Saturday, October 25, 2008

On Flying a US Airline

I am back from an interview in Boston, MA.

They put me on a one-stop flight from YYZ to BOS. The stop-over was in Philly. Big mistake. Actually the 1st mistake was accepting this flight instead of insisting on a direct flight to Boston. But the company had already paid for the flight when they e-mailed me the itinerary and I did not want to fuss over it.

When I got to the airport I got the first shock: US airlines now charge $15 for each piece of luggage checked in. Luckily I had every thing packed in one carry-on bag.

On my first stop on Philly my departure flight to Boston was delayed 45 minutes while burning gas on the tarmac. As the plane left the gate at the prescribed hour it was reported as "on time". This sounds like a nice scam to me.

On my way back in Boston the airplane has taxied for 90 minutes wandering thru various places of the BOS; I think they were sightseeing. They said there was a "security issue" at Philly and they were not departing. To add insult to injury they said they burned to much fuel and may have to return to gate for refueling.

A frequent flier told me that nowadays airlines only carry the minimum legal amount of fuel. This reckless stinginess may lead to some problems in the future.

Eventually we departed. When we touched down in Philly we kinda hanged around on the tarmac as they had to cross TWO active airstrips in order to get to the gate. Half an hour of this. Kind of idiotic traffic planning IMNSHO.

Again we departed "on time" but we waited in a queue of 32 planes for about 45 minutes. Another example of brilliant airport planning.

So I arrived in Toronto one hour late. I am told that this is very common with US airlines. And I thought that Air Canada sucked big.

-ulianov

P.S. I wasted seven hours travelling each way on something that could have been a 90 minutes flight. Next time I shall not let myself be talked into such a crappy deal.