Air travel - it's for the birds

For the holidays, my girlfriend and I went to Austria (the one in Europe, not the one in the southern hemisphere) for a working vacation (more on that later) and to spend some time with family. The trip was great, except for two small parts - the beginning, and the end.

The Beginning:

As suggested by TSA and the airlines, we arrived two hours early, as did the other 2000 people who were flying out of San Francisco on United Airlines flights that afternoon. About the only people who didn't arrive two hours early were the United check-in agents - there were roughly ten people checking in 2000 international travelers.

Needless to say, the check-in process proceeded slowly. We stood in line for an hour before someone realized the lines were exceedingly long and tried to readjust things a bit. We were taken out of the line we had begun to call "home" along with eight or so other people and brought to a new, "special" line. Since it was only us and a handful of other people in the special line, we expected we'd be through check-in in a few minutes.

It was not to be. To earn a few extra dollars, airlines are now charging people for overweight luggage ("overweight" meaning luggage that weighs more than 50 pounds, not luggage with clothing for large people). One couple in front of us didn't want to pay the charge, so they started repacking their bags, right there at the counter. To make matters worse (or more amusing, depending on whether you are a passenger or a random spectator), they actually couldn't adjust their bags/belongings to come up with bags that weighed under the limit (two bags, 120 pounds total, 50 pound limit, you do the math), so the gate agent went off to find a box for them to put their extra stuff in. That was a very nice gesture on the agent's part, but...

Here's the thing - the overweight people were certainly happy about getting a box, avoiding the excess baggage fee, and so on, but what about the rest of us? Were we expected to just sit there and wait patiently (and wait and wait)? The agent could have let them slide with their slightly overweight bags or sent them elsewhere to repack, but instead she irritated everyone else in line - appease one customer, annoy ten - that's not good business. If this was the post office, they would have been sent elsewhere to do their repacking while the rest of us checked in, and then rejoined the line somewhere near the beginning when they'd finished - maybe this approach would work for airlines too?

And, of course, because we had all stood in line so long, there were now people stuck in line who were on flights that were leaving "soon" so they were shuffled in front of us. We started out fifth in line, but didn't move for 30 minutes - there's just something wrong with this system.

Adding insult to injury, we waited in lines for so long, we didn't have enough time to get food at one of the local places, so we were forced to eat the food on the plane. The food itself wasn't so bad really, but there's something inherently wrong with paying $1000 for a plane ticket and then having to pay $5.00 a beer (note: only US airlines seem to charge for alcohol on international flights, it's free on European carriers).

I thought about that for a while - sure, the plane food wasn't that bad, but wouldn't everyone have benefited if we had a chance to eat and shop at the airport? We wouldn't have had to eat food on the plane,the store/restaurant would have gotten my business, the airline would have one less meal to serve, and so on. So isn't it then in the best interests of the airlines to get passengers through the check-in line quicker, so they can then visit airport shops and restaurants? I'm not an economist, but sure makes sense to me.

And then there was the end:

Our return flight arrived into SFO at 8pm, as scheduled. We shuffled off the plane with everyone else, and then made our way to the baggage claim area. And there we stood - exhausted after 20 hours of traveling, waiting for our bags. We waited, dozed off, waited some more, etc. Roughly an hour after our plane arrived, our luggage came off the belt.

Why? I don't know. I can see there being a delay if our plane had arrived early or late - the baggage crews no doubt have schedules - offload plane X at time T, plane Y at time T2 and so on, so if we arrived at the wrong time, there wouldn't have been a crew to handle the baggage, but we arrived at the right time.

Maybe the person who schedules crews read the first half of this rant and thought "maybe I can help airport businesses by making people wait for their luggage"? Or is it just another case of "we'll save money by having only two guys unloading all of the planes that come in." That seems more likely.

I wonder if I can get back the extra $1.00 that I paid for long term parking while we waited for our luggage?