Christmas in the Airport

It’s Christmas, and our airport had to celebrate. Lights were lit, trees were up and jingles have been playing non-stop. All. Day. Long.

In my company, life goes on. You can’t feel the festivities unless you wander around the terminals and see the airport’s decorations. For us, it’s like any other day (except no bosses are around).

Not to feel left out, we armed ourselves with the oh-so-awesome holiday spirit. We tip-toed around the terminal, snatched a tree (with its colorful lighting) and dragged it back to the office.

It now stands next to the fax machine, decorated with airline material (FRAGILE stickers, HEAVY tags, even an Unaccompanied Minor pouch bag). Instead of a star at the top, we have a walkie-talkie.

Those coming to work in the morning for their early bird shift will have a nice surprise. They’ll have a laugh. Not our boss however. I don’t want to see his face when he returns from his holidays and is contacted by airport security with a video surveillance tape featuring us, dragging the tree around the terminal….

What? It’s Christmas! Happy Holidays!

kids left alone

The summer is GONE! Change in the airport is evident the moment you enter the road heading to the parking area and the terminal. No more traffic and loud horns, people zig-zagging between cars with their luggage. You can’t smell edginess in the air inside the terminal anymore. No long queues, overbooked flights and rude passengers. Notably, there aren’t that many children traveling alone anymore. Oh how I love the low season!

During the summer, it is not strange to have 8 children traveling unaccompanied in the same flight. We used to laugh at the flight dispatchers when they used to come and pick up the kids from the boarding gate to take them to the aircraft. If it wasn’t for their bright safety jackets you’d confuse them with summer camp guides than airport employees.

I have no problem with children traveling alone. I have a problem however with some parents. Yes, the airline company becomes responsible for the child but it does not in any case become a nursery or a play ground where you can drop your kid and leave.

We’ve had a 9 year old dropped off at the entrance of the terminal to fend for himself. Mind you, the kid knew what he was doing. He queued in the right counter and presented his passport and luggage to the check-in agent all by himself. It’s obvious he’s done it before. His parents couldn’t be found. Obviously, we couldn’t accept the child especially since he was taking an international flight!

Another incident we’ve had this summer was a 7 year old with an international connecting flight with a stop over of over six hours! What’s the child supposed to do for 6 hours alone? Yes, he’s in the care of the airline company but what are we supposed to do with him during all this time? Sit him on a chair in the office while we do our paperwork? Six hours! I don’t get it.

There’s more anecdotes of course there are! I can’t remember many of them. I spent the summer in a haze and I’m happy to have blocked most of it out of my memory. However, I do remember one family who got pretty angry at us for not accepting their child. The kid had a connecting flight which he was going to miss because of a delay. In these cases, we can’t accept unaccompanied minors because there are no guarantees they can be rerouted that same day onto a different flight if they miss their connecting flight. The parents didn’t get it. They said the kid could take the next flight the following morning if he loses his connecting flight. Now I don’t get that. How can you send your kid away with a 100% he’s missing his connecting flight and would have to sleep one night alone in another city? Really, it blows my mind. I didn’t accept the kid that day even though I may now have a pierced eardrum from all the yelling I got from his parents.

Here’s an interesting incident. Didn’t happen to us (thank god!). Some airline mishandled an unaccompanied minor situation where the kid left the aircraft by himself. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing but hey, I’m weird like that.

Euro Trip

I’m back! I took a few weeks off and traveled around Europe. I went to Amsterdam, Berlin and London. Tried three different low cost airlines and actually had a fine experience with all of them. More to that later.

Just wanted to let you know where I was hiding.

For now, here’s a souvenir from London:

Passenger folies

Just when I thought the summer couldn’t get any more crazier and I have seen all there is to see in the airport life, a family of 4 shatters my expectations.

I know that traveling is a stressful experience and the fear of losing one’s flight can take it’s toll on people’s judgments. But I’ve never seen such panic drive people to insanity to the point of endangering their lives.

This family of 4, took their time shopping in the duty free shops and didn’t hear the last call to board their flight. Once they heard their names being broadcasted through the terminal’s airwaves they panicked. They rushed to the boarding gate and once they realized their bus to the aircraft had departed without them, they became distressed. The boarding agents reassured them the bus will return for them and all they had to do was wait.

The passengers oblivious to the instructions of the boarding agents dashed through the gate, removed the chain at the gate and ran to the aircraft. They literally ran through the tarmac, duty free bags and baby stroller in hand. It was a scene from a movie. One of the boarding agents ran after them begging them to stop while the other notified airport security. The passengers could hear nothing, even when two police cars surrounded them from both sides. All they were seeing was their plane in the distance and they had to get to it, didn’t matter at what cost.

It was the most dangerous and scariest incident I had ever witnessed. In their hurry, they were crossing the main road of the tarmac, where planes, cars, trucks and other vehicles drove in constantly (most of the times ignoring the speed limit). One aircraft was being led by a “follow me” car to its parking space. The passengers didn’t see it. They simply ran disregarding anything in their way.

Thankfully, they got to the aircraft without getting hurt, thanks in part to the police cars that escorted them and stopped any vehicle approaching. When interrogated by the police, all they said was that they were afraid of missing their flight!!??

I’m telling you, something strange happens to people once they enter through the airport’s doors. It’s as if all sanity and composure is erased from them. They become disoriented and irrational. I can’t wait for the summer to be over, really!

Seat Guru

I had to giggle when I came upon this site after all the rant in my previous post on seat reservations. Alas, I try and be  helpful when I can. I’m not always grumpy, I swear!

If you like to reserve your seat ahead of time, Seat Guru  provides nice seat maps on various airline companies’ aircrafts.  The site mainly focuses on long-haul flights and large aircrafts, but there a few small aircrafts, like CRJ 65 and Dash 8-100.  These small ones are among my favorite aircrafts. Checking-in and boarding these planes is a breeze. Excellent opportunity to sneak in a book and read it during the “down time”.

Would you pay more to sit in a window or aisle seat on a plane?

The Sun Sentinel has a very interesting article on airlines charging for special seats.

 

Atlanta-based AirTran in June began charging customers for advance seat reservations on discounted fares — something Northwest Airlines started last year. United offers “economy plus” seating, with extra legroom , at no charge — but only to their frequent fliers.[...]

AirTran now charges $15 each way to reserve an exit row seat and $5 for a window or aisle seat, allowing coach passengers to avoid the middle seat.

This is not uncommon with low cost airlines. Jet2.com for example, has raised the fee for extra-leg room seats to 19 EUR (26 USD) for flights less than 3 hours, and 27 EUR (37 USD) for flights over 3 hours.

Personally, I wouldn’t recommend it. I just don’t see the point of advanced seat reservations and paying extra for a particular seat. It is fine if you are really tall and require extra space for your legs, but really, there isn’t much difference. Especially with the newly remodeled low cost aircrafts where passengers are packed like sardines to maximize profit. Unless if it’s the first row, or an emergency seat where the seat in front of it doesn’t recline, you really don’t have that much space to spread your legs and be comfortable. I know I’m going to be prosecuted by the industry for saying this, but unless you travel in business class or the almost defunct First class, you are NOT going to be comfortable flying in economy!

Also lets not forget about an important fact, advanced seat reservations are a pain in the neck to a check-in agent. Not talking low cost airlines here where there isn’t much difference where you sit (except, you can argue, the extra-leg room seats).

Say you are happily at home or with your travel agent, and you reserve a window seat. The system usually assigns you whatever window seat it pleases. Perhaps you had in mind a window seat near the front of the plane (I dont know, because you want to get chatty with the pilot for example). Anyway, once the check-in agent gives you your boarding card and you realize you are way in the back of the plane, or gasp, it’s an aisle seat. Your eyes begin to twitch and your wrath falls on the check-in agent.

Well sorry to inform you but, your pre-assigned seat doesn’t really matter. It all depends on the aircraft’s seat configuration, especially if it’s an aircraft with say First, Business and Economy seat configuration. More often than not, a flight’s configuration is determined a few hours before it actually departs. Especially in the high season.

If the flight’s configuration was initially of 22 Business class seats, and say 119 Economy class seats, but in the end only 5 Business passengers and 136 Economy passengers check in. Instead of upgrading those extra 17 Economy passengers into Business (lots of money for the company), it would be much easier to simply change the aircraft’s seat configuration. The much loved and cheaper method for the airline company is the famous movable curtain that divides the classes. Just unhook it from the row you want it and hook it up again a few rows down and voilá, Business class and Economy class have been rearranged!

So anyway, I got off track. You’re still standing there at the counter angry that you didn’t get the seat you reserved. It depends on the aircraft’s seat configuration, really. If it hasn’t changed or it hasn’t affected that particular seat you had reserved, then you’ve got nothing to worry about. However if your seat fell in the midst of the movable curtain’s shuffle, well then, too bad. You’ll need a new seat.

Conclusion…. if you want to pay extra for a seat which in reality to me is almost identical to the one you are already paying for (price of your ticket!), go right ahead. But I don’t see the point. The only true advantage it gives you is that it protects you from me, because then I won’t be able to sit you where I want if you catch me in one of my Voldomortian moods….

For the full article in the Sun-Sentinel: Click here!

The Cranky Flier

Oh my goodness look at this little gem of a blog I found:

Cranky Flier

How did I not know about it before?  This is getting bookmarked fast!

It Ain’t All Glitter

People often ask me, why people in the airline industry are grumpy all the time. They see us in immaculate uniforms, with perfect manicures, all made up with no hair out of place and assume our job is glamorous. They think we get lots of perks and get to go anywhere we please for free. Far from it. More than glamorous we are master deceivers I’d say.

We are underpaid. Working over hours is the norm, sometimes 10 hrs a day, other 12 hrs a day. We don’t get any perks nor assistance from the companies (be it airline companies or airports). In my airport for example, we are forced to purchase a parking permit (no discount). We are not allowed to park for free anywhere, even outside of the airport area (cars gets towed constantly). Apart from paying full parking fare, we have to walk 10 minutes to the airport. We don’t have a worker’s canteen, so, we get to pay full airport rates for anything we eat or drink which is usually double what you can find in a regular restaurant.

Take for example our uniform. I ended up paying for alterations for every single item they’ve given me. You can’t decide which size you can get. Whatever is there is yours. I ended up with items which were 2 or 3 sizes wrong. I remember one of the shirts they gave me was 4 sizes larger. It was like a tunic instead of a shirt. The company doesn’t pay for alterations, so I had to shell out the money myself. It was either wear the tunic or pay for it.

Our skirts, pants and blazers are 50% wool. We are expected to wear them throughout the summer. Let me tell you, that taking that 10 minute walk from the parking lot to the terminal in that uniform is far from glamorous. The wool is unbearable, and we’re not even in August yet!

Yes we get some discounts on some tickets, but to be honest, with all the Low Cost airlines out there, you can find cheaper fares than what we can get with our discounts. Plus, our discounted tickets are always subject to space availability. We can get kicked off a flight if it’s too full. So it doesn’t only cost you more than a Low Cost airline but you don’t even have a guarantee that you’re going to fly.

Yet despite all of this, people love the job. Why? I don’t even know. We have shitty schedules, were sometimes you get to sleep throughout the day and work only at night and then the following week it’s the other way round. You rarely get a weekend off. You get to work practically every holiday (missed Christmas Eve and New Year’s eve this year). Your social life becomes your work colleagues because no one can keep up with your schedule. Who else is going to get a Wednesday night off and want to go out right in the middle of the week?

The job is hard and not glamorous at all. We don’t get as many perks as people think yet we love it. We put up with horrible, just horrible people on a daily basis, yet every now and then, there comes a passenger who makes this whole debacle worth it. We value those passengers. Unfortunately, there are only few, and days may pass since you meet one. But when you do, it just reminds you why you love your job.

I still want to get rid of the wool uniform for the summer though.

Testing the Competition

I took a very quick trip yesterday. The flight I took was with another company, so I took the opportunity to observe how the competition operates.

I was more interested in passenger service as it’s my area. I must say, it was quick with no hiccups (even with an electronic ticket). I didn’t stand in the queue for more than a minute before it was my turn to the counter. I asked for a window seat and I must have seemed nice to the check-in lady, cause she gave me a whole row to myself. She didn’t know I worked in the same airport as her. I made sure to go to an unfamiliar face. Those of us who work in the airline industry tend to be very lenient towards fellow colleagues, even if they work for other companies. We always try and help each other out (give the best seats, turn a blind eye to excess baggage fees etc..). If we don’t help each other out, who’s going to help us? Certainly not our bosses nor our companies. Us workers stick together!

I had no bag to check-in so the process was very easy. The bad news came at the time of boarding. The flight was 45 mins delayed. I guess we’re not the only company who is familiar with delays! I could see how stressed and annoyed the boarding agent was as she was being overwhelmed with angry passengers surrounding and screaming at her. I felt bad for her as I knew how she may have felt. She had her hands tied and can’t do anything about it, yet the passengers didn’t care. They scream and shout as if she decided to delay everyone. I bet the poor thing had to get off work 45 mins late because of that delay. She must have been annoyed by it just as much as the passengers.

By the time the plane arrived and we had to board, the boarding went smoothly for us passengers… not the boarding agent. She was trying to get everyone on the plane as fast as she could. Another agent came to help her out. Between the two of them they boarded all 70 of us in just a couple of minutes (it was direct boarding no bus trip). It didn’t take them long to get all the paperwork done after we boarded, so the doors were shut just a few minutes later.

All in all despite the delay, I don’t have any complaints about the competition. I won’t name them so not to advertise though!