldest to go back to school today. My wife went in to help get them to the security line which turned out to be a good thing because their checked bag was 54 pounds - having picked up a few Christmas gifts since arriving. Turns out that checking a bag over 50 pounds - even 4 pounds over - costs $125!!!!! So they dug out some heavy stuff which we now need to mail. Since a second bag was only $25 more, we should have put all that stuff - along with the presents we need to mail anyway - into a second bag and checked it. Live and learn.

So that's the least of it. On the way home from school, the poor child was delayed on one flight and finally ended up spending the night at the San Francisco airport. OK. These things happen.
Then on the way back to school, they are delayed again. And looking at the airline website, they've changed the ticket to a different flight (an earlier flight which still hadn't left the ground) and also confirmed a reservation on an additional flight for the connecting leg in case the delay caused them to miss the original flight - so you had one person booked on four flights at all kinds of overlapping times.

Turns out, it all worked out and they got home relatively on time and without any grief.

But it got me thinking of a couple things:
I noticed that United has a new color scheme for their jets. Given the cost of repainting a jet and the economic conditions of United, what are they thinking? If my budget was tight, I'd decide to wait a while before I take the family car to Maaco. I couldn't find any definitive sources, but the ranges for paint jobs on airliners seems to be about $50,000 to $60,000 - that's EACH. Maybe they should use this coupon. While musing on this, I found this interesting writeup on the tradeoffs in polished versus painted aircraft finishes. Did you know the paint on a 737 weighs about 180 lbs? That's 126 lbs more than my child's suitcase. That means we could have just scraped off about a square foot of paint to compensate for the extra 4 pounds.

Has anyone noticed that the post 9/11 security changes all seem to be things that the airlines wanted anyway? Not the part about making the Burger King rejects into unionized federal employees, but the parts about not being able to go to the gate to wait for someone or to drop someone off, effectively limiting checked baggage in ways the airlines couldn't bring themselves to do on their own, etc. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they suddenly determine that food of any kind on the plane is a hazard. And now, viola, United will offer you their special fast security lane - where they try to drop your laptop less often - for only $25 more.

Finally, hey, I paid like $600 for this ticket - how about a WHOLE can of soda?!?!