Which one of you is doing this?
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I’ve definitely done this a little bit, not for an entire flight, but I certainly can just sit and stare and think about nothing in particular.
I enjoy going through my phone and deleting a ton of photos that have added up. Then I’ll play a little chess on my phone, lose to he computer, then contemplate my existence for a while while staring at the map.
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This has been my form of meditation lately. Usually doubles as a fun trip down memory lane, too.
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From the article
success,” says Luke Winkie, a 33-year-old staff writer at Slate, who has used the flight map as his only in-flight entertainment for years. “For some reason I don’t like processing new information when I’m in the air. I want to stick to things that are predictable and safe.”
Soft. Charmin soft.
I generally skip in flight meals. Maybe nibble on the fruit if its present. That’s about it. Airline food is mostly ass. A beer or two maaybe. Or wine if I’m up in biz. But not too much. Mainly focus on staying hydrated.
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it should be called the David Puddy
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Bareback? Swashbuckling?
Was this originally published on Grindr as a joke or something?
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I learn very hard. Another AA trip. CMH to London via ORD because it was the only daytime flight. Flight out of CMH delayed and so now I am in Toronto waiting for a British Airlines flight leaving this evening and flying overnight in a center seat in economy. Just shoot me.
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Slightly random one - has anyone flown through Dubai recently and seen if they are still selling nicotine pouches at Duty Free? Picked some up a couple years ago and would be keen to do so again on the way through their next month.
Coming in hot to complain about Aer Lingus. I came back from a trip with him a week ago, and one of our bags is still not with us. We got back to DEN on 6/19. The bag didn’t make our connection and was rerouted through ORD and arrived in DEN late on 6/20. We didn’t get confirmation until 6/24 that the bag was actually in DEN. The delivery company is supposed to contact us, and we haven’t heard anything from them yet. Very frustrating. The daily calls to Aer Lingus’ bag support are frustrating because they keep telling me to be patient without actually doing anything. Ugh.
Fortunately, there’s nothing irreplaceable in the bag, and my credit card has insurance. On the other hand, I have a dental mouthguard that will be expensive and time-consuming to replace if the bag doesn’t show up. Very stupid for me to put that in there.
Oh and, 2 of us didn’t have working entertainment systems on the 9.5 hour flight from Dublin to Denver.
Other than that, Aer Lingus was fine…
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Seattle or Alaska Airlines or both have been a bit of a shit show the past few days.
I’ve had 4 flights transiting through SEA and all have been delayed. Sunday night I had to overnight here despite having almost 2.5 hours of layover buffer.
#notgreatbob
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Landing from JFK to CDG 6am Wednesday AM on Air France and have a 1 hour and 10 min connection time to our next flight.
Would anyone like to tell me how fucked I am or do I have a reasonable shot of making this? Never done a connection this tight at CDG having to deal with border control.
Also anyone know if I have to go through security or just border control? Air France says no security if arriving from US but seems like some conflicting info elsewhere.
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I don’t like your odds. For starters, are you connecting to another EU destination, or another country outside the EU? If outside the EU, there’s a separate area for just transiting passengers, but I still believe they check your passport. If inside the EU, you’ll have to do full customs, as intra EU flights are treated like domestic flights in the US.
Very easy for flights to get delayed out of Kennedy. 1:10 is a tight tight connection, I would be making preparations for possibly taking a later flight depending on where you’re going, of course.
Is your connecting flight going to be in the same terminal as the JFK leg lands in? That could make a big difference
Connection is another city in France but means it’s a different terminal. Have to get from 2e to 2f (and unsure where exactly in 2e). The connection is all the same ticket so presumably I’ll just be rebooked for later but I have a contingency plan to get a high speed train instead of waiting around for a later flight.
My best guess is it’s about 50/50 chance in making the flight and much of it depends on the customs line? Not so much concerned about a JFK delay. Can’t do anything if that occurs (plus luckily weather looks good here).
https://www.parisaeroport.fr/en/passengers/access/paris-charles-de-gaulle/terminals-map
2E is across the vehicle traffic area from 2F. Unable to tell from that map if they have connections within security between the two buildings. Not sure how many customs processing areas exist within CDG…many times you take a long corridor from the gate to get to a centralized customs processing area.
You can use the AF website to find out how many other flights they have to your destination and use that as a guideline to whether or not taking the train is worth it:
No more bickering. Every single legacy airline in America sucks ass.
Flying has never been more expensive and it’s just poverty level accommodations top to bottom. Overbooking. Shitty cramped seats. Tired and/or dangerous equipment. Awful baggage contractors who routinely lose and destroy luggage. Now, we all have to watch out for the food onboard.
“Hey our onboard food offering is garbage, but check it out, it’s also gone bad.”
I’m a proud Allegiant flyer for a number of reasons. You can go ahead and add “never served me spoiled food” to the list.
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wait, you fly allegiant to embrace how terrible air travel is?
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today’s WSJ - full story pasted below since it’s behind a paywall:
United Wants to Win Your Trust by Oversharing
Fliers find pros and cons in getting more specifics on delayed and canceled flights
Oversharing can get messy on social media and first dates. United Airlines is betting there’s no such thing as too much information when it comes to flight delays and cancellations.
The airline doesn’t just tell you that your flight is running behind, like most carriers. It details why in frequently updated texts, emails and mobile alerts—and on the electronic sign at the gate. Even when it’s United’s fault. It can be both helpful and stressful. One traveler joked on X that United texts more than a teenager.
“We want you to know your flight is departing late because we needed to finish cleaning your plane,” the airline told passengers on a flight from Newark to Nashville delayed by 70 minutes.
United Chief Executive Scott Kirby says he’s on a mission to give passengers as much information as he’d get if he called the operations center himself.
“What would you tell me? I want to tell every single one of our customers exactly what you would tell me,” Kirby said at an investor conference in May. “I think that kind of transparency goes a long, long way.”
It’s another move in the carrier’s battle for supremacy among U.S. carriers, with Delta Air Lines its top rival.
Henry Harteveldt lives in San Francisco and is a United frequent flier. The veteran travel analyst says United goes to greater lengths than any other U.S. airline when it comes to explaining flight delays in real time. (United’s on-time performance in 2024 is 80.3%, second to Delta at 83.5%, according to aviation analytics company Cirium. United’s cancellation rate is 1.94%, among the highest in the industry.)
United recognized that the industry as a whole sometimes has a “loose relationship with the facts” when it comes to delays and cancellations, Harteveldt says.
“United is achingly transparent in their explanations,” he says. “It’s almost to the point where [they say] a member of the crew had a toothache and is at the dentist right now.”
Spilling the beans
United began testing more detailed passenger messages before the pandemic. Employees on the team are called storytellers and come from non-airline backgrounds to keep industry jargon to a minimum. They work in the operations center, collecting detailed flight information, crew reports and other information to translate.
As travel started surging back in 2021, the focus returned to telling people what was going on with their individual flights rather than Covid precautions.
Today United sends crafted messages to passengers on about 20% of delayed flights, according to Jason Birnbaum, the airline’s chief information officer. The figure is growing as the airline enlists AI to help with the messages, crafting messages off the same info the storytellers collect.
“It got good enough, it was hard to tell the difference,” Birnbaum says.
The storytellers review those AI alerts and can now handle several flights at a time rather than one. Flights delayed at least an hour generally get the personal treatment, as do airport-wide issues. The rest get canned messages, such as, “Your flight is delayed because an earlier delay impacted your plane’s arrival.”
Employees had given feedback that these narrative notifications caught them off-guard, so now they get them three to five minutes before passengers. (That doesn’t mean they see them as quickly as those of us glued to our phones for the latest update.)
My friend’s flight from Chicago to Shannon, Ireland, was delayed several times last week and she received several messages from United. One: “We’re sorry for the disruption to your travel plans and would like to help you grab a bite to eat while we work to get you on your way.” The alert included a link to $15 meal vouchers to use at airport restaurants.
United says customer-satisfaction scores have improved 5% since it began sharing more information with passengers. Specifics on why your flight is delayed aren’t going to instantly turn you from cranky to happy, but can take the edge off, executives say.
“It’s not a 10 out of 10, but what we do know is if people just know what’s going on, they’re more likely to say, ‘All right, I got it, it happens,’ and become comfortable and move forward,” Birnbaum says.
Rain checks
United’s newest push is to provide more context around weather delays. Who among us hasn’t questioned whether weather is really the issue when it’s sunny at our departing airport and those meeting us at our destination report the same? Kirby says it’s logical to suspect the airline is lying to you.
hat’s why you might find a weather map in a communication from United on your next flight. The goal is to show travelers the storm sitting on top of the airport in Houston or a line of bad weather on the route from New York to Florida.
Jad Boutros, a cybersecurity expert who lives in San Francisco, found United’s messaging over the top and unreliable when the airline canceled two flights home from Paris in late May and early June for mechanical reasons. He counted 45 text messages with updates about delays and found it mentally draining, especially during an hourslong wait on the tarmac in France.
“That volume brings an inherent level of anxiety, because you’re always waiting for one,” he says, adding that the messages didn’t match what he heard from the crew and other sources.
United says its research shows passengers prefer more information.
Birnbaum, United’s CIO, concedes some travelers may feel message overload, but says most passengers only pay attention to a fraction of them. He points to a fellow Houston-bound passenger on a flight diverted to New Orleans for fuel. She was lost in her headphones during the flight and took them off when the plane landed.
“She’s like, ‘Oh we’re in Houston.’ Everyone’s like, ‘No, you’re in New Orleans.’”
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“We used to make shit in this country…”
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Flying sucks regardless. At least with Allegiant, I’m not paying through the nose for it.
Even the most basic, awful, steerage classes on the big airlines are still way more expensive than Allegiant.
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