Air Travel: Every trip an adventure

The hassels of traveling by air are well known to most people these days. Anything from beaurocratic red tape to bad weather to air traffic to a loose screw can add hours of annoyance to any journey. I'm by no means the most experienced air passenger around, but I've been on enough planes to know that air schedules are very much estimated, a change of clothes (or at least toiletries) in the carryon luggage is highly recommended, and even such seemingly static data as dates, times, scheduled stops, and even airlines can vary wildly from departure to arrival.

My most recent trip by air presents a perfect example of two very different flights. K and I flew from Portland to Kansas City for an awesome weekend of bagpipes, and the trip out was nothing short of ideal. The flight from Portland to Detroit was smooth and right on time, we had a short walk through Northwest's very nice terminal, and a nearly on-time departure for Kansas City. The light snow meant the plane to be deiced before takeoff, which set us back about 20 minutes arriving into Kansas City. Not really a big deal. The baggage claim was almost next to the gate (separated by just a barrier), and our suitcases were literally the first and second ones to hit the belt.

The trip back was a different story. We were again flying Northwest and connecting through Detroit, and upon checking in at the airport were told that due to snow in Detroit, our flight out of KC was delayed beyond our connecting fight. By the time we arrived they had already arranged an alternative itinerary on a different airline: flying United through Dulles. I hadn't guessed they would put us on a competing airline, but they did. I was quite impressed.

There was another issue though: because we had switched airlines on the same day as the flight, we were "randomly" selected for additional security screening. I can't figured out how, but apparently that's a sign of suspicious behavior. It meant that in addition to the regular metal detector and x-ray process, we recieved a pat down from our friendly TSA officer and a thorough search of our bags. Genius me left my utility knife in my pipe case, so I had to go outside security to deal with it, then go through the process again to get back to the gate. At least that section wasn't terribly busy, so there wasn't much in the way of lines.

There were three things that made the whole experience bearable. First was that our rescheduled flight was to arrive in Portland at roughly the same time as the original, so we didn't lose any more time than we already had. Second was that our rescheduled flights were all on time. Third, everyone we dealt with at the Kansas City airport was really great to deal with. The curbside Northwest rep, the Northwest ticket agents, the United ticket agents, and finally the TSA reps at the security checkpoint were very pleasant, professional, knowledgable, and just generally pleasant to work with. The attitude was "Sorry your flight has been delayed, I understand this is inconvenient, but we're doing our best to get you where you need to go."

In fact, the whole process was handled so well by the airline reps that I don't have a thing to complain about. Our luggage even arrived in Portland on the same plane!