10. Every action has a reaction. Charging for bags is no different. Instead of reducing the amount of luggage checked on a plane, airlines have forced passengers to carry everything they can handle with them onto the plane. Drop the baggage fees and we'll all have more overhead space.
9. The TSA categories (you know what I'm talking about: "Family, Casual and Expert Traveler") might be the most poorly executed idea ever. For one, it's not used consistently at any airport. Two, nobody pays attention to it, they simply gravitate to the shortest line. Three, a system that requires passengers to police themselves about who is a "casual traveler" versus an "expert traveler" is absurd. Give me a job with the TSA (with multiple lunch breaks) and i'll sit there and tell you exactly who belongs in the "Expert Traveler" line versus the "Casual Traveler" line. It's not complicated. In an attempt to level the playing field and not offend those who buy a coach ticket or travel infrequently, TSA has created a system that is totally ineffective. Let's go back to the old system, the American way of pay-to-play. . . if you pay through the nose for a ticket or fly all the time, you deserve to jump to the head of the line.
8. Please stop searching grandmas like they are on the terrorist watch list or just got off a one-way flight from Yemen. If a 90 year old lady forgets to take her glasses out of her pocket, you do not need to make her spread her feet and hands apart while wanding her with a security stick, then pour through her luggage before making her put it all back in her bag.
7. It's generally not encouraging to sit in line at security while the guy who's supposed to be checking the x-ray screen is going on about his weekend and how hungover he is. . .
6. Attention all pilots: I don't want to know what's wrong with the plane. Lie to me. Tell me you forgot to fill out the paperwork or that air traffic control has a ground hold due to fog in San Francisco. . . anything, just don't tell me the truth.
5. Please stop printing in-flight menus that claim to have food created with the vision of some award winning chef, as if that justifies charging $5 for a cookie. Just sell us the crappy airline food and don't insult us by making us think that it came from someone who has a show on the Food Network. The plastic sealed wrapper kind of gives it away.
4. Take a cue from the public jokes made about road workers. . . don't have 2 security lines open at LAX and 10 TSA employees hanging around, watching the line, talking to each other, doing nothing.
3. Offer United and American flight attendants retirement packages with jobs as after-school detention monitors, where grumpiness and scowls are actually effective ways of dealing with people. Then hire the HR department at Virgin America and find out where they get happy workers. Is it the HEPA air filtration system on their planes?
2. Attention all domestic airlines: Be more like Virgin America and Southwest (for the flexible ticket policies, not the peanuts) in every way possible.
1. After 8.5 years since 9/11, can someone find a wrench and even out the metal tables we use to slide our bins towards the security belt? Is a series of uneven tables the best we can do with our 9/11 security fee we pay on every ticket?
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