Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Labor Day Delays

With Labor Day weekend fast approaching, many Americans will be heading out of town. Unfortunately, while the weekend promises to be wonderful and relaxing, getting to your destination is sure to be the opposite. Those driving may be stuck in beach traffic and those flying will be stuck in an all together different sort of mess.

In an effort to squeeze as much money as possible out of the flying public this weekend, the airlines will over-schedule and over-book well beyond capacity. And passengers so looking forward to their vacation will have to sit in a tarmac traffic jam, until, hopefully not too long after the scheduled departure time, the plane finally takes off.

It’s a shame that vacations are disrupted, delayed and otherwise inconvenienced because airline CEOs are more interested in their own pocketbooks than the best interest of their customers.

1 comment:

W. Kelly said...

When so many people want to fly on a holiday, what do you expect but delays? Should the airlines not schedule as many flights and leave an enormous number of people with no option at all except driving? We all know the roads are never packed on holidays. No, it's clear sailing all the way on the interstates and toll roads. Are there problems with the airlines overbooking? Yes. Are there problems on the roads? Yes. Hey, here's a reality check. Why don't we drop the personal propoganda stance and admit that in spite of the snippy airline agent that we'd love to lay all the blame on, for some time now our bigger problem has been population growth outpacing our ability to pay for and construct the infrastructure necessary to adequately handle it. Friends, short of making it law that a couple can never have more than one child (hey, he can't say that), which is obviously absurd, the situation is not going to be solved. Yes, it's hard to accept and you want to say, "no that's not the problem". Well until some brilliant person comes up with a new social solution that every citizen is agreeable to, our only option is trying to be a little nicer to each other. It'll make that line at the airline counter easier to take.