Dear people who work at the airport(life-after-ssri.bearblog.dev) |
Dear people who work at the airport(life-after-ssri.bearblog.dev) |
I went to see a gate agent because I had a question. Right after yelling at someone else for the same reason, they told me "No, you have to use the kiosks."
By the time I got to the check-in kiosks I figured it out. Maybe they worked for some people but it had to be like 20% at best. Everyone else had to have help, myself included. It wouldn't scan my passport for the first 5 attempts, and then it wouldnt print my bag tag so I had to see the agent anyways.
What is the purpose of an automated system that drives everyone to the manual system? It just added an extra step.
Sorry for venting.
I am a pleb and say this btw.
Low cost economy was a mistake and shouldn’t exist. Half of all people shouldn’t be flying.
https://travelupdate.com/business-class-seat-selection-fee/
Wanna sit with your partner? Both of you, pay up! Lounge access? Oh, that's extra now.
I don’t need meals for domestic flights, and it’s trivial for me to pack a little something. Noise canceling earphones and ipads/laptops/phones make entertaining oneself trivial.
There is even wifi now, and messaging is free so you can be in constant communication with your friends/family, especially to coordinate pickup.
The planes themselves are better (except maybe if you are a big person). But price per hour of flight time for me has stayed below inflation, so I assume the extra seats helps offset that for me.
I can buy flights anywhere, anytime on my electronic devices, have the boarding passes on my watch or phone or paper, and I can get push notifications about all flights so pickups/dropoffs are simple. I can even see the status of the plane’s previous flight so I get even more of a heads up about delays. There is also luggage tracking available now, at least with airtags if not from the airline itself.
In the early 1990s, my girlfriend was scared of flying. I went with her to the gate for emotional support. I also sometimes met people when they arrived at the gate. No longer, at least, not without some planning.
In the early 1990s, full names and id checks were not required. This made for an active resale market which has since disappeared, with the profit going to the airliners. My mother and I share the same first initial, which proved personally useful one time when we booked the ticket as "E. Smith" since we weren't sure which of us was going make the trip. No longer.
In the 1990s, from drop-off to gate in the small city I lived was about 5 minutes, for carry-on. Check-in at the gate by showing the ticket. The only inspection was for guns. I regularly carried a pocket knife back then, even on planes. No longer.
In the early 2000s I traveled international. My carry-on at times included bottles of beer (to share with people in Europe) and wine (returning from South Africa), since I thought that would be safer than in my luggage. I bought them in regular stores. No longer.
Around 2008 I made the mistake once of returning international via SFO to visit friends there. I knew where they lived - I've driven there many times. But I didn't know their zip, only their street address, and there was no way for me to check in the new automated kiosk without that vital piece of useless information. I was able to look it up, but I was flustered and in panic that I would miss the flight.
Back in the 1990s, as US citizen I could just show up in most countries, with only my passport - no visa, no fingerprinting, no automated facial recognition, and no "electronic system for travel authorization" or rather its foreign equivalents.
It even worked the other way. I had friends of mine from South Africa going to Canada for a conference, with a transfer in the US. They didn't know they were supposed to get a US visa even though they didn't leave the airport. But the US at the time did have the TWOV (Transit Without Visa) program, which meant they were able to get to the conference and back home. They even had a comfortable TWOV room at the airport, and an escort for those who needed to step outside for a smoke. The TWOV program was suspended in 2003 and has not been restored.
Air travel in the 1990s felt like freedom. Now it feels like a key part of modern government security and control, with little leeway for humanity.
100% disagree.
All of this is true, and no matter how much you do it, it's still all true.
I can't even keep track of what I'm supposed to do at my own home airport that I've been to thousands of times. Some people know me on a first name basis there, and still act judgmental when something was (seemingly randomly) changed and I don't know about it.
TSA is by far the worst in the USA though. Their expectation that you do exactly what you should, without telling you what to do, while constantly changing the rules, is infuriating. Often there'll be 2-3 lines and DESPITE HAVING THE SAME SCANNERS, they'll have different unspoken rules that you are literally yelled at over.
Of course, this is baby/bathwater territory as only a fraction of a percentage of people are up to no good, and of those only a percentage is a danger to others.
It's all so organized and simple and zero need to rush. They even have signs in all major languages, it's nuts!
Source: SF, Miami, New York, Bolivia, Argentina, Texas - all kind of the same all over. Like visiting different Wawa's.
We need to go back to when flying was for the elites only.
For the climate, of course.
This not the only story, there are many stories, like the one time they politely asked me to keep my bag at the front door of the airplane because there’s no enough space (I found inside people with three pieces tho), silly me I thought I will take it when I leave only to find they checked it, and the rest of the trip I was left with nothing but my passport (luckily I had it with me or I will be stranded), only to find some of my stuff got stolen from my bag and a broken laptop.
The first story however is the symbolization of the infamous Canadian bureaucracy in anything government wise, what something could be solved in one step quickly, gets convoluted with so many steps because who ever designed them is either out of touch of reality and needs to touch some grass, or just straight up moron, the same applies for hospitals ER btw, it’s not “short staff” as they claim, it’s just a poor process design.
Railways aren't much better. German railways are bad enough, but Eastern Europe... good luck even finding a realtime track schedule, and screw you if you don't speak the language. Last time in Rijeka there was construction going on but no indications anywhere, my fellow travellers were lucky I spoke Croatian and recognized that the attendant was shouting in Croatian for the people on what should have been a train...
It also doesn't help when so many countries (and even cities) have totally different systems for paying, etc. Contactless payment is simplifying some of that. But you still, for example, have the need to tap out in some places but not others. And, no, having to scour guidebooks (of possibly outdated info), for all the right incantations for a given locale isn't really satisfactory.
The tapping out thing can be so confusing, even as someone that uses transit a lot. I was traveling recently and encountered buses where you had to tap in only, ones you had to tap in and out on, and ones where you had to tell the driver where you were going before tapping in. None of which had clear signage on the bus itself.
Even with my home system, at the airport I noticed they had installed extra stickers covering up the wrong way gates, and I had to tell someone where to tap their tickets when their entire family was blocking my way to the platform when trying to get home.
German service providers absolutely don't care if you don't speak German and will take that extra step to make sure you get the message.
> When we try to find gate B45, we encounter the following sign:
(see board with 2 B45 gates)
Well, yes. This is wrong. And confusing. But mostly wrong
1. Use ChatGPT (or similar) to make a fun and attractive greetings card image that is a farcical representation of the situation.
2. Use MoonPig.com (or similar) to send it through the real/royal mail to someone important (but not the CEO) at the company that has annoyed you.
This need not cost more than $6. That's almost certainly less than 1% the cost of the long haul flight that this happened on.
Everything you describe is likely a function of the CFO being allowed to treat the savings they can find as if they are a profit centre. It is incumbent upon those of us that can see a better way to demonstrate that the 5p per flight that the CFO optimised annoyed some customers enough to spend real time bringing it to someone's attention.
The first time I did this I effectively received over $2,000 from my airline of choice (though the path to that was convoluted). Most people don't react well to being told they are wrong. Use your intellect and industry to show them a better way in a positive and friendly way.
You will usually get better results and by spreading more positivity in the world will likely feel happier too.
My observation is that's improved a lot. But I remember I was traveling somewhare on UK trains, and between receipts and tickets for trains after a change, I had this sheaf of cards that my friend and I were rifling through to get on a train (with a short connection) and it wasn't at all obvious what we needed to feed into the turnstyle with people getting annoyed behind us.
Don’t care about who you sit next to? Have a discount!
Suppose you operate an airline, and your costs increase (e.g. fuel, labor, etc). Your options are to divide the increase equally by number of seats, or you increase price differently based on customer’s ability and willingness to pay.
I do not see what is “wrong” about the latter. In fact, the latter would allow maintaining more access to air travel for those who can afford it the least.
I don’t care for airport lounges, why should I pay for them? Same for bigger seats, or checked bags, or alcoholic drinks, etc.
But they can, and will, always stretch this further than it should go.
It's like a restaurant that charges you extra for cutlery. Some cultures eat with their hands, and probably plenty of people would take a discount to do so. But it ruins the experience in the long term, and then the industry demands a bailout and we all get to pay more taxes for a shitty experience so they can buy back shares to boost the stock.
Eventually "basic economy" becomes a single iron maiden at the back of the plane used to punish the lowest-paying passenger for not knowing about its existence.
That is just an opinion. For example:
>It's like a restaurant that charges you extra for cutlery. Some cultures eat with their hands, and probably plenty of people would take a discount to do so. But it ruins the experience in the long term
My parents and family come from a culture that almost exclusively eats with their hands. It is so important to them that they actually say they do not feel like they have eaten unless they eat with their hands.
>and then the industry demands a bailout and we all get to pay more taxes for a shitty experience so they can buy back shares to boost the stock.
This is a separate topic about politics, not about the "right" or "wrong" nature of a business choosing how to price discriminate.
>Eventually "basic economy" becomes a single iron maiden at the back of the plane used to punish the lowest-paying passenger for not knowing about its existence.
Not according to any flight I have been on. I don't see the point of feeling outrage at something that hasn't happened. In my experience, basic economy is still just as clean and safe of a seat as the others, you get on the plane, sit down, and put headphones on or read a book or go to sleep. If they let me pay a lower price for that, great!
Because the "sticker" price is prominently advertised, so advertising a lower price than nickel-and-diming up leaves a sour taste in people's mouths rather than advertising a higher price then offering a discount, even if the final prices are the same. Of course, everyone shops for flights on comparison websites, so their only metric is that sticker price, and airlines have to engage in this sort of stuff to be competitive.
Imagine if they charged extra for seat belts, or getting help evacuating after a crash. Some people would be willing to take the extra risk in exchange for paying less. You let more people access air travel. People who value safety can pay extra for more of it. There would be rightful outrage.
Something like lounge access is firmly in the realm of reasonable price discrimination. Charge extra, certainly! But something like charging extra to sit with your travel companions is bullshit. That sort of thing should be strongly rejected.
Why? This isn't happening, and I can't figure out how it is productive to make up a scenario.
>But something like charging extra to sit with your travel companions is bullshit. That sort of thing should be strongly rejected.
Suppose a plane has seats in groups of 3s, and everyone on the plane is in a group of even number of people. Obviously, seating everyone together is impossible. As a seller, why is it "bullshit" to give the people that do not get to sit with their companion a lower price?
Are we just learning about future tense?
> In my experience, basic economy is still just as clean and safe of a seat as the others...
They are meaningfully less safe.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8412040/
"Economy class syndrome refers to the occurrence of thrombotic events during long-haul flights, mainly in economy class passengers."
Airlines are looking at standing seats (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_seat), which would absolutely impact evacuation safety (mainly a concern of bandwidth through the aisle/doors) to save some ticket costs.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/mar/05/ryanair-toi...
> Obviously, seating everyone together is impossible.
We manage it just fine at the movie theater, at sports stadiums, etc.
Sometimes you're one row behind. Sometimes the last person to book is in a weird spot. But largely, if you want to sit with your spouse, you'll be able to.
At a certain point, the bean counters have to be told no.
>Ryanair threatened to make people pay for toilet usage.
Ryanair says a lot of crap as part of their advertising strategy. It is ragebait/clickbait/etc. Eitherway, it's on the government to enforce basic standards.
>At a certain point, the bean counters have to be told no.
The government should ensure minimum standards (and sufficient competition in the market). Everything else, let the customers decide what they want or do not want to pay for.
"Other people are also enshittifying" is not the argument you think it to be. (It's not the case in my area, incidentally.)
You asserted it couldn't be done. I quote:
> Obviously, seating everyone together is impossible.
Another place I experience this phenomenon is bike shops. They'll start talking to you with specialized vocabulary and won't give you the time of day if you don't know exactly what they're talking about. Yet, I brought my bike to the bike shop because I'm not an expert bike mechanic. Funny enough, I couldn't find a bike shop that wasn't like this so with the help of youtube I do all my own bike work now.
Ugh, the industry still needs to do so much work to this end. There are good shops out there, fwiw, but the elitism is real. Totally counterproductive for a means of conveyance that is so elegantly classless (in the positive, egalitarian sense).
[0]though adjusting the tension spring on the brake levers still puzzles me sometimes... Looser should mean it travels more when you squeeze and release the brake lever, right? Stiffer spring has less displacement for a given force. Not quite. https://www.sheldonbrown.com/canti-direct.html#parallel
I'm pretty sure I know who is more responsible for ruining cycling.
Fortunately my local shop in the suburbs here couldn't be more different. They're patient and lovely with my kids, efficient and non-condescending with my wife, will even send a little car to your house to collect a broken bike for service - whether or not they sold it.
The only bike shops that aren't this way are going to be relatively small and new establishments where the owner is the only guy there. Do not expect the advice or inventory to be all that great.
If you just want the advice, catch the salesman that he's eventually forced to hire when they're off work at the bar.
I used to bike with a few bike shop employees and they were only in it to eke out a living doing something adjacent to the thing they love, selling bikes was not their passion, riding them and talking about the tech was.
At least 10 years ago, wages in the whole sector were pretty low, so you'd only work there if you really wanted to and valued perks like buying bikes at wholesale (hey, that's half off) and having access to tools or a mechanic buddy.
I think the sort of lingo-centric scoffing “expertise” is a defensive posture that near-novices tend to take, to scare off further questions. You see it in every field, and we should all be careful not to replicate it in our own.
This is my personal favorite story about bike shops (from circa 2008).
At the time, I both lived and worked in Manhattan. I was lucky that biking was an option for commuting but the only bike I had was a 20 year old Giant Acapulco (not a fancy bike at all).
I worked down in Tribeca and one day on the way to work my shifters just broke. Thankfully, there was a bike shop near work so I dropped of the bike in the morning and said I would be back that afternoon.
Fast forward to the afternoon and I come in to pick up my bike (as I assumed it was an easy fix and they would just charge me). The repair counter guy looks at my ticket, checks something and says he has to go get the manager. This is somewhat confusing as this was a simple fix or repair.
The manager comes out and several of the staff are arrayed behind him. Now I'm a mixture of concerned and fascinated as to what could possibly have happened to my bike given this deployment of bike shop personnel.
Manager: "Sir, the repair for your shifters is going to cost $40"
Me: "Ok, is there an issue with that?"
Manager: "Well, a quality used bike would cost you about $60 so we weren't sure how you would want us to proceed"
(I should add that the staff behind him all seemed as though they were holding their breath here).
Me: "That's cool. I'm good with the repair"
Everyone visibly relaxed, the manager turned around, pointed at one guy, then turned back to me and said "Your bike will be ready tomorrow."
My only thought on this level of nervousness is due to the shop being near a lot of investment bank offices that had a very type A guys who were also into bike racing. I myself dealt with a lot of those folks so it's not hard to imagine the shop staff assuming I would be that way too.
also, it's easiest to use that same app for the boarding pass too these days
once I printed them out (with the provided pdf) thinking it would be easier, the printed paper didn't work and they said I HAD to install and use the app or go back to a kiosk and use one of their printouts and lose my place in line...)
Lazy/incompetent/annoyed employees is the inevitable outcome of such an environment
Which would be great if it was actually accurate. Took a United flight two days ago. Checked two bags. App only reported one bag loaded onto plane. Spent the flight anxiously wondering if the other bag had been lost. Both bags arrived fine.
I'd rather have no information than unreliable information.
I got to LAX and I proceeded to try to find my UA flight, but the flight number was nowhere to be found. I waited a bit and when it still didn’t show up on the monitor, I asked a gate agent. The agent looked at my ticket and told me to keep waiting.
Eventually I started to get worried as my departure time was approaching. I asked another gate agent, and this time I was informed my flight was not a United flight at all! It was a US Airways flight. Also, it was in a completely different terminal. Also, at LAX to move between terminals you have to exit security and hike across parking structures and parking lots. There was no way I would make my flight.
I looked at my ticket and sure enough, in small print it said “operated by US airways.” I hadn’t even noticed this, but even if I had, how was I supposed to know that this meant it was literally not a United flight at all?
Thankfully a friendly customer service agent took mercy on me and got me booked on an American flight later that day.
I later learned from a flight attendant friend that this was called a “code share” and it was subsequently changed to make it more user friendly.
There are a million things like this I don’t even think about anymore because I travel so much. But when I think back to those days of early adulthood I remember how stressful and confusing airports could be.
The one thing that kind of works for me is, “Well, what should I do?” when they bark orders about what I can’t do.
“You can’t have your boarding pass in your hand!”, when you’re in the x-ray. “Where should I put it now?”
Oh well, it turns out I actually can have it in my hand. Thanks.
When i attempted to find airport maps, I was met with a mess of mobile apps, mobile website pdf's, and an enormous amount of text.
Just... give me an easy to use map. Call out the obvious use cases like "how to transfer terminals" and "your bags will/will-not be checked through".
Feels like your explanation is missing a few steps.
The latter group are so, so happy that you addressed the former, and not them. They have successfully avoided the inconvenience and scrutiny that would prompt them to change. (Of course, between Abe and the UHC guy, taking your complaints directly to an executive also seems to be effective, if not even more so.)
The experience doesn't have to be so stressful and confusing, but I'm not sure how to fix it.
I can't remember which airports/countries/systems require which procedures, so I just have to go in blind every time.
As far as I can tell the difference between them is that a personal item can't have wheels.
There's a of implicit knowledge in that environment.
It's much simpler; the incoming plane takes pretty much any available gate, because they are all almost always full.
Getting the two flights to Vienna in the same spot might mean an hour of extra waiting on the tarmac for a gate to open up.
Beginning to get worried and with no-one to talk to in the construction site of an airport I discovered that I needed to rotate my phone and then the extra columns appeared on their website. Yes I had tried scrolling and zooming, but in portrait it wouldn't actually render outside of the visible width.
Additionally I want to make a scene every time I hand over documents and get told "I don't need this" since if I hadn't provided that ID/Passport/Boarding pass there was an equal chance I'd get berated for not providing it. There is zero empathy for the traveller. If I walk forward I get yelled at, if I wait to be called I get yelled at, it's infuriating. Everything about the airport feels like a lose-lose scenario to me.
I don't fly that often and every time I do I hate the airport experience so much because I feel like I'm constantly doing _something_ wrong.
The security theater of the TSA is just the moldy cherry on top of the shit sundae that is flying.
I recently flew and the airport had gotten the new scanners since the last time I had gone somewhere. The signage was confusing as only some of the lines had signs that specifically said you didn't have to take out your electronics on "this lane only". Even with the new scanners they were pulling out half the bags for additional screening and only had one person doing the additional screening.
Coming back from overseas I saw how it was supposed to work, walked up and they directed me to a line and a specific bin loading station, had someone remind me to ensure my pockets were empty, walked through the scanner and my bag was already waiting for me, took all of 2 minutes.
It's a bunch of baloney.
That's not why she was anxious! She was anxious because, according to author's own account, this is someone:
a) flying for the first time
b) hardly speaks English
c) is in a foreign country
d) solo responsible for 4 grand kids running around
etc.
Blaming the airport staff who have to optimize for the greater good is quite something.
I had so much confusion on the entire protocols on what is allowed and what is not and all those terminologies, such that a week before travel, I had my friend do a full end-to-end guide on everything we must do since entering an airport to coming out of it.
Even then when I visited it, it was a little different than what my friend told me. But thankfully it is not a rushy airport, so I frankly told my situation to the person issuing boarding pass and he told me in detailed manner everything (my biggest confusion was with luggages).
Unlike a bus or train which you can at the worst case run through and board, for airplanes, you need to go through a lot of checkings and phew...
When in flight, there were a few instructions, messages from pilot etc. However they spoke so fast that it was so unclear. The passangers around me were also talking a little loudly, so I couldn't understand anything.
May be from what I understand, these instructions are so regular, so people who frequent flights find it boring.
For me it was both curiosity and feae of missing important details. And since it was India, they said the instructions in both English and Hindi only (I know only a little Hindi), even though the flights were for different language speaking region.
At the end, it somehow ended up fine. But I think if it were my parents in my place, the journey could have been a nightmare :)
I was at O’hare for the first time in a few decades a few weeks ago and my flight was delayed due to some mechanical issue with the assigned plane. At least that’s what the app said. Because of the delay, the gate kept changing. We were supposed to know this because every once in a while the gate we were at no longer said it was our flight, so there must be some other location. I think at least one of the times it was mentioned over the PA, but besides the flight number everything else was unintelligible.
We see other flights to our destination that were scheduled after ours from the same airline on the same type of plane boarding and leaving. It doesn’t matter that our tickets were from earlier in the day. They’ve already screwed over 150 passengers. Screwing them over more is far less bad than delaying them slightly but having to also delay later flights by a little bit, too. I think we watched three flights leave. As a group of six, with four children, the likelihood of standby coming through on any of these is less than zero.
On the departure board the flight was referred to by a carrier other than the one we bought the tickets from, because of course everyone should know every carrier’s partner airlines and how their flight numbers map.
Three hours of delay had arrived but the plane was finally at the gate. FAA says I’m entitled to a meal for the delay, so I go ask how to redeem it. I’m told to go back to customer service near security and stand in a line to get a voucher. But if I miss the flight, there’s nothing they can do about it. I’m sure that’s not how that’s supposed to work, but I’m several hours delayed already, my plans for the day are shot, missing the flight it really an option just so I can get some airport food.
The time has arrived to start boarding. I’m on chat complaining about the service when it disconnects. The app stops working, so I check the airline’s website, and get a hard down, unstyled error message. I tell my wife that something seems wrong with their site and have my suspicion confirmed a few minutes later that their entire system is down and all flights are halted until further notice. No ETA.
At this point Reddit has more information about what’s happening than the gate agent. It’s another 45 minutes before a mumbly PA announcement tells us flights are delayed due to a global system wide outage.
Fortunately, their IT staff seemed to be on it, and the whole thing only lasted an hour. Then they put us on the plane like nothing happened and even got people to cheer for the crap service. Ice water in hell, I suppose.
Nowadays, if I can take a train, I take the train. At least where I live, the train stations are almost always in the city, very well-connected, are more comfortable, you can arrive very late at the train station since there is no gate, no security, no bullshit. And even if the trip is 3-4h longer with a train, you can make up for it by not having to show up minimum 1 hour early at the airport, then having to wait 1 hour for a slow bus that takes you from the airport to the actual city center, or take a taxi and give them all your life savings.
Bad call-out to Heathrow though where they’re amongst the best in the world at this.
Laptops: In/Out
Liquids: In/Out
Shoes: On/Off
Etc
Recently had to fly with some splints and crutches and stuff and that was a whole extra set of fun difference in airport rules. First one really wanted to rub their explosives swab on my finger that was held together by exposed metal pins and had exposed subcutaneous tissue. They were a bit put off when I asked for alternate options.
Until a few weeks ago when a another TSA official berated me for thinking I could walk through a metal detector wearing a watch...
You're supposed to the watch/bracelet, but you do have to hold your wrist close to your body. You kind of want to hold your hands in front of your body as if you're about to grab one of your wrists with your other hand.
Watches and other jewelry are basically right at the cutoff of detection. They want to detect small knives but not earrings.
This is all absolutely tribal airport knowledge. I had been traveling for work for years, taken hundreds of flights, but I only found this out when my partner tried to go through a metal detector with a semi-permanent bracelet that requires a small screwdriver to take off, and the TSA person mercifully told her exactly how to pose as she walked through the detector.
It is really anxiety inducing overall though. Not to mention the ritual of getting partly undressed before the stupid thing then trying to put everything back on and in pockets on the other side.
Literally never heard of that.
When I pointed to the other agent and said “your friend over there told me to do the opposite, that’s why it’s in there!” they just sort of scowled at me.
I just smiled and went about my day, but yes the TSA is often just a total dumpster fire. Some folks are very nice but too many of their folks have a giant chip on their shoulder about something.
Recent fun experience in Amsterdam:
security line was moving veeeery slowly. Almost every bag got flagged for inspection. As I’m waiting for my bag to get checked, I see two agents briefly mutter in each others ears. One of them walks up to the lady manning the xray machine, taps her on the shoulder, says something in her ear and they swap places. He goes on xray machine, she start checking bags.
Almost every bag after that passed the xray test. Line started moving quickly
In one airport, I had a TSA agent yell at me that I'm not allowed to bring two laptops through precheck in my bag. That they had to go through separately. I complied but asked if that was this airport's policy because no other airport seemed to care. She swore up and down that this was national TSA policy and I should know better if I flew so much.
When I look at the TSA's success rates in audits, I tend to agree with the claim that it is more a government jobs program than a security agency.
All while gaining basically no transferrable skills.
*Also, a significant portion of these strangers are headed to destinations and experiences you could never dream of affording or having the opportunity to access.
After the 20th time you ask someone to take out their laptop, there’s a part of you that’s screaming, “we’ve done this 20 times, you should know this by now!” Of course, “we” haven’t done this 20 times, only one side of the interaction has the repeated experience. But it’s natural to project that onto the other person, and get into a mode of, “I’ve told you before.”
Obviously this can be overcome, I'm not sure TSA hires people with enough self awareness to even see the problem.
Yes, exactly. But actually, given what they must be paid they do an admirable job. I can’t truly blame someone for not giving a shit, it’s just frustrating for me when getting on my flight depends on them doing so.
I am hedging because i have had nuggets of exceptional service and support here and there, even in nightmarish hellscapes like Heathrow. Flight attendants are a whole different area of joy and fears...
I have boarded with a wheeled carry-on + wheeled personal item (a backpack with wheels) in the past, but every time the gate agent tested the personal item for size.
They could also just say "only one carry-on can go in the overhead bin."
They could've saved a lot of time and labor by just letting me check it like I would have before they started charging $30-50 each way for it.
think of it as 1 item that goes in the overhead storage and 1 item that goes under the seat in front of you
The author gave plenty of other reasons why someone might be stressed out by what's communicated at the airport.
The whole point is that airport staff (and especially leadership) are maybe not so great at "optimizing for the greater good" always.
>The author gave plenty of other reasons why someone might be stressed out by what's communicated at the airport.
Without objective accounts (ie. a picture), it's unclear whether that's due to poor design or just poor comprehension/situational awareness from the person reading it. For instance, "Now boarding - remain seated" seems like pretty standard priority boarding (eg. first class boards first, economy stays seated). If you're bad at english and all you can do is scan for random keywords, and/or it's your first time flying and you're not aware of this, you might be confused. But there's also so much you can do for this target audience.
I don't think it's actually as noble as "optimizing for the greater good", but rather "optimizing for getting through the day in one piece". Which, in my experience, is why (polite + friendly + reasonable + firm) is the right register to use in pretty much every interaction with airport staff. You're asking them to do something (not telling), but your presence is ideally vaguely net positive (friendly, smiling, relaxed), you're asking for something that's within their authority to do, and there's a vague threat that you're not going to back down if they say no off-hand (their day is going to have a larger hassle-increment if they say no vs. if they say yes).
Written out it kind of reads as cold and calculating, but I think every element of it is the best for everyone involved. You don't end up feeling like you just acquiesced to getting screwed by United or Delta, they get to have a nice friendly interaction that ideally makes those 10 minutes of their day suck less than it could have with an asshole customer.
Greater good my posterior. The grandma was in the wrong place at that time because they optimised the experience to extract the most money out of the flying public. They were boarding the people who paid extra, and since she didn't they couldn't let her board. Because if they do why would anyone pay extra for their "higher class" more expensive tickets. They could have said "passport?" and then pointed her towards the gate. But doing so as a policy would net the corporation less profit. So they don't.
In other words the grandma's distress was by design. You can avoid the indignity of turned away from the gate by coughing up more money. She quite literally "didn't know her place" both in the queue and in the hierarchy.
The class conflict/"corporate profit" angle doesn't make any sense because even in communism you'd still need to board people in different groups (eg. people who are disabled and/or need assistance first, then people at the back, all the way to the front), thereby creating the issue described in the OP.
It touches on a “race to the bottom” that European low cost carriers have have shown that people don’t care about airport stress in the shadow of cost — which lends to the enshittification of the whole overall experience.
It’s so bad that people are starting to /pay/ to have less stress by visiting airport lounges, which are now starting to be, themselves, overcrowded due to the increase in demand.[1]
[1]. https://web.archive.org/web/20260714133432/https://www.globa...
> c) is in a foreign country
So you don't want tourists to your Country? You do realize 95% of the World lives outside the US? and at least 80% lives in non-English speaking Countries? Creating a horrid experience for them would mean losing huge chuck of that wealth flowing into your Country. Especially so when their income levels are rising drastically compared to a US Citizen (in terms of % change in disposable income as many are from low cost of living countries).
Also, EU speaks great English, the Nordic countries especially.
I feel like there is a lot more to the fungibility of planes. E.g. add just one more consideration, like bag loading, to the scenario and suddenly you end up with a mess of not great answers for a whole complex tree of things unless you somehow know with certainty how long the fix is actually going to take ahead of time. The more of these additional considerations you add, the more they start interacting with each other and the less likely "just switch the planes" only means passing the delay along.
I don't think this is that uncommon, so I've only ever paid attention to airline and flight number. I would recommend everyone else do the same.
Reinforced cockpit doors are basically invisible, but they've also basically made hijackings impossible, especially when coupled with the fact that passengers will no longer assume the plane will safely land and negotiate.
FWIW though, I rarely had bad experiences with airport staff. They are just trying to do their jobs in a hectic place and don’t intentionally make our lives difficult.
For the most part I agree most are at least neutral though. I.e. they are there because it's a job, not because they hate people or love people and this job was the way to do that. It's just the ones that do tend to really stand out for people.
At most gates, I've seen the little boxes that are used to size test carry on luggage to also have a section to size test personal items.
My experience is that it barely fits a large backpack with some books, snacks, and at least one 15 inch laptop.
Carry on luggage can be much, much larger.
> I frequently travel with a duffel bag carry-on that goes in the overhead
Yes, that is one carry on luggage item, and one personal item.
>They could also just say "only one carry-on can go in the overhead bin."
No because you are not afforded two carry on luggage items. One item has to be small enough to fit under the seat in front of you.
That's physically not possible if all you have is a single display in front of the gate, which is common at most airports. Of course, you can add "First class - now boarding, everyone else - stay seated" but for OP's case where there's reading comprehension issues I doubt that would help.
>I don't think that they can, so it's a bad message that probably came into existence because of some entertaining concatenation of events that somebody in the airport business could be able to explain.
It's not hard to think why it's necessary. Otherwise you have a hoarde of economy people clogging up the gates when it's only supposed to be first class people.
The point is not asking one to do something for the target audience beyond showing a bit of compassion. If the passenger is lost/confused and is being yelled at it would do nothing to either diffuse the situation or help the passenger. Hand-holding one or two passengers would only make the experience pleasant enough for them. It has the effect of them learning something they did not know and also wanting to come back again.
If there were some change they could enact which improves the "greater good" (whatever that is) at the cost of profit, they wouldn't. Simple as that.
> or need assistance first
yeah. Like a grandma with a tenuous command of the language and four kids. :)
> thereby creating the issue described in the OP.
I'm sure a fictional airport organised by other principles would have other problems. Doesn't change a bit that the current airport you can experience is optimised for profit, and not for "greater good".
Right, nobody thinks airports/airlines are altruistic organizations, but this specific complaint doesn't make any sense because the specific decision to board by sections is for the greater good. A moshpit where everybody boards at once benefits no one. In this case, "greater good" and "maximize profit" overlaps.
>yeah. Like a grandma with a tenuous command of the language and four kids. :)
Usually this would be handled by the airport, not the airlines. Moreover airports usually have criteria for which people can get assistance, and they can only help people that they think need assistance. It's easily to identify someone in a wheelchair, less easy to identify "grandma with a tenuous command of the language" without engaging in sterotyping/racial profiling.
This also allows me to actually plan for what I need on the plane versus what I don't, instead of an at-gate shuffle of medications and charger blocks from one bag to another.
What’s weird is, I agree, the way it’s described and marketed. Carry on add-ons should be sold as ‘small checked bag’. As it is, if you know your carry on is going to be gate checked it’s easy to plan where you pack your lithium battery devices; if you don’t you’ll be doing the gate check shuffle.
But it's unnecessarily implemented in a costly, inefficient, annoying way that makes the entire experience worse to no one's benefit.
For people who travel for work, how often do you get a checked bag in your fare?
Which leaves me confused with GP's suggestion. Every TSA line I've been in already has these signs. Are airports in other countries worse about their signage than TSA?
- Laptop: In Tray / In bag
- Shoes: Wear / Remove
I’m sure we can come up with clear wording for such a sign lol.
Also: here’s a list of things we are constitutionally not allowed to require, but if you choose to opt out you have a random 1:1 chance of being selected for an invasive “enhanced” screening.
Also: here’s where you can pay your bribe^H^H^H^H*Hfee to be prescreened so the whole process is easier for you unless we decide we you should be on the list that we randomly select for “enhanced” screening. Then your children get to watch a large man put his hands all over your body in ways that they’ve been told to never let a stranger touch you. And if you speak up, we’ll do it you your minor children too.
A lot of the constraints in how airlines can market service levels are imposed by the ticketing aggregation standards and how fares show up in searches. There are also issues with creating differences in luggage standards between regional and long haul flights because of through ticketing.
It’s probably more complicated than it looks from the outside, and all falls into the same problem of overall air travel inscrutability caused by the ‘it makes sense to the people who are in it but looks Byzantine from outside’ problems the original article here is complaining about.
It's a way to make more money off people for worse service, with the externalities going on people who can't do anything about it.