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1. bean
   April 11th, 2008 at 5:13 pm

   I’m planning on doing a lot of traveling within the country this summer, but it will all be by car. Even with gas prices the way they are, I’d just rather set my own schedule. I think the good old fashioned road trip is about to come back into style.

2. Alex
   April 11th, 2008 at 5:24 pm

   This happened about a year ago. We went on a family vacation to Paris and got a great deal with American Airlines.

   Things went wrong almost immediately: American Airlines lost our luggage when we arrived in Paris. This would be an inconvenience for any traveler, but it’s a MAJOR inconvenience for a family traveling with a baby (We packed our baby food in the luggage).

   When they finally delivered our bags, they didn’t give us any receipt proving that they lost our luggage. When we said to them we’d need some sort of paperwork so we can claim our expenses to our travel insurance, they simply couldn’t be bothered.

   When we arrived in Boston for our return trip, our connecting flight to Los Angeles was canceled and we had to stay overnight in Boston. (We had ran out of baby food at this time, but it was easily available in supermarkets in the States).

   And that leg was canceled permanently - we had to fly to Chicago and then to Los Angeles. Fine. So we did. And when we arrived at Chicago - our flight to LA was … you guessed it - canceled!

   After hundreds of people scrambled to rebook their flights, the flight was un-canceled! Those people who ran to the front and got on another flight couldn’t get back on this one!

   For all of our troubles, AA sent us a $100 voucher, which I promptly just throw away. I like the people in AA (they’re much nicer than United, which has surly stewardesses - oh except in France, they’re all rude), but AA’s planes are just too old.

3. biltmore
   April 11th, 2008 at 5:27 pm

   God knows that they have to pretty much strip search us at the damn airport, but the FAA can’t even be bothered with making sure that the airplanes themselves are okay.

   This sums it up nicely.

   http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Daily-Show-skewers-the-FAA-Bush-on- airline-safety

4. bean
   April 11th, 2008 at 6:05 pm

   Alex-
   That’s odd about your experience with United stewardesses. They’re my favorite of any American carrier. The worst I’ve dealt with are Frontier’s people.

5. jmp478
   April 11th, 2008 at 6:12 pm

   Do yourself a HUGE favor and never fly American Airlines.
   The turbulence is terrible, as the wings are in the very back of the damn plane.
   that had to have been the only time I got sick on an airplane.
   Ride Southwest Airlines. They’re been the best to us.

6. Alex
   April 11th, 2008 at 6:28 pm

   I used to fly United a lot (when I lived near the San Francisco airport), so I’ve been on a lot of United flights. In almost every flight, there’s at least one cranky United stewardess.

   Granted this was during some sort of a paycheck reduction / protest time period, so maybe they had changed since then.

7. Alex
   April 11th, 2008 at 6:30 pm

   I flew only a handful of times on American, so I can’t tell whether the quality of the plane ride is bad because of turbulence (which is out of the airline’s control), small planes, or the old age of the equipment.

   One thing’s for sure: American Airline planes are old …

8. Cori
   April 11th, 2008 at 7:33 pm

   I haven’t had a lot of experience flying, but my best experience was definitely with Air France. Then again, I’ve only flown with Air France and Delta.

9. oxyacetylene
   April 11th, 2008 at 8:23 pm

   u people really piss me off! here they are trying to fix a bug that can possibly cause lives to be lost and ur bitching about it! and wot gets me most is if u found out a plane crashed and it was a simple fix u would be bitching about that also!

10. Alannah
    April 11th, 2008 at 9:15 pm

    I believe the whole point of the article was that the fix was NOT a major issue to the planes.

11. Alex
    April 11th, 2008 at 9:18 pm

    If you know what the problem is, oxyacetylene, perhaps you’ll change your opinion: the FAA has a regulation that says cable bundles in the wheel well should be tied at an interval of exactly 1 inch apart.

    The bundles were tied, but some aren’t exactly 1 inches apart: 1 inch and a quarter to an inch to a half. And this isn’t exactly a new problem: it was diagnosed as early as 2006.

    Some experts say that while it’s a problem that definitely should be fixed, it’s not a critical problem. It’s not a problem that require mass groundings of all MD-80 airplanes. Some even said that the grounding is an effort by the authorities to appear tough.

12. Greg
    April 11th, 2008 at 9:27 pm

    @oxyacetylene,

    they aren’t bitching about the flights being repaired, I don’t think anyone would argue with that, but its the way it was done. Canceling 3000 flights in 3 days? C’mon, why couldn’t have these repairs been done over months? AA knew there was a problem, its not like this just crept up on them. Very poor management at work here.

13. Christophe
    April 11th, 2008 at 9:30 pm

    Alex:
    I was flying back and forth Boston and Paris with AA and never had to complain, and yes their crew was really friendly.
    I was waiting in their Paris lounge to come back to Boston in the 9/11 morning, and even during this mayhem they still were ok.
    So I guess you really ran out of luck with them. Or, their service really went down the drain lately…

    I flew Virgin once and it was ok. The only time I ‘flew’ Air France was the time we moved to France, with our baby. This was just after a big -20 deg winter storm, and the stupid Air France maintenance crew did not plug a heather and plenty of the plane’s pipes burst frozen. They did not communicate until we got to the Logan airport. We manage to get to a Swissair flight, via Zurich. Their crew was openly amused by the Air France competence
    With Swissair, in US and Switzerland, our baby always made us VIP, cutting lines and whatnot. Cool.

    As for the French hability for a warm and business like welcome? Man, you’re giving them work, why should they welcome you???

14. Nastia
    April 11th, 2008 at 10:25 pm

    I haven’t been on a flight that hasn’t been delayed or canceled in over 10 years, even domestic flights, whats up with that?

15. Dianne
    April 11th, 2008 at 10:30 pm

    What can you do? They have the planes and you don’t!! Plus, they couldn’t care less how your vacation/business trip is going.

16. sparge
    April 12th, 2008 at 12:09 am

    Does it really matter? People have both good and bad experiences on all airlines. I fly whichever airline is the cheapest, which is usually a different one each time, and I’ve never seen any reason to prefer one airline over another. (Except Midwest, but only because of the freshly baked cookies.) I’ve experienced delays, delayed luggage, and unfriendliness about equally across the board.

17. Thomas
    April 12th, 2008 at 1:21 am

    Only one of many reasons I don’t fly anywhere in the US. Mostly, I just love driving.

18. kyboiz
    April 12th, 2008 at 2:16 am

    Delta is my choice. Gotta fly into Atlanta almost every time but the subway sure is fun!

19. kathe
    April 12th, 2008 at 6:35 pm

    Air France was great. Southwest has been pretty good to me, and I had a great flight on Jet Blue. Delta is a bit of a hit or miss.

20. Kathy
    April 12th, 2008 at 9:38 pm

    Southwest is a great airline and well managed. I fly it at every opportunity.

21. Greg
    April 13th, 2008 at 9:28 am

    The main problem with the airlines is that we don’t let these great international carriers come in and compete with US companies domestically, Singapore Airlines, Aer Lingus, Aer France, these are all great airlines, but that can’t take you from NYC to Chicago. Why? Let them come in and compete. If we are going to have a free trade system, let them compete, otherwise, the Government needs to take over the airlines.

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