How can I fly the friendly skies if I can't get off the ground?

(Note: I wrote the bulk of this account yesterday but could not post it thanks to absence of functioning WiFi service at Newark International Airport.) 

United Airlines' customer-service queue at Newark was short by American corporate standards in this post-customer-service era, so it took just twenty-five minutes for me to get a new boarding pass, this one with my name on it rather than that of a mysterious Mr. Peterson, as on the first pass United had given me. I then got to the gate, only to find — naturally — that my 4:05 flight was now scheduled to depart at 5:20.  I was also surprised to see and hear a gate attendant take the microphone and page the flight crew, asking it to report to Gate 114. Could the crew not find its way to work otherwise?

A hilarious oxymoron

My day at work was already shot, so I thought I'd log on to my computer and type the blog post you're reading now. It's a good thing no WiFi was available, because on my way back from the spot where a restaurant worker had told me I might find a connection (Yes, a restaurant worker. If Newark's airport has an information counter, it's invisible to passengers or available only to Gold Class Preferred Chairman's Club Plus members. Think I'm kidding? The counter where I waited to have a correct boarding pass printed had a priority-access line. That's right: Pay extra, and you can shove ahead and get United to remedy its fuck-ups before the coach-class saps who got there first do.)

But I digress. I had started to say it was good no WiFi was available because on my way back to the gate, I saw that my flight had not been delayed after all. And the crew apparently showed up because a boarding announcement has just been made.

Airy logic: Pay extra
to check your bag free

Some final thoughts: In Montreal, I sat down and linked to the Internet with the airport's free, efficient WiFi network. My fellow passengers wheeled their luggage on the airport's free luggage carts (which, by the way, always seemed to be lined up neatly at their stands when not in use).

Free luggage carts at a government-run facility? Free WiFi? Waste in government? I call it customer service.  Sure, you'll pay ten dollars for a five-dollar sandwich at Montreal's airport instead of the $8.75 you might pay in the U.S., but the tax dollars go for the exotic purpose of providing service. Maybe if we called it "enhancing the flying experience," someone in the U.S. would get interested.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Social decay at home and abroad

I hopped into a cab in Montreal this morning, and the driver immediately turned down the volume on his radio. Such unbidden courtesy would be unimaginable in Philadelphia or New York, I thought, and I was grateful for the civility of a fellow Canadian.

Alas, when I arrived at the airport, I was reminded I was flying to the United States. United Airlines charged me $28.75 for my one checked bag. At 7:20 on a Monday morning, the dense, snaking lines for security and U.S. Customs were more typical of a holiday weekend "Due to the current budget situation limiting the number of border agents at the airport," as several signs informed me.

The one-two-three punch of private-sector cupidity, governmental paralysis, and bad grammar (the adjectival due to misused for the adverbial because of) should have prepared me for the overzealous inspection agent who had me hauled aside for an interview that left me worried I'd miss my plane. But I got to the gate in plenty of time to find out that the United Airlines fight would be delayed by mechanical problems long enough to make me miss my connecting flight. As of this writing, I hope the American social fabric holds together long enough to get both me and my luggage to Philadelphia by this evening.

Speaking of social fabric, two Irish crime novels I'm reading show sharp awareness of Ireland's financial troubles. Alan Glynn's Graveland has a pair of bankers being murdered and, though the novel is set in New York, I suspect strongly that Glynn, a Dubliner, had his own country's problems and the impunity of those responsible for them very much in mind.

Gene Kerrigan's The Rage, winner of the 2012 CWA Gold Dagger for best novel, meanwhile, includes bits such as these:

"Not bad enough the pay's shit — he's just had a wage cut, he's paying shitty levies the government takes to bail out the fucking banks."

and

"Trade unions are out of fashion now, but everything we ever got we had to fight for it —money, hours, conditions. Today, it's like everyone's grateful to be a unit of labour."

and

"My father was a die operator in a plastic extrusion factory — small place, non-union. Only time you got to open your mouth was to say `yes, sir.' What he said to me — you get there habit of bowing and scraping, it becomes part of your nature. Don't get the habit, he said."

Now, off for some coffee so I don't sleep through announcements of the next delays or cancellation.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Flight dreck, Part II

My theory about flight crews? Glad you asked. But first, rest assured that the theory is grounded in repeated observation, refined only later into a general proposition.

One night I was having a drink at the Ledes and Layoffs Club in Philadelphia, my peace disturbed by a too-loud group pounding tables in bad rhythm and jocosely threatening not to pay for their rounds. "An airline crew," the bartender whispered. "They work for Northeast."

Next week, different crew, same airline, same behaviour.

Some months later, the club a bit more crowded, the music a bit louder, the behaviour a bit worse. "These guys fly for Northeast, too?" I asked.

"Nope," the bartender said, "Epsilon Airlines."

Now, what may we conclude? That commercial-airline flight crews, worn to a frazzle and wound tight by endless rules and procedures and by the tight quarters in which they work, rendered light-headed by jet lag, go nuts when let loose in a strange city? Or maybe these three crews (from two real airlines whose names have been changed to avoid embarrassing the club or its customers) were just jerks.

In any case, next time I go to Europe, I may take the train. (Read more about flying here, including a comment that suggests another plausible explanation for flight crews' blowing off steam.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Flight dreck

Another bit from my current crime reading, Selçuk Altun's Songs My Mother Never Taught Me, dovetails nicely with a non-crime post I had planned to make. Here's Altun:

"The stewardess of the `business class' section was presenting the flight security precautions with the usual repulsive mimicry."

Here's me:

"A train journey begins with a thrilling lurch into motion. A plane journey begins with the slightly nauseating whiff of filtered, pressurized air.

"You squeeze past your rowmates' knees to get up. You squeeze past their knees to get back. (Just don't drop anything, because good luck squeezing down between rows to pick it up.) You contemplate the condensation between the windows. You choose from a wide range of entertainment options. You enjoy the easy-going conversational genuineness of the crew ..."

Coming soon: More from Selçuk Altun, plus my theory about why flight crews, so rigidly cheerful in the air, can be so obnoxious once they land.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009