Kayoh @ 190

I am finally back from a long week of working, and have decided to reflect on the past five days…..

First stop- Puerto Vallarta where if you tell people you are headed down there, they say “Are you going to get the fish tacos? They’re the best in the WORLD!”. Now, I am not a big fish eater, but in the interest of making the most of what could be the last couple months of my job, I decided to try the fish tacos that were supposed to change my life forever.  All I want to know is what the hell is everyone I work with eating that would make them think that those tacos were anywhere near the vicinity of “good”????  I only managed to get down two bites, but those two bites got back at me the rest of the day!

Next- Salt Lake City. I only had enough time there to attempt to sleep, so nothing really to report.

Newark! If you say it with flair it doesn’t sound so bad ;)  For some reason, I was actually surprised that it was a little chilly, and scolded myself for not knowing better. This time of year, it is imperative to pack for all temperatures just in case, but each and every year I get caught with my proverbial pants down and end up buying a sweatshirt just so I can walk across the street for dinner in relative comfort (I am a huge temperature wuss! Anything above or below 72 is just awful!).  You should see my sweatshirt collection!

LA - Awwww, home sweet home. There is nothing better than having an overnight where you can sleep in your own bed….ok going home and not having to go back to work is better, but the overnight is a close second.

Las Vegas- Viva!  Still really hot and windy, but people going to Vegas are always excited and in a good mood.

Fresno- What can I say? It’s Fresno.  Although, I did run into an airplane I used to fly….a really old Cessna 152  (a little two seater). No, I didn’t literally run into it, but I did have my picture taken standing next to it. This was one of the airplanes I used to have my flight lessons in, and later on in life, I taught people how to fly using this airplane. I have certainly come full circle!

Today is the first day of yet another new life. With the airlines cutting flights across the board, this means that the passengers’ options become very limited, and the airfare for the flights that are left will skyrocket.  To the employees, this means less commuting options, a much worse quality of life, and yes, several thousand of us will be furloughed (a nice way of saying “laid off” because a furlough implies that you will actually return one day).

So my new life for the immediate future means that my schedule gets reduced to what is called “Short Call Reserve”. Now I have to go to my base and sit there for five days waiting to see if I get called out to go fly anywhere. I must be able to get to the airport within a two hour call-out. Seeing as I live in California and my base is in Phoenix, this is quite a considerable pain in the butt! (Could be worse, could be commuting to the East Coast!)

I am very fortunate, and have wonderful friends here in Phoenix who have set me up with a room and an old beater airport car I have named “La Bamba” (so much fun to drive it around and get funny looks!) .  All this for a fraction of what any other crash pad situation would cost me.

So here I sit in Phoenix, reading and writing just waiting for the call.  My new life until the next new life!

Have you ever wondered what happens when you purchase your airline ticket online, clicked your choice of seat on the cute little airplane diagram, and then you arrive at the airport only to be given a boarding pass with a different seat number on it?

Daily while I am at work, I observe people who are quite upset when their 4A window seat magically turns into the 22B middle seat by the lav. Can’t really say that I blame them, they thought they were getting 4A. They also thought they had purchased a seat next to their significant other- no worries, he/she is now in the other middle seat across the aisle from you!

Because this happens so frequently, I started asking around to try to find out what is happening and why it happens so often.

Rumor has it:  So there you are online purchasing your airline ticket (Now I know you don’t want to pay the “talk to a human fee”!) and selecting what you think will be your seat. When you do this, what is actually happening is that you are placing a seat request. You have just purchased “any” seat on that flight (you have just bought yourself a space in that airplane), you have not purchased “that specific” seat (4A) on that flight. I have been told that “the company” does their best to honor these seat requests, but your best bet is to check in and get your boarding pass in your hot little hands as soon as possible with the seat you want printed on it. Waiting until you get to the gate just prior to boarding and trying to change seats will not usually get you a better seat as many other people have had the same idea.

The age-old saying “The early bird catches the worm” is definitely applicable in this situation, only now it becomes “The early bird doesn’t get the middle seat”!

Quite the interesting morning today at the Toronto airport. After clearing customs for the second time in about ten hours (and YES, I now have a Canada stamp in my passport-yaay!), my crew and I were going through security when we hear a loud crash coming from the security line next to us. I look over to see a man picking up his laptop from the ground and say “You idiot!”. The man in front of him who had accidentally knocked the laptop off the security “belt” turned around and started screaming at this man. “F you, you piece of sh-t. How dare you talk to me like that, you don’t do that!”. The other man says “You broke my laptop!”

“IT WAS A F-ING ACCIDENT YOU PIECE OF TRASH! You’d better get away from me or I’m going to punch your F-ing face in!”. After a few more expletives, things lighten up a bit and we make it through security without a full blown brawl breaking out (thank goodness-I left my camera at home and hate to miss such photo opportunities!) As we walk away, the crew and I place bets as to whether or not these two gentlemen (I use that word loosely) will be on our flight. A bet that I win- they were not on our flight After the betting had closed, I note how there we were in line at airport security when a fight breaks out and the fine security personnel did NOTHING aside from a couple of “calm down” sirs. Did I mention they did NOTHING? So apparently it is alright for two very angry men, about to go to blows, to waltz through security and get on a very confined aluminum tube without so much as a “time out”?

The trip I am on now is a delightful mix of cities and countries. I just spent the previous two evenings in Toronto, tonight I will be in Boise and tomorrow will take me to Puerto Vallarta. I love trips like this where each of the cities that I go to are so completely different from one another.

Because several of my flights on this trip include international destinations, I spend more time than usual walking between the international and domestic gates. There are usually large distances between gates (sometimes even a mile or more) that need to be covered in short periods of time, especially if you need to grab a bite to eat or use the restroom (any restroom other than an airplane lav is a welcomed treat during the day!). The distance in itself isn’t really a problem, but trying to walk a mile zig-zagging through the crowds while dragging your luggage behind you can get a little hairy. You learn how to do this “airport walk” over time with speed and grace. The one thing I never get used to, though, are the “diagonal walkers”. You know, the person you end up walking behind who is on their cell phone or is just looking around trying to figure out where they are going. The person who walks diagonally in front of you, limiting your options to get around them smoothly. I haven’t yet figured out this phenomena, but it is so prevalent in the travelers of today’s airports that there must be some link between walking and distraction that causes people to walk in a diagonal. Would it be rude to stop somebody one of these days and ask them if they realize that they’re walking diagonally? I’m just curious!

There are also the people who just stop in the middle of the concourse. The “stoppers” I really can’t complain too much about since we are all guilty of that one!

Also on this trip I received my first stamp in my shiny new passport!  Of course, it was from the U.S. The one stamp in my passport at this very moment is from the United States….apparently I should have asked Canada and Mexico for a stamp. Next time!

Walking off the jetway in Chicago the other night, I hear the gate agent say “It’s not my problem!”. Now I have felt that way on several occasions throughout life, but as I look around and see a woman in a wheelchair with her son standing by her side, I take notice of the situation.  Apparently we had three people in need of a wheelchair with only two wheelchairs actually present and only one woman to push all three.  I guess in Chicago after midnight, they hide all the wheelchairs.  The gate agent promptly disappears leaving these three people to fend for themselves.

We (the crew), go in all directions trying to find another wheelchair, and as I get back to the gate I hear one of the flight attendants say “I don’t know why we have to deal with this”.  Are you kidding me?

I am fully aware that it is not in my job description to chase down wheelchairs, but in the interest of not being a complete jackass, I do it anyway.  Would you really want your loved ones to get stranded in an empty terminal of Chicago O’Hare in the middle of the night? There are just some things in life you don’t do, and stranding elderly people who can’t walk in an airport definitely falls in that category.

A few minutes later, everyone is on their way to baggage claim and off we go to the hotel for our layover, but this whole epsiode got me thinking.  How on earth did we become such inconsiderate jerks as a society? Has it always been this way over the decades?  When did America become the land of the free, home of the rude?

These days, I believe you can actually taste the negativity looming in the airports.  Everyone is upset, understandably so.

The passengers, having stood in hours of lines (from the ticket counters to the security lines, to the lines at the various eateries and gift shops) are usually at least a little perturbed by the time they get on an actual airplane.  “A little Perturbed” is only a valid statement if things are going well. If the flight is going to be late, or there is some sort of problem (ie. crew issues or a mechanical), then I think “angry” becomes a much better descriptor at that point.  If a flight cancels altogether then comes another possible hour of standing in line at the customer service counter praying to be re-booked and subsequently make it to the desired city on the same day (hence why I always tell people to take the early flights. If something happens, you will be the first to be re-accomodated and have a much better chance of NOT getting stranded in a city you don’t want to be in).

The crews-not the happiest people to be at the airport either.  Getting around the airport is quite a feat these days-trying to navigate our way through the crowds to get from gate to gate can be quite a challenge while dragging around sixty pounds of your life behind you (I apolgize to anyone and everyone who has or will be affected by my luggage dragging techniques through a crowd..sometimes the luggage just has a mind of its own!). Not to mention we too have to endure the security lines (albeit not as long for us), and the other various airport lines every day that we are at work.

It is usually there, standing in the lines at the eateries where passengers like to strike up a conversation, usually about how bad their experience has been on my airline.  I always say how sorry I am to hear it (I truly am), and almost always the conversation ends with “I’m never flying this airline again”. Unfortunately, after years and years of having this particular conversation, I have resorted to avoiding any line that I can and I try to get to my next flight without having to hear yet again how bad the airline I work for is (believe me, all of us employees are WELL aware of how bad our airline is!). Most of us are very cautious when being approached by a passenger….in a way, we “gear up” to hear the worst  (another reason to fly early-the employees are much nicer when they are fresh for the day).

So there I was, walking through the terminal at my normal fast pace when I was stopped by a woman:

“Excuse me!”

As I kind of slow down “Yes?”

Woman:  “Do you know where there is good pizza in this airport?”

Total relief!  I can answer this one! I stop and have a pleasant conversation about airport food.  Now, I rarely know where the restroom is, I never know which carousel your bag will be going to in baggage claim, and nine times out of ten I will have no clue what gate your connecting flight will be going out of, but I sure can tell you where the good places to eat are in almost every major airport in the US! Something to be proud of? I think so!

So with a little conversation about airport food, I smiled and felt as though just maybe not all airport experiences are negative

They say that every airline pilot lives through at least one strike and one furlough.  I came within minutes of going on strike about five years ago, and yesterday the mailman was kind enough to deliver THE certified letter from the company stating that “due to economic times, high fuel costs, blah, blah, blah” that I will be furloughed sometime in the next eight months.  EIGHT MONTHS?????  They’re kidding, right? I realize that corporate America somewhere along the way has lost any heart (ethics) or loyalty (integrity) towards the “cost units” down on the bottom rung of the corporate ladder, but “sometime in the next eight months?”.  I’m having trouble wrapping my head around that.  “We don’t think we want you, but we don’t want you out there finding another job either.”  Wow, it feels like a few relationships I’ve had in my time!

My next task is to frame the furlough letter and hang it proudly on my “ME” wall because now, I am a REAL airline pilot.

How often in our lives does it feel like everyone in the world wants money from us?  This would be in addition to the daily struggle we face to not be completely torn apart in every direction. Perhaps my awareness of everyone wanting and expecting money from me is heightened solely because of the non-recession recession that we are in at the moment.

On top of all the usual suspects, I have noticed in the last week alone three requests for donations to various causes (very noble causes, I might add!), the hotel van drivers being more expectant than usual for their dollar tip (one actually started following me to make sure I gave it to him), as well as various other union and legal causes all wanting donations too. There are more, but thinking about them is too daunting!

What do we do- what do you do when you feel like the world is grabbing at your pocketbook?

Yesterday, the airlines began charging for everything.  The nickel and diming continues!  First, it was the second checked bag, then it was ANY checked bags, and don’t forget paying a small fee to have a better seat.  By better seat, we’re not talking first class, oh no, apparently there are actually better seats in coach class!  Who knew?  It seems that the first few rows in the beginning of coach class are actually better seats and worth a premium price.  Now, I get the idea of slapping down the Visa for an aisle or window seat.  I think all of us have a story or ten about the time when you were stuck in the dreaded middle seat between two people who fought you the entire flight for an inch of the armrest. Or those times when you’re in between two people who definitely didn’t bother to shower that morning, or possibly any other morning in the previous week.  So, on that note, I actually do encourage everyone to purchase a premium aisle or window seat- money well spent!

Now that the flying public has just started getting used to paying extra for “premium” seats and checked bags, the airlines also started charging for every type of beverage on board the airplane- the soda, water, coffee, juice, and of course alcohol (ok, they always charged for that in coach class, but now it’s even more!).  Ever since the new charges have been announced to the public, it seems that everywhere I go, I get asked “Why don’t they just raise the fares?”.  Ahhhhhh, excellent question, I will have to get back to that one another time.   What has been surprising to me in the past couple of days is how I have not heard a single complaint from the passengers.  The passengers appear to be content with the situation.