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In reply to the discussion: Airplane Etiquette [View all]PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,750 posts)Here's the underlying problem. Airlines have trained people to go for the cheapest possible fair, regardless.
Recently I helped a friend book flights from Santa Fe, NM to Oregon and back from California. As we went through the booking process, I was able to point out to him that a fare a bit above the cheapest possible now meant that he could check a bag (otherwise $30/per flight) and select his seats now (who knows how much he as saving) and the checked baggage thing was less than the cheapest possible fare.
I'm curious, and maybe someone here can enlighten me. If you book a cheap fare, and cannot select a seat, and at the airport only some kind of premium seat is available, do you then have to pay the additional charge for the premium seat? Or will they board you and let you sit in a premium seat?
I've become so disgusted with such nonsense, that my dirty secret is that I book a first class seat the rare times I fly. Okay, it will be a business class if I ever fly international, but you know what I mean. I've figured out that if I book such a seat far enough in advance I can get it for a price I'm willing to pay. So what if it's not the cheapest possible fare? I think I've already covered what's wrong with that thinking. More to the point, I get that thing that enables me to bypass the security bullshit. Oh, and should I mention that I used to be an airline ticket agent? And that I started well before any security nonsense, and that I understand EXACTLY why we got the original security, and that it worked incredibly well (hijackings went to zero) and that the security changes since 9/11 are pure theater and don't get me started on that.
Oh, and I'm not sure if it's because I buy a first class seat, or if it's that I'm a senior citizen, but the rare times I've flown recently I get that bypass thing. And even if I don't, do you REALLY think a 70 year old lady is going to hijack a plane? Really?
I will add this, to give a bit of context. I was an airline ticket agent at National Airport in Washington, DC (DCA) from January 1969 to August 1979. I took the job (even though I desperately wanted to be a stewardess and alas, no matter how many times I applied for that job I was turned down) mainly for the travel benefits.
My older brother worked as an operations agent for Piedmont Airlines in 1967 and 1968. His travel benefits allowed him to visit us in Tucson in 1967 and 1968, flying first class on American Airlines. I was dazzled by that. In 1968, when I expressed dissatisfaction with my life in Tucson, he said, "Well you can always come live with us", meaning him and his wife who lived in the DC area. I lost no time. Within two weeks I resigned my job at Ma Bell (I was an information operator at the time), closed out my apartment, packed all my worldly goods, and flew with brother and his wife to the DC area.
Three months later I got a job with an airline long since out of business (Mohawk Airlines) as a ticket agent at DCA. It was an incredibly difficult job in many ways. Some years later, when I was a new mother, and belonged to a group of brand new first time mothers, one of the moms sighed and said, "This is the hardest job I've ever had." I looked at her in utter astonishment. I could not imagine a job as easy as being a mother of a baby. I didn't have to smile and make my baby acquiesce to delays or cancellations. I didn't have to dress in high heels to nurse him. I didn't have to work flights until midnight or 1 am am and then be back at the airport at 6 am to get the morning flights out. In short, I couldn't imagine having a job half way as easy as this.
I know that context is everything. But I've often said that nothing I have done, including childbirth, has been remotely as difficult as working at the airport.