March 25, 2022

Airline Tales

By roads-rus

Ruth & I have not flown much lately. So far in 2022 we have been or will be on commercial flights only 3 times. We have flown to Las Vegas, St Louis, and are anticipating a flight to Pittsburgh next month. We have, so far, avoided international destinations because of the hassle involved, but we look forward to such travel down the road. Our recent experience shows that avoiding flight time to be a wise course until some of the airline problems go away. When we have flown, we have experienced full flights and a shortage of pilots and personnel. People are, nevertheless, eager to resume travel. I have been on only one not full flight since COVID waned. Offers to fly are tempting but the thought of hours behind a mask keep us from venturing forth much.

On March 7, 2022, we flew to St. Louis and got into a hotel after midnight. We have experienced long lines to acquire rental cars because vehicles were simply not available, and what was rentable was far more expensive than before. In general, we find travel more expensive than ever.

Our return to Portland on Monday, March 14, 2022, was an eye opening, difficult experience. We got to the airport in St. Louis early to find that our flight had been canceled. The airline claimed that we should have known because we were alerted, but we were busy traveling and did not know. Airlines forget that passengers don’t always get to see notifications. Ruth was covered. The agent found a spot for her on a flight to PDX via Phoenix that only meant a 6 hour delay in St. Louis at the terminal. This change more or less duplicated the flight schedule we had been on to get to St. Louis except for the long delay.

The agent said there was absolutely nothing for me. Ruth asked her to look again, and she found a flight schedule that would get me to PDX one hour before she arrived. The bad news was that I had to go to Boston and Washington’s Reagan Air Terminal to get home. I subsequently enjoyed seeing Boston Harbor and was incorrectly directed to a flight to Miami in our nation’s capital before I got to Portland. Mishaps happen now.

I did make it home the same day but not without difficulties, so I was very lucky. Others have not been so fortunate and have incurred unanticipated expenses in the process. It is clearly not a good time to fly. Yet.

Hank

About roads-rus

Since the beginning, I've had to avoid writing about the downside of travel in order to sell more than 100 articles. Just because something negative happened doesn't mean your trip was ruined. But tell that to publishers who are into 5-star cruise and tropical beach fantasies. I want to tell what happened on my way to the beach, and it may not have been all that pleasant. My number one rule of the road is...today's disaster is tomorrow's great story. My travel experiences have appeared in about twenty magazines and newspapers. I've been in all 50 states more than once and more than 50 countries. Ruth and I love to travel internationally--Japan, Canada, China, Argentina, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, etc. Within the next 2 years we will have visited all of the European countries. But our favorite destination is Australia. Ruth and I have been there 9 times. I've written a book about Australia's Outback, ALONE NEAR ALICE, which is available through both Amazon & Barnes & Noble. My first fictional work, MOVING FORWARD, GETTING NOWHERE, has recently been posted on Amazon. It's a contemporary, hopefully funny re-telling of The Odyssey. View all posts by roads-rus
This entry was posted on Friday, March 25th, 2022 at 8:52 pm and posted in Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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