If you have nothing good to say about U.S. travel, come sit by me
I am disgusted.
I am a U.S. traveler with multiple transportation options, and most of them are awful.
After a week spent flying from Texas to Virginia to Chicago back to Texas, my verdict is official - air travel is simply wretched. Unless you have the money to decamp to first class, which I do not, it is a soul-sucking, annoying, tiring disaster (and I was traveling alone, without having to worry about wrangling young children.)
I am not clueless about the current high price of fuel, so I understand why the airlines (except for Southwest, which actually planned for a fuel price increase) think they must nickel and dime passengers for every mangy pillow, blanket, sandwich, suitcase and inch of legroom, but I’d rather just pay for a somewhat higher-priced ticket and not be treated like a fee-ridden pest in coach.
I’m your customer, Mr. Airline.
I’m dealing with your dinky seats — I’m not obese nor am I tall, so I can handle crummy seat pitch although if you squeeze it much more, I won’t be able to fit.
I’m dealing with no food — I buy my own sandwich from some random nasty, unimaginative, overpriced food joint in your rat-filled airports.
I check in online, print my own boarding pass and try to arrive early, so you airline jerks can’t involuntarily bump me because you overbooked flights that you knew would be full.
I’m dealing with your rules about checked luggage and I refuse to let you lose my suitcase and have it end up in your Alabama warehouse — I traveled for a week with everything in my wheelie Travelpro carry-on.
I am not clueless about terrorism (co-Honor Graduate of my US Naval War College class should count for something) but I fail to understand uneven enforcement of various draconian TSA security rules that have dubious anti-terrorism benefit.
Example: the great 3 oz liquid flail, wherein my little baggie of appropriately-sized liquid toiletries sailed through checkpoints at Austin and Washington Dulles but TSA suddenly decides at Chicago O’Hare that the bag’s too big….except it was a quart-sized zip-top bag that I picked up from TSA last October when they were handing them out at the Albuquerque airport.
FAIL.
Give me a break.
Let’s not even get into how unwelcome visitors to the U.S. feel, thanks to our screening procedures.
Here’s my beef: we don’t have any other significantly better travel options in the U.S.
- Unlike Europe and many other continents, we don’t really have a viable passenger rail system in the U.S. that can provide an efficient, well-priced alternative that runs on time, other than a somewhat functional Amtrak grid in the Northeast. I did find a family who rode the rails roundtrip Tucson-Chicago, but don’t expect to adhere to any schedule. Hope springs eternal, since May 10 is National Train Day, for what that’s worth (and I’m the granddaughter of a railroad engineer, so the demise of U.S. rail is painful.)
- Would you take your kids and “go Greyhound?” Bus systems are starting to respond better to the needs of budget travelers (check out Megabus and BoltBus) but how well do those funky downtown bus stations work with children in tow?
- Gas is pushing $4/gallon, and it seems wasteful for individuals or families to each load up a car and hit the road, rather than use mass transportation.
Where does this leave the family traveler?
The best (but less planet-friendly and more expensive option, when you include hotels) is to drive yourself, and that’s what I plan to do with my family this summer.
To heck with it.
We will explore our own backyard near Austin, and perhaps take a few short road trips to East Texas and maybe to a Bandera family dude ranch (wish me luck convincing my city kid teen to do THAT one!)
I’m not paying another dime to the airlines until I can figure out how to fly with my kids fairly comfortably, without feeling like I’m in a game of cat-and-mouse to avoid tyrannical air travel policies and price structures.
I’m smarter than that, Mr. Airline. You lose.
(My post title is a riff on a favorite saying by Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy’s daughter and a noted curmudgeon.)
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Tags: air travel, airline fees, Amtrak, family travel, flying, road trips, travel by bus, travel by car, travel by train
May 8th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Excellent Rant Sheila! You captured the zeitgeist of air travel today with lots of links to prove it! Wow, this triggered some ideas around “train-oriented travel” with hotels and attractions nearby train stations so you don’t have to drive or rent a car. Kids love trains! Just that kids and trains both require infinite time…
May 8th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Hey Elliott, great to see you. Yes, I told my husband this morning that I wanted to check out something like Megabus or BoltBus if they’re here in Texas yet. You should’ve seen the skeptical look I got in return….
The Texas Eagle train goes places here in Texas and I’d love to ride it with the family, but with some assurance that we’d actually arrive/depart somewhere near a few hours of the scheduled times. I’m just too used to European & Asian trains that actually run somewhat on time and have their act together.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Tragically, when I looked at train vs. flight fares to SF from Seattle, it cost more for me to take the train (admittedly with sleeper, but it’s an 18+ hour trip!) then it did to fly. That was very disappointing. 45 minute flight vs. 18 hour train trip? ARGH! I WAS willing, but it had to beat the price, at least.
Carpooling. There’s an option.
May 8th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Hi Pam,
I did the same thing; looked into taking the train for my Washington DC to Chicago trip leg last week. A regular seat was pretty cheap, but a basic overnight sleeper was much more expensive compared to a flight. I wimped out of sitting up all night, and flew.
Not looking for the Orient Express, but we’ve gotta do better….
May 8th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
This seems like a good time to mention that this Saturday is National Train Day. Ride a train!
Not even spending the big bucks for a first class ticket helps when you are flying a US airline. A family member just returned from a 7-hour flight on United. He was in business class, $1100 ticket. The seat didn’t recline, so even though the flight left at 10 pm, he wasn’t able to sleep. And the entertainment console was broken - whenever he tried to set the TV up, it flopped down. $1100.
It’s time to rethink the airline industry. As in, not have one. It’s polluting, inefficient, and unpleasant. It fails miserably to be a strategic resource. Corporations should use virtual worlds to interface instead.
A car trip with the kids is far less polluting than a plane flight also.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
I travel quite a bit and I love it when the staff are creative, fun and seem like they enjoy their work - rarely. I’d love to just get the fun and adventure back into airline travel. No idea how that might happen, but airlines, are you listening?
Great post.
(found you on twitter)
May 9th, 2008 at 2:12 am
Oh, man, Sheila, you are so right about all of this.
I’m an expat in Egypt, and just yesterday I booked our travel to the US for my summer leave. My husband has fewer weeks in the US, so I’ll be going both ways alone with my boys on six different flights (a few within the US), including two of 12 hours in the air.
But, honestly, the airports and getting on the plane are worse than the flights themselves. I used to think non-US airports and airlines had it together, but now it seems everyone’s a mess. What I particularly hate at international airports is when you have to take a bus to and from the airplane. So you walk for miles to get to your gate… then you wait in line to get through to the gate… then you wait in line to get to the bus… then you wait for the bus to load… then you want to get off the bus… then you wait to load up on the plane.
And this from someone who’s really excited for our travels! Oy.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
[…] If you have nothing good to say about U.S. travel, come sit by me […]
May 9th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
@ Hi Raq, I did mention National Train Day, which is nice but won’t solve Amtrak’s reliability issues (since it must share tracks with freight traffic.) Maybe we ought to become 1930s-era boxcar hobos on freight trains….:)
@ Hi Michelle, thanks for stopping by from Twitter!
@ Hi Ms. Four, gosh I’m very sorry you have to do all that with kids; it’s hard on everyone, isn’t it?
May 10th, 2008 at 4:45 am
Re: hobos — you obviously haven’t watched the film “Into the Wild.” Apparently the trains take freeriders quite seriously . . .
“The Bus” is nowhere near as sketchy as everyone seems to think. This rebranding (Mega- and BoltBus) of buses is in direct response to the supposed discomfort for middle- and upper-class passengers on regular bus lines. You run into the same “problems” on buses as you do in any public space. Most of us are simply spoiled by the insularity of our own vehicles. I for one think it would be awesome if more families started taking buses rather than driving on longer trips.
May 10th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
I consider myself to be pretty tolerant. And, while other travelers have been whining for years about bad air travel experiences, I thought they were simply being whiners.
Now, like you, I’ve joined the ranks.
Travel is my business and I love it once I’m THERE. But getting there has become depressing. I don’t need to go into details since you’ve outlined my own complaints above.
I will share one happy story… On a recent flight from Tokyo to Seattle, the Northwest Airlines pilot came through the plane to say hello to everyone and express his gratitude for us all flying with him. Once back in the cockpit, he sang us a song and played the harmonica. It surely put everyone in a good mood for the remainder of the flight.
Travel Well,
Beth Whitman
http://www.WanderlustAndLipstick.com
May 10th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
@ Hi poetloverrebelspy (that’s almost as good as sendlawyersgunsandmoney) No, haven’t seen “Into the Wild” but was just joking about hobo-ing on freight trains; probably not good for one’s legal health. And thanks for the plug for bus travel; I mean, we can’t get much more squooshed together than we are on planes, right?
@ Hi Beth, Thanks for stopping by, and for sharing a positive story from your Northwest Airlines experience. He sounds like a guy who “gets it.” No one expects perfection or luxury (at least not in coach) but pleasant human contact contributes so much to a memorable travel experience.
May 11th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Funny that May 10 in National Train Day as I just booked myself, wife, and family on a train from Portland to Seattle and then Seattle to Vancouver. Are you ready for the price? I used my AAA discount and it was $126 for ALL of us. Sweet! No airport hassles, no decrepit planes, no nickel and diming for baggage, and we’ll probably get from point A to B faster than we would have in a plane. If only we could do this in more parts of the country.
I will say though that this sad state of affairs is not something I encounter all that much traveling internationally. As soon as you depart our air space, things seem to improve markedly, even when you are on a U.S. airline. I just flew back from Honduras in coach and got a beer, a meal, and a movie. And the flight crew couldn’t have been more pleasant. Remember those days? My last one on Copa was even better.