Fun With Airlines

So this year for Christmas I went to Sweden with my wife (who is Swedish). We have spent the last few years right here in Omaha, Nebraska for Christmas but it was time to spend a Christmas with the Swedish side of this marriage.

To get to Sweden from Omaha you have to catch a connecting flight in Chicago. It may be shocking that there is no direct Omaha-Stockholm flights, but it turns out that is not a financially viable line. Once I entered the Chicago airport, I noticed a subtle change- subtle as in jump right up into your face and say “NOTICE ME NOTICE ME”. The people who work at the airport have a bit of an attitude. As I walked to my connecting flight I could hear around me courteous airport staff helping passengers. “Did I SAY you have to go through security again” one annoyed, rage-filled staffer told a quivering old lady.

In this world of mass travel via airplane there are a lot of obstacles to sanity and comfort. For some reason when I overheard this conversation it made me reflect on the wonderful world of airplane travel. I have broken this up into a few different parts.

Tickets: About ten to fifteen years ago airlines finally took the leap into electronic tickets. Kicking and screaming, the whole industry took a leap they should have taken twenty years earlier- a leap that not only makes travel easier on the passengers but saves the airlines huge amounts of money and time. I bring this up first because I see the ticket as the hallmark of airline progress.

Take something that benefits EVERYONE and drag your feet for years. If this is something you personally engage in, watch out- you might be an international airline.

Putting your flight, seat, and gate number in a clear-to-see and find area of the ticket is NEW. In the 90’s my airline tickets resembled numeric crossword puzzles, with gate, flight and seat information scattered indiscriminately across an ocean of random numbers that have meaning only to airline workers or some pagan airline. You would have to forsake your own personal faith and pray should you ever want to decipher your ticket and find your gate. Let me say that again, making the word SEAT big and placing YOUR seat number next to it is a NEW invention of the airlines. Somebody came up with that just ten years ago and that guy got a big raise, and robust men patted him on the back, and said things like “Johnson- ticket make good read. Me CEO, me big man, now I make plane go zoom zoom hee hee.” Some of you might notice that I didn’t say a woman invented this concept and that must be true. There is no way a woman was involved because a woman would have figured out tickets should be easy to read on the FIRST DAMN ONE EVER PRINTED.

I am not going to obsess on the walk through security because everyone knows how ridiculous it is and I just…it just hurts my head. But I will note that because I remove my shoes, take off my belt, stripped off my dignity and submit to random acts of searching stupidity I no longer have to be asked the dumbest questions created by man i.e. “are you carrying any weapons?” When my wife went through the final step to getting her green card I had to go in with her and prove we were married. Here are some of the questions they asked her. “Do you have any relatives you are bringing with you into the U.S.?” Fair enough, a question worth asking I suppose. This was followed up with “Are you a terrorist?” I kid you not, that was a real question. There was also, “have you ever been or are you currently involved in the trafficking of illegal drugs?” Maybe these are not stupid questions maybe our jails are so packed because questions like these catch criminals all of the time. Maybe this is the greatest invention in crime fighting since Batman- I doubt it, but I digress.

The most interesting thing I have found out about airport security is the differences that occur country-to-country. If you are at an airport in the good old U.S.A. well, be prepared to have your grandmother strip searched and tasered for having a pair of knitting needles. Are you leaving Sweden? Well, expect a polite, non-rushed security check that might also resemble a line at the grocery store. Did you just get done vacationing in Laos (yes, Laos has an airline, called Lao Air, Fun Fact: Lao Air is one of only two airlines in the world that does not make public it’s safety record….yea) Walking through security in Laos is a lot like just walking, there is not much of a check. Now I have to think this is because A. Laos has never had a terrorist problem. OR B. Even terrorists who are going to blow themselves up are afraid to fly Lao Air. O.K. now I’m not even digressing I’m just wandering around the landscape of airline security.