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!

Pax I dislike Vol 0.3

- Pax with unrealistic excess luggage who wait until the very last minute to check-in

Oh it’s not an airport legend. This is another extraordinary phenomenon that is known to every check-in agent worldwide. There is always someone who shows up at the same exact minute you are closing the check-in counter with unreasonable excess luggage. They know this is crunch time and you don’t have that much time to haggle with them. I’m not talking about 5 or 10 kilos of excess luggage, but 30 to 40 kilos or even more.

These passengers know you are pressed for time and that you are more likely to turn a blind eye on the excess luggage than delay a flight.

What usually happens is a common scene that repeats itself over and over again. You get ready to close the counter and here is someone with 2 or 3 suitcases of almost 60 kilos (when they are allowed only 20 kg.) You tell them they have excess and they say they’ll pay but once they find out that they are going to be charged more than their ticket fare, they obviously refuse to pay deciding to remove items from their bags. You look at your watch and you are already two minutes behind closing time, they have their suitcases wide open in front of the counters removing items. “Did I just see a whole box of milk?” you ask yourself while the Weight & Balance department is sending you frenetic messages through the radio. They are pleading for you to close the check-in counter quickly so they can create the flight’s final figures.

Now these passengers place their re-packed luggage on the belt again and even though they removed a few items, they are still carrying a lot of excess weight. You are already 10 minutes late. You are stressing out and you become exasperated. There is no time to haggle anymore, nor there is time for them to go pay the excess luggage as the boarding call is being announced. You finally yell “GO! Just go”. You check their luggage in and warn them NOT to show up at the boarding gate with large hand luggage.

What do they do? They show up at the boarding gate with all the stuff they removed from their checked-in suitcases in their hands. They usually carry 3 or 4 big sports bags and/or trollies.

You can’t help but get infuriated because the whole debacle happens again at the boarding gate. You tell them they cannot board the plane with that amount of hand luggage and they begin haggling with you. There is NO time for that. You either feel compelled to deny them boarding and have them miss their flight, or you once again turn a blind eye and send the excess luggage to the plane’s hold as last minute luggage.

Obvisouly, the flight has been delayed and you are responsible for it.

Unfortunately, I have become jaded and cold hearted. I used to turn a blind eye, but I’ve been fooled so many times and been accountable for so many delays that I’ve lost all my sensibilities. If you show up at the check-in counter at crunch time with 30 kilos of excess luggage, you’re not flying. Period. I don’t waist time haggling anymore. If you show up at the boarding gate with unreasonable hand luggage after being told not to take it, you are not flying. You may be lucky however and catch me in a somewhat good mood, that luggage will go into the aircraft’s hold with a hand written baggage tag which most probably will cause it to get lost or misplaced for a few days.

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.

Why the rush?

Things at work haven’t changed a bit. They are as hectic and chaotic as they always were. Some passengers’ reactions keep astonishing me. Sometimes I really wonder if these things do in fact happen or I may simply be imagining them. Take for instance today.

A bus full of passengers was waiting with its doors closed for the OK from the aircraft. The aircraft was not ready and would need a few more minutes so the bus driver not to stay idle, left the bus to help the ramp agents load the luggage onto the aircraft, and kept the bus doors closed. A few passengers got impatient standing in the bus, so they smashed the emergency handle and forced the doors open. They descended merely and started boarding the plane on their own accord.

The truth is, I would have paid good money to see the cabin crews’ faces when these passengers entered the plane unexpectedly. The captain was furious to say the least. After everybody sat down in their seat, he informed the passengers that he was canceling the flight unless the person who forced the doors was identified.

It may seem extreme but, it was a security issue. The aircraft was still fueling, the passengers were scattered around the plane on the tarmac when they got out of the bus, no airport staff nor aircraft crew were supervising the flow of passengers into the plane. Many things could have gone wrong and many could have hurt themselves. It was not only dangerous, but foolish! Also, there was no guarantee that a person with such conduct would behave inside the aircraft once it was 2000 ft in the air.

During all this chaos, I was wishing I was still in London on holidays!

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:

Where’s My Bag and the Other 34…

People always wonder why they don’t get their luggage once they arrive at their final destination. Many things may happen. The most common incident is for a passenger to have a short connection between flights where the ramp agents don’t have time to load the bags into the new flight. However, other things may happen, such as technical error or unfortunately, human error.

Take for instance this incident:

A flight arrived with passengers but was scheduled to depart empty, that is, it didn’t collect any passengers after landing. It was due to go to some other place and collect passengers there. We were only required to receive the plane and its incoming passengers.

So this flight arrived full. The luggage was stowed in two different halls. The ramp agents began unloading Hall Nº 1. Just at that time, two other flights landed which had a short stopover as opposed to the other flight which had a much longer stopover. Also, these two new flights where scheduled to leave with passage, which required more attention than an empty flight.

The ramp agents, understaffed and pressed for time did what they had to do; they left the first aircraft and headed to where they were most needed.

While the ramp agents loaded and unloaded the two new aircrafts, the first flight closed its doors and departed. Nobody however realized that Hall Nº2 didn’t get unloaded, and inside its belly remained 35 incoming bags.

When the now sweaty and stressed beyond belief ramp agents finished with the 2 short stopover flights, and headed back to the first aircraft, they found the parking space empty. Naturally, they contacted the coordination department and informed them that Hall Nº2 was still loaded. They in turn contacted the pilot and informed him of the extra weight onboard so precautions could be taken.

Now next time you lose your bag, remember, a million things could happen for it not to get to you on the arrival baggage belt. Perhaps it fell off the luggage carriage while being transported through the tarmac. Perhaps it was loaded onto the wrong plane. Perhaps it lost its tag. Or if you were among the 35 passengers today who didn’t get their bags, well, your bag was simply forgotten and never left the aircraft.

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!

Frequent Flyer Walkie Talkie

I am almost certain, weird things only happen at our airport.

We misplaced a walkie talkie in the morning. No one could find it. The last time it was seen, a ramp agent had it before loading a Milan flight.

By noon we received a telex from the Milan base asking us if we had misplaced a walkie talkie. They had found it inside the aircraft’s hall between the luggage….  Apparently the ramp agent either dropped it or forgot it in the hall while he was loading the bags!

That same aircraft returned later that night and with it came our walkie talkie.  It spent the whole day in Milan.  Now that’s what I call a freebie!