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January 4, 2003

“It starts the minute you check in,
Departure time is at noon,
A cup of tea and a schnecken,
And -- quick! -- it's leaving soon.
One o-clock and you're at the gate,
Two o-clock and the flight's still late,
When you finally leave it's eight,
And what do we do? We fly!”
-Steven Sondheim

Gone are the days when the world was in awe over the Wright Brothers’ first flight.  Today, flying is at best a hassle and at worst a nightmare. And we keep subjecting ourselves to it again and again.

For the record, I’m not afraid of flying or anything like that.  I’ve been on many flights, all over the world, with various airlines. Some have been smooth and simple, some have been total horror shows, and most have been somewhere in between - adequate, but still unbelievably aggravating.

There was the time when our charter flight to Florida was 7 1/2 hours late departing.  The airline gave us a complimentary food voucher, worth $50, but when we used it to buy french fries for $1.99 we were informed, “sorry, no change”.  There was the flight from California where all our luggage emerged with broken wheels and handles.  There was the joyous experience of sitting on an El-Al plane on a stopover in New York, waiting for the flight attendants to count the passengers for the eighty-zillionth time before we could take off for Toronto. The times where baggage has been lost or connections missed are too numerous to count or recall.

Take yesterday, for example. My family and I were heading home from Vancouver.  Overall, it was a successful flight, I suppose.  We got home in one piece, only about an hour and a half late, and all the bags arrived.  But the story, if it wasn’t so frustrating, could read like one long comedy piece.

Firstly, our flight departed at 8:30, with a stopover in Toronto.  There was another flight, nonstop, departing an hour later and arriving in Montreal earlier. We were only on the former flight because the latter one didn’t exist until after we booked our tickets.  When we asked the airline if we could switch, we were told that yes, there are seats on the nonstop flight, but switching would cost us over $100 each.  All to push a button on a computer. Thanks but no thanks.

We arrived at the Vancouver airport around 6:45 to find that the line to check in went out the ropes and halfway through the food court.  Bleary-eyed, we dutifully lined up for over an hour, while being informed by the airline personnel that they were “short-staffed’.  Short-staffed? It’s January friggin’ third! Don’t they KNOW that this is the busiest week of the year?  Don’t they KNOW we’re coming? I mean, we all have reservations!  It’s in their computer!

(We encountered a similar lineup at Dorval on the way out, but it was even worse - at one point only two agents were checking people in. When we asked, we found out everyone else was on a break.  Sure, there’s only about 400 people trying to get to their flights on time. Good time for a coffee break.)

Finally we made it to the front of the line, only to find out the conveyor belts were all broken.  None of the checked luggage could be sent to the planes. They were stacking it up next to the counters, and eventually they got some porters to take it all to the planes by hand. This of course meant that our flight took off about 45 minutes late.  (But not before paying the $10 - each - “airport improvement tax”.  If they ever use it to improve the airport I’ll be shocked out of my mind.  And at Dorval, it’s $15 each!)

Once in the air - packed in like sardines because apparently economy-class passengers don’t rate enough room to bend our knees anymore - there was a kid sitting behind me who was kicking the back of my seat the entire friggin’ flight!  Good thing he got off in Toronto, or else I don’t know what I would’ve done.

To add to everyone’s cheery mood, the flight encountered unexpected turbulence and was bumpy as hell. That, to be fair, wasn’t anybody’s fault, but it didn’t help the meagre breakfast that they served go down very smoothly.  To be sure, it was just a stale roll, tiny slices of fruit, and runny eggs, but this was the last food any of us were going to see for over seven hours. You’d think on a flight that long, we might get, oh, I don’t know, lunch??? But no, what could I have possibly been thinking?  They’re far too cheap for that. By the time we got home, we were all starving.

We landed in Toronto a bit late, and were told that for security reasons we had to stay on the plane for the hour stopover. But we were assured we’d be taking off as scheduled. Hah! Fat chance!  By the time everyone got off the plane, and the few people got on the plane, and the cleaning crew went through, and the bags were loaded and unloaded, and the bags of the 7 people who didn’t make the flight were removed, and the plane was de-iced . . . well, let’s just say that “on time” obviously has a different meaning for airline people than for the rest of the world. It seemed like every five minutes, the pilot or the flight attendant was on the loudspeaker apologizing for something.

“We’re sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but there will be a delay of a few minutes while we wait to be cleared for takeoff.”

“We’re sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but there will be a delay of a few minutes while we wait o see if some fucking retards who couldn’t make it to a flight that is already late show up.” 

“We’re sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but we all left our brains at home this morning so there will be another delay while we go look for them.”

When we finally arrived in Montreal (over an hour late), we had to sit on the runway for 15 minutes while the ground crew got ready for us.  Which, of course, begs the question of why they weren’t ready in the first place - it’s not like it was any secret that we were coming. But by now I’m sure you’ve figured out how futile it is to ask those sorts of questions.

Finally they figured out what gate to go to, and we pulled up. It’s over, right?  Wrong! Now, we got to sit tight for yet another twenty minutes, because it turned out the bridge to the gate was broken, and nobody could figure out how to fix it! No, I’m not making this up.  They had to call the repair company, while we all sat around and waited on the prison that was our airplane.

Miraculously, our bags all showed up - though we were in serious doubt as to whether the skis would make it for a while.  We piled our luggage and ourselves into a cab and went home.  This has nothing to do with flying, but as tired and hungry and irritable as we all were, none of us were pleased to find the skating rink of sheer ice that was our driveway.  Unloading the luggage and getting it into the house was, well, interesting, to say the least.  My father fell on the ice, and my sister went to three depanneurs looking for bags of salt (all sold out).

Thus concluded our long day of travelling, and it sort of left me wondering why we subject ourselves to this sort of torture.

The worst part? All of what I just described is more or less par for the course. Nobody even expects good service from airlines anymore.  We’ve grown accustomed to delays, lost bags, uncomfortable seats, lousy food, and all the other hassles and headaches!  It’s like we’re saying that it’s okay for the airlines to cut costs to the point where ticket prices skyrocket and service is poor to non-existant.

Well, I’m fed up.  There, I said it. Of course, now that I said it, it’s not like there’s much I can do about it. If I want to get from point A to point B, and there’s an ocean to cross or a distance to long to drive, I’m pretty much stuck.  And despite minor differences between airlines, most of them are pretty much on a spectrum from lousy to awful.  So I’ll probably have lots more frustrating, hassle-filled flights ahead of me.

But what do we do? We fly!