Via Instapundit, Stephen Bainbridge (who, thank God, was born an adult) asks how horrible airlines will have to become before we stop flying. When it comes to flying coast to coast or around the world, I’d say that barring an invention of the South Park version of the Ginger device, they’d have to be a great deal worse than they are. However, I have reached the point where I will no longer fly voluntarily, in the sense that if I can get from Point A to Point B in a day by car, and plan to stay at Point B for at least a couple of days in between, I’m driving. Not because of bratty kids or clueless parents who leave them screaming in pain rather than give them something to pop their ears at take off or landing. These paying customers are minor annoyances who come and go. The major annoyances are the adults who work there day in and day out. Case in point:

Last month, we planned a trip to visit my mother in law in Greenwich, CT. She lives barely 5 minutes from the White Plains, NY (HPN) airport, but prices of flights to HPN tend to be prohibitive, so after experimenting with Travelocity, Expedia and Priceline, we ended up booking three tickets on Hotwire to NY LaGuardia (LGA) for about $250 apiece. The total came to around $750, which was about $400 more than we expected to pay on fuel if we drove. We briefly debated whether the 5 hours we expected to save each way (or 10 hours total) were really worth that additional $400, but somehow concluded that it was.

The outbound flight, Delta/Comair Flight 5561, was scheduled to take off from GSO, which is also known as Piedmont Triad International Airport because of its daily international nonstops to major international destinations like New York, Chicago and Detroit, on Thursday at 12:25 p.m. and arrive at LGA at 2:24 p.m. We checked in online at 9:00 a.m. without incident, and were told everything was on schedule. We arrived at GSO around 11:00 and I alone checked both of our bags, again without incident (more on that later). We parked the vehicle, entered the terminal, breezed past security with two partially consumed kiddie bottles of apple juice (signs merely said to place all liquids in a separate bin, which we did), took a bathroom break, and re-emerged. By now it was close to 11:30, and all of a sudden the status of Flight 5561 had changed from “on time” to “canceled.” The plane wasn’t anywhere near Greensboro, and never had been, but Delta had not let on that even a delay, let alone an outright cancellation, was in the cards.

We went to the terminal to make alternative arrangements, and found a huge line that was moving at an excruciatingly slow pace. After about 10 minutes of staring into space, I noticed a guy ahead of me in line talking to Delta on his cell phone and rebooking his flight on his cell phone. I asked him for the number and called it myself, only to be treated to a 10 minute hold time, complete with a smarmy appeal to call my Congressman and blame my high Delta fares on oil speculators. [Presumably they meant speculators other than Delta itself, who either (1) trades on the oil futures market like everyone else or (2) is out of its corporate mind.] About mid-way through the hold time, I heard an announcement over the P.A. of another delay:

ATTENTION ALL PASSENGERS FOR FLIGHT X TO CHARLOTTE. YOU F(*&^ING IDIOTS. WHY THE HELL ARE YOU FLYING TO CHARLOTTE? DON’T YOU KNOW THAT YOU COULD F(&^ING DRIVE THERE IN LESS TIME THAN IT TAKES TO CHECK IN, GO THROUGH SECURITY, GET ON THE PLANE, FLY THERE, DEBOARD, RENT A CAR AND FINALLY DRIVE TO WHEREVER THE HELL YOU WERE TRYING TO GET TO? ANYHOO, IT’S GOING TO TAKE YOU EVEN LONGER NOW, AS WE’VE JUST DELAYED YOUR FLIGHT FOR 20 MINUTES, WHICH MORE FRIGGIN’ TIME THAN YOU CAN EXPECT TO SPEND IN THE AIR ON SUCH A RIDICULOUSLY SHORT FLIGHT IF EVERYTHING ELSE WENT ACCORDING TO PLAN, WHICH IT PROBABLY WON’T. DUMBASSES.

My memory is a bit hazy, so I’m not sure that’s exactly what the announcer said. I’m pretty sure he meant it, though. Ten minutes and one amusing (albeit in a schadenfroh way) announcement later, I finally got through to a human, who told me I had been “accommodated” with a 6:30 departure to Atlanta. Apparently, Delta prefers to circle the globe en route from Point A to Point B, so Atlanta was right on the way. However, that wouldn’t have gotten us to LGA until 11:30 p.m., which was a bit late to ask my in-laws to drive downtown to pick us up, so I told the lady that if this was the best she could do they’d best just cancel the ticket, give us our bags back and let us drive. She put me on hold again to talk to a regular agent, who picked up about 5 minutes later. I had the agent search all flights from GSO, Charlotte (CLT) or Raleigh (RDU) to HPN, LGA or JFK, in that order of preference. The best they could do was a 5:10 flight to Cincinnati with a connecting flight to HPN that would get us there at 9:30. We said OK, they said stay in line to get the boarding passes. I did, and was given the boarding passes, complete with an assurance that the bags would be transferred automatically and all we needed to do was be back around 4:45 to check in.

By now it’s pushing 1:00 p.m., so it’s really too late to go home. We went out for lunch, then to a local park for a couple of hours, and got back around 3:30. Our “new” flight was now listed as delayed, so we got in line at the first class check in area (we weren’t flying first class but there was no such area for coach) and were told that some other flights had opened up in the interim, and the airline had tried to page us repeatedly, presumably because we looked like four schlocks who had nothing better to do than sit around an airport all afternoon hoping for information on a new flight we were never told had any hope of existing to begin with. Our current flight was delayed by more than an hour, making the connection impossible, and Delta had no more flights for the day. However, US Airways had given them more than a few passengers that day, and everyone knows turnabout is fair play, so why not call them? The agent did, and got us a 6:30-ish flight to Philadelphia (PHL) with a connecting flight to arrive at HPN at 9:55. OK. Once again, we were assured that the bags would be transferred automatically, no need to do anything except show up at US Airways’s terminal and get on board. We did, but were given boarding passes for the first leg of the trip only, and instructed that boarding passes for the connecting flights would have to be picked up at PHL.

Sometime between then and the time we arrived at US Airways’s terminal, TSA changed our category from “so secure we’ll even let their kids drink apple juice” to fitting the “really sneaky terrorist who deliberately books a flight on an airline he is not targeting, knowing that flight will be canceled and he’ll end up on the targeted flight after all” profile, so they patted us all down (yes, I said “all,” as in, “including Xrlq 2.0 and Xrlq 3.0, ages 3 and 1, respectively) and subjected all our stuff to manual searches. Once the first bin had been cleared, Mrs. X asked me to pass Xrlq 3.0′s sandals from it, but TSA told us he could not put them on, apparently because Xrlq 3.0 fit the “really sneaky one-year-old shoe-bomber who sneaks the bomb by on shoes that have already cleared security” profile.

Eventually, we got through and boarded the plane which, horror of all horrors, was only delayed by 10-15 minutes. We arrived at PHL more or less on time, went to the ticket counter to obtain our connecting boarding passes, and noticed that US Airways had assigned the three ticketed passengers among us to three separate rows. We told the counter agent that at least two of the seats needed to be together, as one of the passengers, Xrlq 2.0, was only 3 and needed to sit with an adult. The counter agent told us that we were too close to the flight to enable him to reassign any seats, but the stewardesses flight attendants could do that for us once we were on the plane. We were the first ones on the plane, and asked the surly stewardess flight attendant to reassign a seat for us, and she told us that only the counter agents could do that, referring twice to the counter-agent’s contrary explanation as “crap.” Fortunately, the holder of one of the seats we wanted to trade with happened to overhear the conversation and volunteered his seat, and off we went.

About an hour and a half later we arrived at HPN. Our luggage, however, was not so fortunate. When I reported the missing bags to US Airways, they initially shifted the blame to Delta for supposedly not having given them to US Airways in the first place. I later learned that they had, and that US Airways had taken them with us to Philadelphia, and left them to rot there for around 20 hours before finally shipping them to HPN. All day Friday, I repeatedly called the 800 number asking where my bags were, only to be told by a retarded Cyborg (which had somehow convinced itself that its spoken English was better than it was, and was much too “cool” to let me punch in numbers instead) that either I, my claim or both did not exist. Eventually, “doesn’t exist” became “does exist, but the bags are sitting in Philly until we get around to shipping them, which may be on the next flight or later, I dunno.” The reason given for this unreasonable delay was that so many other flights into Philadelphia had been canceled and they now had a huge back log of other people’s luggage they had also lost. In other words, they weren’t just incompetent in my case, they were incompetent in general, and somehow, that was supposed to make me feel better.

Friday evening, around 6:45 p.m., the retarded Cyborg and the human agent from Calcutta jointly informed me that my bags had “already” arrived at HPN and would be delivered “shortly.” The definition of “shortly,” alas, was 4-6 hours from the time the bags had arrived, which was 6:30. I told the agent that there is no reason why it should take the delivery company (ironically named “Priority”) 4-6 hours to make a five-minute trip. The agent non-explained that it takes 4-6 hours to complete the rounds because 50 other people had also lost bags at this tiny airport. I said just have the company return the bags to the airport and we’ll pick them up ourselves. No can do, I’m told, as the bags are already en route and the “Priority” delivery route, a super-(duper?) precedent on the order of Roe v. Wade, simply cannot be changed.

Around 9:45 I called again asking where my bags were. Again I was told they were “en route” and would be considered timely if delivered within six hours of arrival, which had itself shifted from 6:30 p.m. to 7:00. So now, any time before 1:00 a.m. (27 1/2 hours after my flight had arrived, and 34 1/2 hours after my original flight was supposed to) is considered A-O-K by US Airways. I said this is not acceptable service and that I ought to be compensated somehow. I was told only Customer Relations can handle that and they, conveniently enough, were closed. I was told I could call them back on Saturdays or Sundays between 6:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. MST. [Not that it mattered while I was traveling, but I later learned that their number, (866) 523-5333, is conveniently omitted from their web site. I also learned when I tried calling it back today that they only have three people manning the phones, and use their "high call volume" as an excuse not to answer at all.]

The bags from Thursday’s flight finally arrived at my mother in law’s home on Saturday at 12:35 a.m. I asked the delivery lady what had taken so long, and she said that she wasn’t even given the bags until 11:00 p.m., and that they had been sitting at the airport (5 mins. away) all evening. In other words, the agents had simply been lying when they told me the bags were en route; in reality, the agents (who could barely speak English and were probably located overseas) had no clue where the bags were. Oh well, one more lie to report to Customer Relations when I call them early Saturday afternoon at around 3:00 p.m. EDT or 12:00 p.m. MST. Psych! The weekend hours were another lie; Customer Relations has no weekend hours at all!

Yesterday’s return trip was a breeze, relatively speaking. Checking in at the kiosk was easy, but checking the bags was more difficult because Xrlq 2.0 announced a sudden need to go to the bathroom, and the LGA staff of Delta has a made-up rule requiring each ticketed passenger to personally appear to surrender the bags in their name (alternatively, I could have checked both bags in my own name for a $25 bribe fee). The woman directing everyone in the long line said “that’s Delta’s rule and that’s the way it is.” I asked for a copy of this allegedly existent rule, adding that I found it difficult to believe that a single airline would have one rule for flights out of GSO and another for flights out of LGA. Rude-bitch insisted that the rule was real, but refused to provide any evidence of such rule, merely quipping that “you can look it up on their web site.” Needless to say, I didn’t have a laptop fired up with wi-fi while waiting in line at a terminal, and was therefore in no position to find this allegedly existent rule on a web site. No matter. I wouldn’t have found it anyway if I had.

Security was as ridiculous as it had been on the outbound flight – apparently, once they decide to single you out for “special” treatment they blacklist you for the entire trip – but no worries, it’s not as though that was going to make us miss the flight, which was delayed by two hours (though at the time they were only fessing up to 20 minutes). We did nearly escape missing that flight, however, as the area surrounding the gate was packed in with four other flights’ worth of people who had also been delayed by several hours and were also competing to hear the incomprehensible P.A. and try to figure out who was going through the gate, when and for what reason. When I finally found out through word of mouth that the line currently moving was for Greensboro, and not for the Richmond flight scheduled to depart 15 mins. earlier, we handed the attendant our boarding passes and went through the gate that we thought would take us to the plane, but which actually led to a shuttle bus that would drive us to the opposite side of the airport. During that excellent adventure / bogus journey, Xrlq 3.0 crapped his pants, so we proceeded to change him immediately after leaving the bus. A luggage worker “helpfully” informed us that an allegedly existent F.A.R. prohibits the unauthorized changing of poopy-pants on runways. We asked if he had any better suggestions, and he told us to get back on the bus so we can change Xrlq 3.0 back at the terminal and miss our flight. We ignored his helpful advice and changed Xrlq 3.0 anyway, and the worker left abruptly as if to tattle. Fortunately, no U.S. Marshals followed, and the remainder of our trip went without a hitch.

So at the end of the day, we spent an extra $400 and gave up our luggage for a day and a half in exchange for spending “only” 19 1/2 hours in transit (12 1/2 hours outbound, plus 7 hours to return) vs. the 21 1/2 hours it would have taken us to drive. That was easily the worst $400 I have ever spent in my life, but it could have been worse. We could have originally booked our flight through U.S. Airways and ended up paying them an extra $30 for the privilege of allowing them to handle our luggage.

UPDATE: Doc and Bitter have more.