Airlines and the Fear of Flying
I dread flying. It’s not some weird combination of acrophobia, agoraphobia and claustrophobia. It has nothing to do with that and everything to do with this:
Depending on the airline, there could be a 50% chance (heads or tails?) that the flight you have booked will actually take off at the time it is supposed to take off. Often, you are delayed, and it can be for as long as 24 hours. This throws off your plans and costs a lot in money and emotional trauma. I have seen (normal) adults break down in tears and almost start a schoolyard brawl at 4am in Newark airport.
All of this mess is the result of bureaucracy, communication failure and general incompetence. I’m convinced every terrible airline and even some of the non-terrible ones need to hire more developers to build better internal systems. This isn’t the only solution, but I think it can go a long way to mitigate the problem.
Here’s an example from my botched trip from Newark to London Heathrow this past June:
Situation: The flight (scheduled to depart at 9pm) was delayed for two hours before they announced that it was not actually a real flight (”SURPRISE!”). In other words, everyone holding a boarding pass with a seat number was screwed in a surreal, Twilight-Zone-meets-Magritte way (Ceci n’est pas un boarding pass). The reason? Because the plane, which arrived at Newark from Canada, was carrying passengers who were supposed to go to London from Chicago two days ago but got derailed in Canada for maintenance purposes (wait, angry Canadians?). Oh and by the way, these poor people were reportedly put up in military barracks while the crew slept in hotels.
United’s Solution: Our flummoxed airport crew decided to prioritize the angry customers not really from Canada (ah, ok). They told all of us waiting at the gate in Newark to sit tight because there’s an off chance they might be able to fit some of us on this plane with the Canada (not Canadian) folks. After they spent another hour talking to each passenger from Canada and getting most of them back on the plane, they then told all of us to line up and start boarding, and we’ll just see how many of you we can get onto this aircraft without doubling up seats (Can you tell how inefficient this is becoming? It’s almost like they’re solving one of those brainteasers with the nine people who walk into a restaurant trying to sit at six-person table and only some of them can sit on someone’s lap). Ensuing mad rush to line up for a coveted seat. For whatever reason, some of our boarding passes were mysteriously denied by the scanner they used. Then after boarding the plane, some people were shepherded back off the plane because it was full.
Before we knew it, the airport staff was in a panic, sorting through a pile of boarding passes trying to figure out WHO IS ON THE PLANE AND WHO IS NOT (McKinnon? No he got off. Stevens? Wang?). They absolutely, positively had to do this before they could give the pilot their blessings to be off (bureaucracy!). This took another two hours. Angry people at the gate. Angry non-Canadians on the plane. Blood, sweat and tears everywhere, and that included the crew and the gate staff who were taking a ton of abuse for this calamity.
Technology cannot save us from our ineptitude, but it can make ineptitude more bearable by:
Ensuring that we do not book seats on flights that are already fully booked (and carrying angry passengers from Canada).
Providing reliable information on the status of a flight so that DELAYED means DELAYED (and not that there are a bunch of angry passengers from Canada are already on the flight).
Helping people who are bad at keeping track of who is on and off an aircraft to do their jobs better.
No one should be OK with spending a good chunk of their lives sitting in an airport. I don’t care how many trendy new restaurants and shops they build, it’s not a cool place to spend hours of your life. Let’s do something about it.
