Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Notes

With a tip of the cap to SI Peter King, here are my enjoyable/aggravating travel notes during this busy summer travel season.

Most of my travel recently has been short trips to destinations not far away. This means I have been able to travel light and carry my bags on instead of checking. This is a big plus for any traveler, especially with most airlines now charging for checked bags and no one likes to wait at the other end for luggage when your vacation is so close.

The annoying part of everyone bringing carry ons onto the plane these days is the lack of room in the overhead compartments. These storage areas were not meant to hold a bag with a weeks worth of clothes. Some of the carry on bags the airlines are letting on look like you could travel for 6 months in them. With out a doubt the jackass that has this huge carry on bag is the last guy on the plane and can’t find an overhead compartment to store his enormous bag. This brings in 3 flight attendants who have to move everyone’s back around to accommodate the ugly flyer.

As an aside, this is similar to my thoughts on busy movie theatres. I got there early to get a good seat. Since you got here during the previews, you have no right to ask me to move down so you can fit your Goober eating ass in a great seat location.

So airlines, if you could deliver luggage to the right destination, get it off the plane in a efficient amount of time, travelers might not have to bring giant carry on bags on the plane and you could collect more checked bag fees.

On most of my flights, I like to be entertained by the in flight system. I read men’s magazines online now, so buying the newest GQ or Esquire before getting on the plane really isn’t that useful for me anymore. I will bring a book and my ipod, but the lure of watching a movie or TV show on the plane is just too great. This is especially true now that planes have personal TV’s and have them turned on from the second you sit down to the moment you de-plane. This gives you maximum viewing time and no need to interact with the smelly guy next to you (or am I the smelly guy, ahhh).

The one issue I do have with this is the passenger announcements that interrupt your viewing. Once the flight attendants start talking your screen shuts off while they babble on about flight safety (I know how to do up a seat-belt, thanks) or to let me know they are bringing the beverage cart around. Once you think they are done and you can get back to movie watching, wrong – they now do them in French as well. If you are on a short flight to say Montreal, you only have an hour and 10 minutes and you need all the viewing possible. Airlines – fix it so your passenger announcements don’t interrupt my on-board entertainment.