Dear GOD, American airline companies suck

Okay, rant time (followed by some doom and gloom speculation...)

So, I've had a streak of bad luck with airlines lately. On my way back from Europe on US Airways (a Star Alliance airline), I was faced with a 3.5 hour delay in Philly (which started off as less than a 2 hour delay, then continually got delayed by 20 minute increments for the next 1.5 hours), my luggage ended up getting completely covered in olive oil from someone else's luggage (which wouldn't have happened if they had actually checked my baggage as priority baggage as they were supposed to, since I'm a Gold Member, but the lady at the check-in counter was on the phone the entire time we were checking in and missed it), etc etc.

Last Friday, I decided to reserve a ticket down to LA from San Francisco using a voucher I got from United (also Star Alliance). I did the entire transaction on the phone since their online system wouldn't allow me to use the voucher. At the end of the conversation, the ticketing person tells me that I then had 24 hours to get to SFO to hand in my voucher in person, otherwise the hold on my tickets would be released and I would lose them. There was no way for him to redeem my voucher via the phone. And this was at 10pm on Thursday - too late for me to take the morning off. I still managed to make it before the ticket counter closed and thought everything was fine.

And this evening at 9pm, less than 24 hours before my flight is supposed to leave, I get a message telling me that my flight is canceled, and that they have automatically put me on the next available flight - leaving at 10pm. Problem is that I had already made dinner plans and whatnot. I called up their customer service to make them do *something* about it. Their only other suggestion was to offer me a 2pm flight. And no matter how many times I told them that I have to work, they didn't seem to understand. *I* finally suggested allowing me to fly (at their cost) on a different airline (and they quickly claimed there were none available), after which point I suggested leaving from a different airport. That worked.

However, when I requested that my *return* flight *also* be changed to return to the same airport (since I would be leaving my car at the parking lot), they told me that I would have to pay a $100 change fee, since it is a "voluntary" change. I explained 4 times very slowly that it was not a voluntary change - I had made plans based on the fact that I was going to arrive in LA before 8pm, and could not change them. And since it would cost me $90 to take a taxi from SFO to San Jose airport to get my car (not to mention I had a late flight and it would mean I wouldn't get home until 1am on Monday morning), it was ridiculous for them to expect me to pay that out of pocket.

I requested to speak to a manager and was told that the manager would tell me the same thing. I asked again and again and told them that I was not going to get off the phone until someone helped me, she finally put me on hold and then changed my return flight for free.

The whole transaction took over an hour.

What the hell is up with this? And they wonder why American airline companies are having so much trouble making money?? It's because nobody expects them to actually live up to any of their promises and their customer service is crap. Which means nobody will pay anything more than bargain prices.

But that sort of brings me to my next question: what's going to happen to the airlines? I've read numerous articles that say American airline companies (except for Southwest) cannot actually turn a profit unless oil is <$80 a barrel (last time it was this cheap was apparently last summer.) Even Richard Branson, head of Virgin Group, says that there will be tons of top airlines closing their doors in the next 12 months. What's going to happen if that comes to pass? That means significantly less business travel, significantly less tourist travel, etc. I don't even want to think about the economic consequences that this would have.

This just makes the fuel issue in the US even more frustrating. There are still people who refuse to accept the fact that we have to change our consumption habits. There are *very* reasonable alternatives to cars in the US; airplanes, not so much.

Ah, Paris

It's strange. Of all the beautiful places we visited during our romp through Europe, of all the wonderful sights we saw, I find myself missing Paris the most. It's not that I had the most *fun* in Paris - no, each place we visited was wonderful in its own way and I was immensely glad to have gone to each and every place. But there was just something about the first days of our trip that have left an impression on me.

When we arrived in Paris in the morning, I was extremely stressed. It was the first 2 week vacation I had ever taken, so I was naturally worried about work. I had convinced myself to leave my Blackberry off until I was confident I could ignore it unless I needed to email someone (since I didn't have regular wi-fi access to use my iPod) but it was much like riding a bike for the first time without training wheels. I haven't been addicted to my Blackberry in a long time, but the idea of not checking work email for so long was scary.

On top of that, it was my first time in many, many years being in a country where I wasn't fluent in the native language. The only exception to that was my brief jaunt in China 2 years ago, but even then I was so insulated from everything around me (having spent 95% of my time trapped in the office or being shuttled from location to location) that it hardly mattered that I didn't speak Chinese. But this was Paris. I'd heard horror stories (and other stories that contradicted those stories, to be sure) about how Parisians reacted to Americans, particularly those that didn't speak French.

The final straw was simply the utter lack of sleep I was suffering by the time of my arrival. I have a chronic problem of being unable to sleep on planes, so by the time I arrived in Paris, I was running on 24 hours of no sleep (not to mention feeling utterly nasty from the recycled air of the airplane).

So, with phrasebook nervously clutched in hand, we set out to find the Eurorail information booth to get our passes validated. The experience did not go so well. He did not speak much English and I could hardly understand what he said. We made it to Paris unscathed, but had to transfer to another train to get to our exit. Having been spoiled by the Japanese transit system, I was utterly shocked at how difficult it was to find any sign that indicated where we were supposed to go. After asking around, we finally found our line and made it with little incident (except we didn't realize we could just walk out of the station without inserting our ticket into a machine, so we stood at the exit looking for a place to insert the ticket... the attendant just came out and opened the door for us.)

The rest of the day was equally exhausting, but increasingly exciting. I found that my pronunciation of French was good enough for people to understand with little problem (though I still couldn't understand a word of anything anyone was saying) and I could tangibly feel my confidence rising. By the time we got back to our hotel and crashed for the night (I use the word "night" here loosely, since it was only about 7:30 when we went to sleep...), I was immensely satisfied with the way things had gone.

Fast forward to the next morning, and having slept nearly 11 hours, I was fully rested and ready to take on the city. The first item on our agenda was the Eiffel Tower, so we hopped back on the subway and made our way there. We found a quaint little cafe (that looked like it got its fair share of tourists, given that the menus were all available in English) that sat in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, across the street from what looked to be a schoolyard.

It was that moment that I miss. The stresses of the previous day made me completely forget about work and my level of confidence had risen to the point where I was little worried about the rest of the trip. Instead, I chose to relax and take in the atmosphere and revel in the fact that we were there. The breakfast (seen in this picture)we had was extremely simple - a croissant (which was delicious), half a baguette with jam and honey, a large cup of cafe creme, and a glass of orange juice. Quite possibly due to its simplicity, it was thoroughly enjoyable. We were in no rush to get anywhere (since we could see the Eiffel Tower was only about 10 minutes away on foot) so we took our time and enjoyed the beginning of our first full day of vacation.

Of course, by the end of our trip, we were thoroughly exhausted and couldn't wait to get back home to our furry-ridden sanctuary, looking back on it all, that morning in Paris was *exactly* what I was hoping this vacation to be.