Comments on We Know Why You Fly...

We need Mr. Garrison to mass market the "It."

"It sure beats the airlines."

Headline typo?

I've quit flying American unless absolutely necessary... Their planes are old, the flight attendants are usually not happy campers, and the flights I have taken with them usually are late or cancelled... O'Hare and DFW seem to be impossible for them to get right...

Funny, because we flew American last month, and three-quarters of the experience was better than my recent experiences on Delta and United.

That 1/4, though, was being trapped in the unreclinable last row seats on a 757 with zero legroom and a guy in front of me yo-yo'ing with his seat recline so that he kept slamming me in the knees.

And they charge $5 for what you can buy from a vending machine for $3. Silly.

You should familiarize yourself with "rule 240"

Here's your secret weapon for fighting airline delays, cancellations, and missed connections:

Rule 240.

Before airline deregulation in 1978, Rule 240 was literally a federal requirement. Nowadays, it's a term describing what individual airlines will do for late or stranded passengers. In fact, the major airlines have filed "conditions of carriage" with the U.S. Department of Transporatation (DOT) guaranteeing their respective Rule 240s.

If your flight is delayed or cancelled, or if you've missed your flight connection, these policies may give you free meal vouchers, hotel accommodations, phone calls, and other amenities. You may be booked on a substitute flight -- even on another airline -- and you may be compensated or given a full refund if the flight problems persist.

Here's how it pertains specifically to American Airlines

Air travel nowadays calls for a high level of buddhist nonattachment, but good airports help. I like booking on Northwest through Detroit. That way, when the inevitable delays happen, I can ride back and forth on the monorail or watch the cool fountain. I love that fountain. This message paid for by Northwest Airlines.

Ugh. My family lives in Detroit, so I basically must take Northwest to visit them. Any airlines that charges $15 extra for an aisle seat deserves liquidation, in my humble opinion.

Oh that is NOT good news. I'm just packing my bags to try and catch a flight from Newark to SeaTac.

Golob, all the cool kids choose window seats. That's a $15 uncoolness fee.

That's a $15 I-don't-want-to-climb-over-my-sleeping-neighbor-if-I-need-to-use-the-bathroom fee.

I've had reasonable luck on Northwest (my partner and I go to Milwaukee a lot) but they too have ancient aircraft... I'm fairly certain the DC-9's they run to Milwaukee are older than me...

All I can say is wait for it--- soon you'll pay an additional charge to check a bag- it's already happened in Europe.

$15 for a window seat too. Middle seats are free. ;p

I love Continental, and the Delta planes that used to be in the Song fleet? Sooo good to New York. Way better than Jet Blue.

They should charge for carry-on bags. It could help cover some of the money wasted on searching the damn things.

And prevent certain idiots from taking two giant bags, a purse, a Nalgene, and their coat...

Re #3's comments on old aircraft:

I'm of the opinion that airliners just get better with age. These are carefully maintained machines, not like a car that gets driven until it quits. Problems get found and fixed. Your average elderly aircraft has a huge stack of airworthiness directives mandating fixes to problems with the original design, while potential problems with a new aircraft are mostly unknown. Also, the failure modes of aluminum and ways to test for them are much better understood than for the composite parts on newer designs -- some people believe it's impossible to conclusively test for cracks in composites, for example. I'd much rather climb on board an old 747 than a new A380.

(But then, I once took a recreational hop in a 1929 Ford Trimotor, an aircraft built when the sum total of human knowledge about the science of aerodynamics would have fit in a small book. So I'm a bit weird.)