Air Travel

It appears the days of the “nice gesture” have gone the way of Michael Jackson’s career—everything comes with strings attached these days. I attempted to redeem a travel voucher last night toward the purchase of a plane ticket to visit my family this spring. Now this voucher was a goodwill gesture extended to me after the travel debacle that consumed the majority of my Christmas experience. Of course at the time I thought the airline was so respectable and gracious, so intent upon keeping my travel business that they would extend an olive branch, insuring that I would once again fly with them. Yeah right. Of course they sent me a voucher; apparently they sent every third person a voucher because they know no one will ever be able to redeem them. Just call the little 800-number and someone can assist you in redeeming your travel voucher. Forty-five elevator-music-filled minutes later, a real live operator, who by the way has no more information than the website, takes all your travel information before informing you in her humorless monotone voice that you must physically present the voucher at a ticket counter within 24 hours to finalize your travel, and that’s 24 hours from right this minute! If you have a problem with the policy, she’s happy to explain it to you in terms of a grocery store coupon. Why thank you for that economic lesson, Bertha, but a $75 airfare discount is a little more important to me than 50 cents off a gallon of milk, especially as I’m lactose intolerant and I don’t buy groceries.

I live in New York City. I do not own a car. I do not leave the island of Manhattan unless I am flying off of it. Thus the mere notion of just visiting the airport is nearly incomprehensible to me. What’s more, the cab fare to and from the airport would not only nullify the voucher, it would put me in the hole! Thus my options are narrowed. I could take the bus, but while I have no problem with public transportation, the last time I took a shuttle bus to an airport I had the pleasure of sitting behind the bus driver and his girlfriend. Basically I spent and hour and a half in Karaoke hell, listening to the girlfriend’s rendition of every song on Light FM. I realize that I am young and still supposed to be sacrificing, but neither my hearing nor my sanity is a facet of my person with which I’m willing to part.

Now I find it hard to believe in this the age of computer technology that an airline cannot somehow electronically track a simple voucher. Now that I think about it, should I be trusting my life to people who can’t install a working phone system? I mean it took 9 attempts before the automated system even put me on hold! That electronic woman kept telling me to try back later. Bitch. Is the idea that these people can defy the laws of gravity, hoist a multi-ton piece of metal into the air and propel it across the country, yet they can’t get my bag on board with me a little odd to anyone else? The hotdog vendor on the corner of 49th St. checks his email on a hand-held device, but the woman at the terminal gate is assigning my seat on what looks to be an early model mimeograph. You want me to pay you hundreds of dollars to lose my luggage, delay my flight, and run up my cell phone bill so that you can look like a hero for giving me a $75 apology note I can never use? It’s a bit like the old “let’s do lunch sometime” that you give the girl you used to be friends with in high school when she corners you in Walmart while you’re engrossed in the check-out magazine you deliberately picked up to avoid making eye contact—you know you’ll never come through, but asking somehow absolves you of the guilt you should feel for pretending you didn’t recognize her the last 12 times she took your order at Wendy’s.

So now I have to make a decision. Do I try an alternate mode of transportation? Train and rental car are both incredibly expensive, take way too long, and smell of previous customers. Or, do I find another airline? The problem here being that there’s only one carrier that flies directly into my tiny hometown. Otherwise I’d be forced to land hours away, and I have never been a cut-your-nose-off-to-spite-your-face kinda gal (my features are much too delicate for such atrocities). Were it not for my lazy, spoiled lifestyle I might fight the good fight, never fly this airline again, and let them miss my semi-annual trips to Po Dunk, USA on the cheapest flight in the cheapest seat shoving bags of peanuts in my purse and grabbing an extra soda for the road. Alas, I fear even the most righteous must crumble in the name of convenience. Thus, I am forced to submit and pay full price on the same worthless airline on which I have suffered so greatly, though to be sure they have not heard the last from me, as tomorrow I will exercise the final and most destructive weapon in my arsenal….the strongly-worded email.