On my way to and from Raleigh this past weekend, I had yet another round of airport HELL. Since last April, I have been on an airplane almost every month. April, June, July, August, September, October, November, January – skipped February & March by driving in order to AVOID flying – May, and June. Starting with Katie’s wedding on August 4, and every subsequent time (with the exception on one trip), I have had a problem. Hell, even on the months I didn’t fly – December, end of May – there were problems. Jay’s flight on December 27 was canceled and when we tried using JetBlue in May, it was also delayed 2 hours. And this past weekend, particularly Friday evening, as my flight was delayed 2 hours, then canceled, then re-instated 20 minutes later for the original 2-hour delay time, then pushed back, then moved up to an even earlier time, then delayed 3 MORE times after that. And they canceled like 6 other flights that day that weren’t re-instated. Then we had a flight attendant who told us that (paraphrasing) “Yeah, who knows what the delay was? Could have been weather [that's what they told us at the airport as we looked out at the bright, sunny sky], could have been something else. Who knows really? You guys are lucky you’re flying today.”

Lucky. To get a service we paid for to actually deliver? And that woman sounded bitter to be working. Well, we were all bitter to be jerked around and inconvenienced. We weren’t getting paid to be there, either.

See here’s my opinion on the whole airline industry going out of business:

Everyone is saying that it’s gas prices. They’re raising fuel prices, tickets cost more, less people flying, forcing airlines to charge to check your bags, etc.

Well guess what? Gas prices are up and people are still driving places that they have to drive to. Maybe they curtail some trips or carpool but they’re STILL driving, there’s still a TON of rush hour traffic. People who have to fly places, be it for business trips or to see their significant others – we’re STILL gonna fly, even if it’s expensive. Cause if not, we’ll just drive and that’s just as expensive.

The problem, as I see it, is the airline service and lack of reliability that your plane’s going to take off on time. When you leave LGA, it’s a “suggested leaving time” – if it leaves at all. And anywhere else, at least from my experience & I know it’s happened to Jay several times too, you’re lucky to leave within the same hour. SO many people missed their connecting flights this morning and this week is a HUGE vacation traveling week. To get mistreated by the staff who are there to help you, to be told you’re “lucky” a service that you paid a lot of money for is actually happening (albeit 3 hours later than you paid for it) – yeah, that’s a slap in the face. The airline industry is going out of business because they’re unreliable, they treat their customers like utter sh*t, and they’re just poorly run businesses. Paying a lot of money is one thing, but that’s how EVERYTHING is right now in this economy. But why should you pay that much money when you’re just barely getting what you’re paying for. If you even get it at all.

The people in charge don’t give a crap at all. They don’t care enough to impose policies that show their customers they care or to enforce any type of Passengers’ Bill of Rights. Rather than good customer service, you get made to feel like you should be thanking them for doing THEIR job, because it’s a “privilege.” Well, lower the airline prices to $100 round trips and then we’ll suck it up and get what we paid for.

The gov’t gives so much money to the airline industry; they can’t offer incentives to hire more people, so at least the staffing problems are fixed? So Christmas-time isn’t ruined when a crew refuses to fly because they’ve gone over their flying hours for the month? Maybe we could actually fix something in this country for once. And btw, not being able to bring a water bottle past security is also a scam. Who wants to pay $3.75 for an 8-ounce bottle of really cheap water? Could a terrorist also just buy a bottle of water and go to the bathroom and put in whatever substance they want to use to blow up a plane?

I just hope Southwest starts to offer more flights out of different airports and that they’re direct, since as far as I’ve seen, it’s REALLY rare to find a direct flight from Southwest to anywhere that’s not Baltimore or Philly and there’s only like 4 flights out a day. Then again, Islip is a really small airport on LI, so that could be why there’s not many choices.Everything but Southwest is going to go out of business soon, starting with Delta. And I say good riddance.