Wanderlust Women calls for boycott of domestic airlines

It had been about 18 months since my last domestic flight.  Fortunately most of my recent travel has been overseas.  This weekend, however, saw me heading to Florida for a spa break and I found myself squished into a sardine can for the journey.  Not only has Continental Airlines (and I am assuming most other US domestic carriers) drastically reduced the number of flights available to any given destination, but they have made taking the journey so uncomfortable for passengers as to hardly be worth the hefty pricetag.

Continental has always been my carrier of choice for reliability, availability and service.  I have logged more lifetime frequent flier miles with Continental than most people and I have never seen it this bad.

I was only traveling for the weekend so I took my trusted wheelie, which has also logged most of those hundreds of thousands of air miles with me.  Sadly, yours truly realized that she had packed a bottle of wine to bring to her hostess so I could not carry that onboard.  Fair enough, my mistake in this post-911 security haze.  I plunked down my $20 and now my slightly affordable wine has become a rare vintage!

The plane we are subsequently squished into for the two-and-a-half hour journey is a Boeing 737, which carries about 180 people.  I would guestimate that 160 of them had wheelies to carry onboard.  UGH!  180 people (not an empty seat) squeezed tighter than sardines in a can…………..now add all of their over-stuffed luggage, most of which should never have been allowed as a carry-on in the first place.  Unfortunately, because most of us now check-in online, there is no airline personnel at the check-in counter to see that these bags are truly over-sized and should be checked luggage rather than carried onboard.

But stay with me – it gets worse.  The head flight attendant begins making frantic announcements that we cannot place our coats in the overhead bins because these are reserved for the “wheelies.”  Oh really?  It’s winter, we all have coats.  Now I have paid just as much as the person with the wheelie; in fact, I have paid 20 bucks more because I checked my bag.  I dare they tell me that I have to sit with my coat on my lap while the buffoon next to me gets to place his over-stuffed suitcase over my head.  I don’t think so.  As I try to place my coat above, an attendant comes racing down the aisle, “no no no, you can’t do that.” 

“Really?  You’d better think twice, Missy,” I mumble to myself.  I then squish my leather coat into a ball small enough for a pinball machine so that it can fit into my shoulder-bag and voila – my handbag is now luggage and can be placed in the overhead bin.  The point is – I shouldn’t have had to do that but two can play THAT game and I will win every time.

Maybe, just maybe, if we all refuse to fly anywhere in the continental US for just one day the airlines would be forced to listen and change their ways.  Picture it – no passengers anywhere for one day.  What would they do with themselves?  I, for one, would like to tell them where to go!