For our recent trip to cruise in sunshine, we drove to Seattle and flew from there to Florida.
On arriving at Seattle Airport, we looked in vain for a person manning a check-in station. All said “Self Check-in”. Oh no! Fortunately, we were able to nab one of the clerks walking back and forth behind them who pressed endless buttons for us, looked at passports and took money for each bag they put onto the moving belt.
Then there’s the ominous announcement that says, “This flight is over-booked! If you are willing to take a later flight, we’ll pay you $200.” That amount leapt up to $400 in one instance. Our request for disability assistance did not appear on the screen. He was not amused when I stated, “I was happy being a dinosaur!”
We walked to our far-flung gate, only to discover it had been changed, sending us back through the same territory. Boarding passes assigned all passengers to Groups, so you board when your Group Number is called. People crowd into these line-ups way ahead of being summoned, leaving no space for those like us who need a place to gather close to the gate. A couple of times our aging gang of four broke rank and pushed in to join the early boarders.
But it actually got worse: “There’s an app for that,” was the response to all the (formerly) usual additions to the flight like the entertainment centre on the back of the chair in front of us and gate numbers for connecting flights. And our connecting flight, booked by the cruise line, was almost impossibly close time-wise, the gate in a totally different section of huge Houston Airport.
We’d never have made it if we hadn’t been rescued by a kind young man and his passenger buggy, arranged for someone else, who managed to get us all where we needed to be on time. That gate too had been changed, but our rescuer had “been here before” and checked one of those hand-held devices that run the world nowadays! Speaking of technology, how come announcements in airports are still impossible to hear/understand?
[On the plus side for technology, my sense of fairness insists on adding: husband John’s GPS, affectionately named Matilda, took us unerringly to our SeaTac motel; my girlfriend Joan and I put our iPads to good use; John read varied books on his e-reader; and Joan uploaded selected photos to Facebook so the folks back home knew all was as it should be.]
Back to complaining again ... remember when delicious food was part of the price? Well, go business class and pay major money to get that now. We’re economy travellers and we got coffee, pop or juice and that was it. No peanuts, no cookies. John and I ordered a box of munchies for an exorbitant price but each package was insufficient for one person, let alone two.
On our return trip, when we saw the self-check-in terminals at Orlando Airport, we said, “We can do this!” And buttons were pressed more or less correctly. An attendant assisted in the final stages, taking our suitcases and money. (We’d given up on “disabled” requests by then.)
However, neither she nor the machine told us we were now going on a much earlier flight. Fortunately, an airport agent had looked at our hair-colour and expedited us (two replaced hips and one bionic knee!) through the security machines. While we girls were buying food, John looked at his boarding pass and discovered the alteration. Balancing lunch-laden Styrofoam containers, we scurried to the gate – just in time to board.