Ten reasons why I dislike the airport

by Scott Carmichael on

I hate airports. It never used to be like this, because most of my travel used to take me abroad. I always looked forward to spending some time at the various major international Airports.

Most of my travel nowadays is between US airports, and it is obvious all my years of international travel spoiled me for life. There are just a handful of decent airports in the US, but the vast majority are just a disgrace. Even airports that act as the gateway to the nation greet tourists with dull and uninspired buildings, rude staff and confusing public transport.

Call me negative Nancy, but I’ve listed ten of the things that annoy me the most when I’m at the airport. Let me know in the comments whether you share any of these things.

Lines

Lets face it – unless you are an elite level flier (or you are flying out of a quiet airport), your trip is going to mean you’ll be standing in line, just so you can stand in line, so you can stand in line.

You’ll encounter lines at the check-in desk or check-in computer kiosk, you’ll be in line for security, you’ll be in line at the gate, you’ll be in line at the air bridge, and you’ll be in line on the plane waiting for someone to spend their first five minutes on board slowly getting comfortable. Lines suck, and unless you are really mellow, lines are a sure way to get your trip off to a bad start.

The “security” checkpoint

TSA staff rank up there with most other bureaucrats. There vast majority of them are good people out there, but plenty of them stand around the security area radiating total and utter contempt for the traveling public.

Basic help is rarely available, and any time the stress of travel makes you forget to empty your pockets or remove your laptop, you find yourself on the receiving end of a monkey in a blue shirt yelling at you. Sadly, all this harassment is done under the disguise of keeping us safe from terrorists, which is the magic word that allows people to be rude.

Poor seating

Airports spend millions on art, but when it comes to providing decent seats, they must shop at IKEA. Even though airports know they’ll often need to take care of you for several hours, the seating they provide is horrible. Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me if it is just done so they can force you into their overpriced restaurants, because spending $6 on a beer appears to be the only way you’ll get a decent place to sit.

Baggage fees

In the past, once you’d paid for your ticket, the only money the airline would get out of you would be for a decent drink on your flight. That has all changed with airlines demanding money for checked bags. A family of 4, each with 2 bags can easily find themselves parting with $200 at the airport.

Concession stands, restaurants and stores

Who doesn’t like paying $10 for a stale sandwich or a 2 day old bagel? Airport food sucks, is overpriced and is usually inedible. There are a couple of airports who managed to find a decent restaurant, but the vast majority consists of bad sandwich stores and greasy fast food.

With a couple of exceptions, US airports also offer a dull array of stores. Just how many people actually shop at the airport Brookstone? Would it hurt them to start offering some real choices? One quick look at Amsterdam, Dubai or Hong Kong shows how a real airport shopping center should be.

Public transportation

Very few US airports have the luxury of a decent public transportation system. When these places were designed, most architects forgot that not everyone would be traveling by car. Even some of the busiest airports in the world (like JFK in New York) didn’t get a decent public transit system till several years ago. Others, like LAX don’t have any direct connections (other than a poor bus service).

As usual, some of the airports outside the US show us how things should be – Hong Kong has a high speed rail service connecting the airport with downtown, Amsterdam has an underground train station linking the airport with most Dutch stations, and even Heathrow offers arriving and departing passengers multiple rail options.

The executive lounge

The “executive lounge” is where elite passengers and people traveling in first class can relax separated from the commoners. In the US, the lounge is a dark and poorly designed room, where you can trade a drink coupon for a beer.

Outside the US, the executive lounge is a completely different story – airports like Heathrow and Hong Kong offer lounge amenities from complimentary spa services to noodle and ice cream bars and an assortment of top shelf liquor. The contrast is amazing. Upscale in the US means grabbing a cracker before someone beats you to it. Upscale abroad means trying to pick which of the various freshly cooked meals you’d like.

Parking

Parking at the airport is a huge scam. There is no logical explanation why a parking spot should cost more than a couple of bucks a day. Arriving back home from a 2 week trip, and having to fork over a $210 to get your car back is a rip-off.

Even short term parking can be a nightmare – $10/hour is not unheard of, and a simple departure delay could mean you are out $20 just for the luxury of waving goodbye.

Drop-off lanes

Does anyone know when dropping people off at the airport became such a pain in the ass? Most airports now employ security staff equipped with whistles and bright orange vests who have been programmed to ensure nobody spends more than 20 seconds saying goodbye to their loved ones. Travel is stressful enough, but these bottom feeders make things far worse than it should be.

Gate lice and the boarding rush

We’ve all seen them (perhaps you are one of them) – the people who hang around the boardin
g door making sure they can get on board the plane before anyone else. They are called gate lice, and they make a sport out of completely ignoring all requests from the gate staff.

Even though they never seem to be in the first boarding group, they’ll still stay put, and as the people who are actually eligible for priority boarding make their way to the gate, they won’t budge. When people walk past them with “boarding group 1” in hand, they’ll stare them down. I hate them, and wish they’d all just stay home.

The TSA took my baby story: The relationship between psychology, customer service and traveling with a young one

by Jamie Rhein on

After watching the TSA video of the mother blogger who claimed in a post on her blog “My Bottle’s Up” that a TSA agent temporarily took her baby son out of her sight during the security screening process at the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airport, I had thoughts about TSA security screening.

Katie wrote a post about this incident earlier today, but there are other points worth making, particularly when considering factors that helped create this partly true, partly fabricated TSA vs. passenger story–even if the fabrications may not have been intentional.

There are a couple of details about this incident that indicate that perhaps TSA still has a bit of work to do when it comes to perfecting customer service and truly understanding human psychology and behavior.

Although I’ve been generally impressed with most TSA agents, there are times when it has been clear to me that bad practices can have adverse effects.

Here are points that came to mind when I looked into this latest TSA vs. passenger story:

1. People who are flying are consumers. They’ve paid for a flight. That means they have expectations of being able to catch their flights. This can produce anxiety if expectations and reality are not matching up when TSA’s security measures become cumbersome, time-consuming and seem ridiculous.

2. A person flying alone with a young child has a bit of paraphernalia to deal with. Along with the child, consider the stroller, bottle, diaper bag, and various objects the caregiver has brought along to keep the child happy. It’s enough of a process to get belongings for one person ready for security. Add in the rigmarole it takes to take a child through the security check, and there’s potential for more anxiety.

3. TSA is a government entity that has all the power at a security check. Regardless that most TSA agents are splendid and do their jobs with the highest professionalism, there are jerks–not many, but there are some.

Plus, there are passengers who have had bad experiences with authority figures–or have anxiety about authority figures. There’s something about going through security that can make even the most law abiding citizens worry.

4. When the mother did get red flagged for a security check because the alarm went off, she was put, along with her child, in a clear box-like room with Plexiglas walls. That seems like a recipe for high anxiety. Why wasn’t she checked as soon as she beeped? Why the box-like room? The more I watched her in the room, the more anxious I felt. She was stuck until someone made a move.

First, there she is holding a young child and being ignored. Watch how many times her hand goes up as she’s trying to get someone’s attention. Watch how her feet are shifting. She’s having problems. Certainly it’s not rocket science to know that people with young children don’t really need to be put in a box-like room without knowing how long they’ll need to wait in it, if at all. Frankly, making people wait before getting the wand feels like a bit of a power play to me.

5. When you are stuck in a box- like room, but the others around you are able to go about their merry way, it can make you feel even worse. While the woman is in the room with her child, others are passing through security without a hitch. Why wouldn’t this put her on edge? Or is the role of TSA really about testing our patience?

6. Even when she was finally checked, the process was maddeningly slow. She was then taken over to sit in a chair for an even longer amount of time. For some reason TSA kept talking to her. I can imagine the “Yoooouuur in a huuurrryyy arrre yyyyouuuuu? Trying to catch a flight? This will teach you a lesson about trying to get TSA to hurry, and I’d watch the attitude, Lady.”

Running a wand over someone should be quick and easy. I’ve been wanded a few times myself. In my experience, it”s been a slam dunk process. This woman was checked and rechecked. She could have completely undressed and got dressed again longer than it took TSA to clear her. The whole time she was being checked, her baby is off to the side in the stroller. There’s nothing worse as a parent to be in a situation when you are in a busy place with your eye off your child. The child was not taken anywhere, but the woman might have been thinking the child could have been.

Even though TSA did not separate this woman from her child, as the woman claimed an agent did, I’d say that TSA didn’t do a whole lot to ensure that this woman would give them high marks on customer service. If anything, it looks to me like the TSA agent was having a bit of a power play.

In Katie’s post, she mentioned that she didn’t think the woman was separated from her belongings like she claims she was. I think she was.

From what I saw, a woman with blond hair gathered the belongings off the conveyor belt. It took some time for the mother to be reunited with her belongings, some of which belonged to her child. One of the belongings was a laptop. It doesn’t take long for a laptop to be snatched.

Like Katie said, the woman didn’t appear to make a phone call to her mother or her husband on her cell phone like she claimed she did–unless it is a teensy tiny cell phone that none of us can see.

Maybe it was a cell phone of her imagination–the one that she uses whenever she’s fending off an anxiety attack. Regardless of the details about this story that are not true, TSA at this particular airport, at least, still has some work to do.

Perhaps this particular TSA could take pointers from this security sign at the airport in Houston.

“Families and Those Needing Special Attention” are listed first. “Small children; strollers” are under the first bullet point.

If a mom (or a dad) and the baby in arms beep, help them first–with a smile. Say, “Sorry to inconvience you, but I need to find out why you beeped. Thanks for your understanding.”

It will work like a charm.

TSA disproves blogger’s claim that agent took her baby

by Katie Hammel on

On Friday, a blogger reported a harrowing tale that would make any parent furious with the TSA. She claims that, while going through security, she was detained because her son’s pacifier clip set off the metal detector. When she was pulled aside for a search, her son was taken away from her by a male TSA agent and was out of her sight for several minutes.

On her blog, she recounts the story of how she was so upset that she screamed obscenities, almost blacked out, and frantically phoned her husband and mother over the course of the nearly ten minutes that her child was out of her sight. She says when the agent finally returned with her son, she ran to him. Once she was allowed to leave, she headed to the bathroom, again nearly blacked out, and took the “emergency Xanax” that she keeps with her at all times because she suffers from severe anxiety.

Well, she might want to take a few more Xanax, because it sounds like this whole episode may have been the result of anxiety-induced hallucinations. The TSA has released proof that the incident, as the blogger claims, never happened.

The video of the blogger and her son going through security has been posted on the TSA website. The nearly 10-minute long video clearly shows that not once was her son out of her sight, that she never picked up her cellphone and that a TSA agent never held her child (though one did pat him down for about 10 seconds). While she is being patted down, her son is visible no more than three feet away, siting in his stroller. Even her claim that her belongings were left on the conveyor belt is false. A TSA agent brings them to the search area shortly after she walks over.

It’s easy to get mad at the TSA, with their frequent fumbles and ever-changing rules about liquids, powders, and shoes. Who likes being forced to walk barefoot (or in my case, often in mismatched socks) around an airport or to have to wait (as she did) ten minutes to be cleared through security? But if you’re thinking of getting even with a falsified account like this, just remember: when dealing with the TSA, you’re always on camera.

EU rules on liquid carry-ons may become “fluid”

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Grab a drink, if you feel inclined … in Europe, at least. The European Union is getting ready to lift the ban on liquids in carry-ons. The target date is still pretty far in the future, because the technology the EU plans to use isn’t widely available yet. Originally, the prohibition was supposed to expire in April, but now it’s looking like no later than 2014.

Okay, so don’t rush to celebrate the change.

That being said, the EU’s transportation officials are pressuring the technology companies involved to move quickly.

The rules against liquids in containers larger than 100 ml and not in clear bags have been in effect for three years, after a terrorist plot was uncovered in Britain. The perps were planning to use liquid explosives in soda cans.

Now that everyone’s safe, we’re also free to gripe about what we can’t take on board – not to mention longer waits at security checkpoints. Progress may be slow, but at least it’s happening. Let’s give a nod to innovative thinking, with a technological solution being devised to give us back some of our time without compromising our security.

If you need action sooner, there’s a chance that the rules may be eased a bit for duty-free liquids bought outside the EU.

Gunman tasered at Gatwick airport

by Sean McLachlan on

If you’re taking a bus to the airport, the last thing you want to see is one of your fellow passengers carrying a gun, especially if you’re in England and you know the guy probably doesn’t have permission to own one.

That’s just what happened to a passenger going to Gatwick Airport near London this morning. As soon as his bus arrived at the airport’s South Terminal he notified police and they wasted no time tasering the suspect and putting him in custody. According to this early report nobody else was injured and the suspect, who is described only as a man in his 40s, apparently had not made any threats to passengers or airport staff. He is now being questioned.

Gadling will post a followup to this story as more details emerge.