trends in travel

[indigo_rose99]

In college in the late 80s and early 90s, I used to travel by air almost exclusively on holidays. I don't remember many delayed or canceled flights. The two hour drive to drop me off or pick me up at the airport would have made that... memorable.

Just before 9/11, I was accustomed to hopping on planes going my direction, as breakages seemed frequent. Then after 9/11, it was harder to talk airline personnel into letting me on a flight, but flights were (by and large) on time and had many empty seats.

Now, flying on this July 4th weekend to and from NY on Continental... All flights are full, and all are delayed by hours, if they happen at all. Our flights are slow to arrive. And then when we board, they pull away from the gate to inform us that our flight is 40-something in line for takeoff and we will be an additional hour on the tarmac, waiting. Had we known, we would and could have driven to our destination faster! But they refuse to allow us off the plane.

Undoubtedly, they knew we would be waiting this long, but chose not to tell us before we got on board. I am bewildered by the logic.

Am I the only one to see these trends? Are they across all airlines? It seems so, but I don't want to believe it....

Comments

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

Sadly I think you're right. I did read an article very recently saying how because of rising fuel prices, airlines using smaller planes and having fewer flights, so all the flights are fuller and they can still make some profit. I definitely have experienced the smaller planes. Ugh.

Oh, and demand is up for some reason, so costs are up.

However, I also read that now instead of delaying every flight into an airport with bad weather, they only delay the ones that would have to fly through a lot of the bad weather, so there are supposedly fewer delays now, although when they happen they are just as long as before.

I also read that check-in is generally quicker now than it was for a long time after 9/11. One thing that helped in some airports was reducing the number of those machines you walk through to one. This freed up more of the minimal staff to help with the luggage conveyer belt machines and thus speeded up the checkpoint.

Robin definitely sat on the tarmac for a long time on the way to Vermont.

[machak.livejournal.com]

Yes, my wife has hit the same problems in her travels (though we had assumed it was an ATLANTA problem). Hope things speed up for you soon!