Holiday Travel: A Postmortem

The holidays have come and gone and so have I.  Travel was again in the cards for me this year and it was an unpleasant experience.

The first clue that I had that this was not going to be a good travel season came on my first day of travel.  I bought a ticket online like most people do these days.  The ticket was a US Airways flight.  I had never flown US Airways, but it also mentioned something about United Airlines, so I assumed they were some sort of United Airlines subsidiary.

The day of the flight comes and I go to the area near the gate from which the flight is supposed to take off.  It is a United Airlines check-in area.  I ask one of the agents in the area if this is where I am supposed to check in and am told that I need to go to the US Airways check-in area.  OK, I have never flown US Airways before, no problem, I’ll just walk down to the US Airways area.  The US Airways area is 30 gates down (about a 20 minute walk in the spacious DFW terminal).

I then queue in line at US Airways and after a long wait (expected due to holiday traffic), I am told that I am actually on a United Airlines flight, so I need to make the walk back to the United Airlines area.  After rushing back to the United Airlines area and checking in as quickly as possible I barely make it to the gate as boarding is happening.

My issue with the whole episode is the person who told me that I was to check in at US Airways.  I did not see them when I came back, but word to the wise, US Airways flights operated by United Airlines are simply United Airlines flights, just forget that US Airways is even mentioned.

On my way back to Dallas, I sat in abject anxiety waiting to hear that my flight would be cancelled.  It turned out that my flight was not canceled, not late, but in fact early.  However, the fact that up until 30 minutes before takeoff, they were not sure if it was going to be ready or not.

So, moral of the story, don’t fly, it sucks and apparently the fine folks at all the airlines barely know what they are doing after being in business for almost 100 years.