Real Experience Air Delays

I keep reading dire predictions on travel sites about the difficulties with air travel this summer. Delays and the incidence of lost luggage are up, but after traveling myself, and talking to friends, it seems that things are as bad as they say.

I just got back from flying to California to spend a long weekend with my mother. I got to the airport two hours before my 9:30 am flight and needed most of the time I had allotted to get through security. I wasn’t allowed to use curbside checking and had to get my boarding pass at the gate. After they tagged the luggage, though, I had to haul it across the terminal to an area for luggage. I stood in line for 15 minutes before they closed that location and sent me down long corridors to another station where I stood in another 15 minute line. When I finally got to the front they asked me if I had firearms or film and took the bag to put in a pile. I really can’t imagine why that couldn’t have been done at the gate. Then the line for security snaked around the terminal and took 40 more minutes. Once I got through security, my flight was delayed an hour, the gate was changed, and it was delayed again for another hour. Every seat was filled and 15 people on standby were turned away.

Coming home my flight was delayed two hours (although there were no lines in security and I used curb-side check-in.) Once we landed we sat in the plane for 50 minutes on the tarmac waiting for a gate. Then the luggage took 40 minutes to get to the carousel . It didn’t get lost though. I did talk to a sales rep who travels every week out of San Antonio, and he said his luggage has been lost three times since January (once when he was on a non-stop flight! For some reason, after they landed, they transferred his bags to another plane.) He was telling me how difficult it is to go on a sales call when you don’t have a clean shirt.

If you plan to fly, my advice is to be patient with the process. It’s a bear.