This post is for those seasoned travelers, like myself, who deal with the same mind numbing situations every time they fly. And by “situations” I’m talking about the passengers whose minds couldn’t be more blown by literally every step of the traveling process.
The airport is a very logical place. So, in the spirit of logic, I’m going to step by step go through the airport highlighting where the pitfalls of dealing with other travelers are. Maybe this post will help protect you and help you avoid what I constantly have to deal with. Chances are you won’t be able to escape them.
Should you have the terrible misfortune to be checking your baggage, you are in for a real treat. No matter what line you stand in to drop your bags off, the person in front of you will either be checking a solid 20 pieces of luggage, or be checking one bag filled with gold bullion. The first situation, at $25 per bag, has to mean that these people have taken out some sort of loan to fund this transaction. These people are also NOT from America, and will be utterly shocked by the language barrier.
The second situation happens most frequently. If you’re a fully grown male adult and you’re struggling to lift the luggage onto the scale, chances are it weighs more than 50 pounds. But instead of saying “wow, I’m an idiot! I should have known, and I will pay the overweight fee as punishment for my foolishness” these people will pop open the top of the suitcase and start consolidating their items in front of everyone. They will layer on coats and shove shoes in their carry ons, each time reweighing the bag to confirm that unfortunately your coat doesn’t weight 20 pounds and you’ll have to remove more.
Once you escape this line, you have to go through security. There’s always someone who didn’t know you have to take your shoes off, because they’ve lived under a rock for the past decade. Or the lady that has a belt buckle built into her clothes and sets the metal detector off but continues to take off non metal items, hoping her socks were setting the detector off instead. It takes absolutely forever to get through, but once you’re through, you have mere milliseconds to put back on your shoes and jacket and repack your computer. How the conveyor belt is FLYING at the back in but CRAWLING at the front end can only be described by Willy Wonka Wonkavetor technology.
Now comes the time to get to your terminal gate. There are 3 options. You can either walk the regular way, walk on the moving sidewalk, or take the train. This is the part that really gets to me, because this is where people will think “I don’t want to walk, but I might want to walk in 20 seconds, so I’m going to just stand on the moving sidewalk and give myself the option instead of taking the train”. They are always blithely unaware of the traffic jam they are creating. Also, I don’t care for the people who are just going to regular walk their way to the terminal. It’s like they are slapping George Jetson in the face with every non-artificially accelerated step they take.
Once you get to your gate, you get to deal with unnecessary lines. These are the “zone 4” ticket holders. They have to board the plane last but have decided to form a blob-like “line” so as to RACE to the ticket checker as soon as zone 4 is called. These people are also the ones that, as soon as the plane lands, will stand up and form a line to get out of the plane, as if there’s a conspiracy and they’ve all forgotten there’s a solid 10 minute wait time before the door opens. It’s literally as if they get anxious should they not be forming a line at all times.
Look at them all... dying to make a line as SOON as the seat belt sign goes off.
Again we’re faced with having checked our luggage. This is the best part of the luggage checking process: picking it up. These same moving sidewalk cloggers and unnecessary line makers are all convinced that the closer you stand to the baggage conveyor belt, the more likely your bag is to come out first. They will literally lean over the belt, looking down the hole that the bags come out. One day I will snap and scream “Everyone who thinks they can crawl fast enough to beat the pace of this belt, please form a line over here so you can crawl down that hole and get it FIRST!”. The opportunity to form a line will convince at least 15 people to do this.
When you do finally see your luggage, you have to borderline body slam these people away from the belt to get it. Even after explaining the obvious statement “that’s my bag” these people are reluctant to temporarily give up their prime spot, straddling the belt practically. This is where learning how to box people out in contact sports will pay off. Sorry tennis and cheer leading, you’re going to have to chase your bag around the carousel til you find a hole.
Doing this process repeatedly will convince you a) to never check your bag, no matter how long you're gone and b) people, on average, are complete idiots. I don’t care what the IOWA test of basic skills told us in 2nd grade.
Beautiful post my friend. This is obviously a post about someone flying Delta haha. For those of us who do not live in the hub city and must connect through it, we face a few more challenges.
ReplyDelete1) Your flight will ALWAYS arrive late in to Hartsfield-Jackson, thus leading to a sub-point to always wear flats because you will inevitably have to run through ATL to make your flight (pack light)
2) Delta boards 40 min before a flight, therefore if you have a 45 minute layover, you only have 5 minutes.
3) Even though you make your flight, your luggage might not
4) If you check luggage through Philly, you may not get it until an hour after your flight lands because their was a "shift change" and people were too lazy to do work. Maybe they should hire a GT IE to streamline their operations... just saying