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Topic: Flying is overrated (AKA: Northwest Airlines YOU SUCK!)

Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

posted 07-14-2007 10:36 AM

quote: John Walsh
I was on a flight to Florida (about 1.5 hours long) with a baby crying the whole time. This kid was screaming so loud and intensely, people were wondering if there was something wrong with it. The very next day, I bought a Bose noise-cancelling headphone.

You will quickly find that Bose noise-cancelling headphones are no match for a baby. They can only effectively cancel out constant noise.

By the way, for those of you considering these headphones, they do work BUT get the version 2, not the newer version 3. The version 3 does not work as effectively and they can sit awkwardly on your ears, whereas the version 2 covers them.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 07-14-2007 11:17 AM

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
One Southwest flight out of SLC had to have a new starter installed on one of the engines before it could leave.... probably before they could start the engine in fact.

That reminds me of a Seinfeld routine..."I wonder if planes have keys? I think when there's a flight delay, it's because the pilot just forgot the keys. 'Dammit, they're on top of the dresser.'"

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 07-14-2007 11:23 AM

I'll risk saying something that some may find blatantly sexist, but screw it, I'll say it anyway.

At least some, or more likely most women suffer some form of mental retardation when they become new mothers. Normal people find a baby's angry hate-filled screams about as pleasant as getting shot in the spine with a Taser X26. Some mothers find the screams enjoyable, like some hit song they downloaded from iTunes. They also seem to think everyone everyone else finds the noise to be just as pleasant, "wow my baby's lungs are well developed. Isn't he the greatest? Aren't I a great mother?" Arrgh.

Fortunately, I haven't had to suffer listening to a baby scream for hours on end while being packed like sardines within the fuselage of a passenger jet. It happens plenty of other places however, such as movie theaters (and often in R-rated shows).

Recently I was stuck in line at the grocery store for what seemed like an hour. It must have been meth smoking break or something because hardly any other registers were open. A lady a couple baskets ahead had three screaming kids who seemed to hand off noise making duties to each other as if they were running a screaming relay baton race. At times all three of them would be going. Of course, the lady had all sorts of complicated shit to do at the register which required summoning other employees, filling out paperwork, swiping numerous cards, etc. Even when she was done paying for her stuff, she took forever getting out of the way so the next person in line could move forward to pay for his stuff. I seriously thought about abandoning my cart at several points during this episode.

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Joshua Waaland
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 800
From: Cleveland, Ohio
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 07-14-2007 11:48 AM

quote: Scott D. Neff
I make it a point not to fly anybody other than Southwest. All the other airlines still try to have their noses stuck in the air and maintain some sense of decorum that they always end up failing to do in the end.

I agree completely. I fly a lot for work. Last year I took over 70 flights.

I have sworn off using Continental even though Cleveland is a major hub for them. I bought some tickets for my boss and I then had to cancel them on the website. I clicked the cancel button but according to the customer service rep I didn't click the small, hidden button lower on the page that gives you a refund. We even bought fully refundable tickets! To make an extremely long story short, we were not issued a refund but had credit with the airline. The problem was to use the credit we had to take a $100 hit because it was considered a change of flight plans rather than just a credit since the credit was from a cancalled reservation. The gravy on top is that we actually had to pay the $100, it wasn't taken from the credit we already had. In other words, our $200 credit cost an additional $100 out of pocket to use! After many long conversations with Continental it became abundantly clear that they do things like this because they can. They basically told us this. Talk about noses in the air and taking advantage of people!

I use Southwest exclusively now. I earned four free tickets last year from them. You get a free ticket for every 16 one-way tickets you buy. They also give you four free beers or three free cocktails when you earn a free ticket. You can change your plans anytime without incurring an extra expense and as many times as you want(great for sales people whose plans change a lot). You always get a customer service rep when you call and not a machine. The seats are bigger with more leg room(great for guys like me). The open seating sucks sometimes though. If you get to the airport early and want to catch an earlier flight you are screwed because everyone else checked in online and got A or B seating the day before. Even if you got to the airport three or four hours before the flight. C seating is a guaranteed middle seat because everyone else has already gotten on and taken the ailses and window seats. The only other problem with them is their flights that leave late in the day are almost always late. A coworker of mine caught a flight to LA this past week from Pittsburgh. His flight was due to leave at 5:30PM but was delayed. He finally made it to LA by 3AM pacific time! I told him he should know better.

Southwest takes short hops which are good if you don't want to go far (like me most of the time) but when I used to go to Texas it could take all day because it was two to three flights to get to Houston.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 07-14-2007 01:20 PM

The baby issue is a difficult one. A pilot friend once explained that changes in cabin pressure affect the underdeveloped eardrums of a really small child (0-3) far more than someone older, and in some cases can be very painful indeed. Screaming reduces the pressure in the ear, and actually reduces the pain - which is why they do it, and for longer than they usually would on the ground. He believes that children under 3 simply shouldn't be allowed to fly, but that's easy to say in somewhere like England where there is a reasonable ground-based alternative to practically every domestic and European route.

I have a politically incorrect answer to this, which is to designate certain flights on long-haul routes and which have multiple flights a day as 'quiet flights'. That would mean no under-18s allowed on board, no hissing ipods: basically, the only activities allowed are eating, quiet work activities (e.g. reading or using a silent laptop) and sleeping. That wouldn't be needed for short haul flights (I can put up with a howling baby for one hour, but not ten) and wouldn't be practical for the one flight a day from a hub to a small town destination. But there must be hundreds of transatlantic, or US east-west coast flights each day. Designating just one or two of them as quiet flights wouldn't seriously inconvenience parents or headphone users, and I'm sure would be welcomed by a lot of travellers.

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Brad Allen
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 688
From: Evansville, IN, USA
Registered: May 2000

posted 07-14-2007 01:49 PM

Anyone who fly's should own and know how to properly use a supply of these: Foam Ear Plugs
They work pretty well against screaming babies among other things. [Big Grin]

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Mike Olpin
Chop Chop!

Posts: 1852
From: Dallas, TX
Registered: Jan 2002

posted 07-14-2007 02:56 PM

I haven't flown in years. In fact, I really enjoy driving and discovering all the cool places along the way.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 07-14-2007 03:08 PM

quote: Leo Enticknap
He believes that children under 3 simply shouldn't be allowed to fly, but that's easy to say in somewhere like England where there is a reasonable ground-based alternative to practically every domestic and European route.

I think it's a disgrace that the United States doesn't have a nation-wide high speed rail network. We can thank people from the airline industry and auto industry for that.

One of the things I really liked about living in New York City was how I could get to so many places between Washington, D.C. and Boston by rail. It wasn't so important to have a car. Out here in Oklahoma, it's a major hardship if you don't have one.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 07-14-2007 03:35 PM

At the end of my California trip in 2005 I took the Coast Starlight train from LA to Seattle, stopping at Santa Barbara for a day to visit a friend.

It was a great way to see California, Oregon and Washington as a tourist - none of the stress of driving, the food and drink was good and it was all reasonably priced. But the train arrived nearly 12 hours late (I'd been forewarned that it was nicknamed the Coast Starlate, and so had allowed an extra day until my flight home for emergencies), because Amtrak has to rent track slots from the freight railroad which actually owns the line. So on the single-track sections, the freight trains get priority and we had to wait. On the run through Oregon there were several 1-2 hour stops, and I doubt if the train did more than 50mph for the entire journey (quite a culture shock for a Brit - long-distance trains here go a lot faster).

None of the people I chatted to on the train were traveling for a functional 'getting from A to B' reason - they were all on vacation. Given how slow and how late the journey was, this wasn't surprising. Even if you were only going one or two stations, you're not going to leave the car at home if you know the train could be several hours late.

But if that line was a reliable, high speed passenger line with trains running at 100mph plus and reasonably reliably, I'd have thought that the complete journey could be done in 15-18 hours, and that the train would be a real alternative to flying for intermediate journeys, e.g. LA to the Bay Area, or Sacramento to Portland, or Portland to Seattle.

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Mike Heenan
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1896
From: Scottsdale, AZ, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 07-14-2007 08:42 PM

quote: Josh
You can change your plans anytime without incurring an extra expense and as many times as you want(great for sales people whose plans change a lot).

Last time I tried to go on an earlier flight (that had seats available) they wanted to charge me $25.

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Allison Parsons
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 630
From: East Peoria, IL
Registered: Oct 2004

posted 07-14-2007 09:04 PM

Brad,
please invent teleportation so none of us had to experience what you did.

Went to England back in 1999 with a few friends. The plane from Peoria IL to Chicago was delayed because of rain. So we hopped in my Dad's car and raced up to Chicago to catch the AirFrance flight from Chicago, to Paris, then to London. Oh no. The damn plane was delayed for a whole day. And NO ONE would tell us why. Long story short, I'm not flying Airfrance ever again. They did put us up in a nice swanky hotel, but that didn't make up for the fact that we miss one day of England and had no idea what was wrong with our plane.

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Joshua Waaland
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 800
From: Cleveland, Ohio
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 07-14-2007 11:20 PM

quote: Mike Heenan
Last time I tried to go on an earlier flight (that had seats available) they wanted to charge me $25.

I always buy fully refundable tickets. The price isn't that much more and is well worth it if you know you will have to change flights.

My sister-in-law and her family flew up here from North Carolina a few weeks ago. They told me they flew that new airline (Skybus I think) and it only cost them like $200-$300 round trip for a family of four. I guess their thing is they charge for extras like carry-on bags, checked bags and drinks and stuff like that. If I didn't get free tickets on Southwest this is the way I would go.

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Mike Heenan
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1896
From: Scottsdale, AZ, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 07-14-2007 11:33 PM

Oh ok I see.... we usually go with the cheapie internet fares $49 each way to CA so that's probably why they had that fee.

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Paul Mayer
Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under!

Posts: 3836
From: Albuquerque, NM
Registered: Feb 2000

posted 07-14-2007 11:39 PM

For Leo, I don't think you'll need to worry much about Northwest, at least on their international routes. Those routes are the money makers, and they'll give them priority staffing wise. But once you get into the domestic system, at least at the end of the month/year... [Big Grin]

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Jack Ondracek
Film God

Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002

posted 07-15-2007 01:13 AM

Flying is only fun if you're the one doing it.

Of course... a Cherokee doesn't go as fast as a jet, but for short hops you can't beat it... and I do get a huge kick out of looking at the traffic jams on I-5.

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