I live about 2000 miles away from my sister to whom I’m very close. One weekend, I made a quick flying trip home because I’d decided there was no way I was going to miss wedding dress shopping with her. It was a fantastic but very short and busy weekend. The last morning I was fighting the creeping feeling of impending sadness and homesickness while doing all the normal tasks of getting ready for a flight– checking in online, double-checking the departure time, seeing if a gate had been assigned yet, etc. When I logged into my email to find my itinerary, I also found an email from a friend telling me that a mutual friend of ours had been struck by a car and killed. I was shocked and upset, but I pulled myself together, got my bags, and went to the airport.
Our petite regional airport herded us through the gate, down the gangway, down the stairs, across the tarmac, up the stairs, and on to one of the smallest planes in the world. I was among the last to be called to board. By the time I got through the door, it was a madhouse of people with overstuffed bags and wheeled suitcases cramming their items into every available overhead bin. My seat on this increasingly overheated, teeny tiny plane was the first in the row (though not first class), with no underseat storage. I looked around helplessly. I tried in vain to shove my small soft-sided carry-on into a bin. I failed. Feeling increasingly overwhelmed with every passing moment, with other impatient passengers piling up behind me as I tried going further down the row, I tried another bin. I failed. The businessman behind me sighed loudly and said in a loud snide voice, “WHAT is taking you so long? IT ISN’T ROCKET SCIENCE.”
There was nothing else I could do. I burst into tears. I shoved past him and everyone else in the aisle, walked towards the still open door, stuck my head out, and just started crying uncontrollably. I cried as I handed the flight attendant my bag for her to stow… somewhere. To this day, I have no idea where she put it. I cried through the safety presentation. I cried into my ginger ale while my seatmate’s huge arms and legs invaded my space. I cried through the duration of my layover and about half of the next flight. I was mortified but I couldn’t stop crying.
So if you saw a girl in her early 20s with tears silently streaming down her face on either of those flights or at the Detroit airport, I apologize. It was a rough day.
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Flier is Frustrated by Bags in Bins
October 24, 2010
in Flying Hell Commentary
This isn’t so much one specific flight from hell, but more of EVERY flight that I’m on ever since airlines found a way to gouge even more money out of fliers by charging for checked baggage. I’m a frequent flier and also have one of those airline-partnered credit cards, so I don’t pay for checked bags to begin with. But I’m so tired of being the last “zone” to board because I am seated near the front of the coach cabin, only to find that the overhead bins above my seats are full of carry-on luggage by first class passengers! I’ve already checked my bags to cut down on the demand, but I often have a laptop which must go in the overhead bin because I’m seated against the bulkhead where there is no other option than the overheads.
Then when everyone is scrambling to retrieve their bags upon landing, it infuriates me when a passenger that has stored their bag nowhere near their seat insists that everyone pass their bags forward (all the while bumping people’s heads, etc.) so that they can deplane!
If you’re in first class, you should either store your bags in the first class cabin or check them like everyone else. Do not take the overhead space in economy and expect everyone to help you collect your bags upon landing. You can just sit in your comfy first class seat and wait on the rest of us to deplane and then retrieve your bags!
Remember when the cost of jet fuel (and oil in general) skyrocketed in 2008 and airlines just HAD to do something to cover the higher cost of fuel, so they started charging for checked bags? Well now that oil/fuel prices have come back down to the pre-sky high days, the airlines will NEVER stop this revenue source. But they now need to solve the problem that THEY created and monitor the use of overhead bins.
P.S. The same goes for people who are seated at the rear of the plane that fill up the space at the front of the coach cabin as they’re boarding because they’re “not sure if there will be space when they get back to their seat!”
Tagged as: baggage, fees, overhead bin
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