Ah airports and flying, how I hate thee.

So I’m back from my little vacation up to Quebec. Since my parents place is still quite rural the internet connect out there is kind of poor, as a result I have a few blog entries stored up that I’ll post over the next couple of days. Here’s the first, a lovely little ditty about the flight back to Montreal.

On the 29th of December I flew out of Minneapolis to head back to Montreal for a late Christmas with the family. Deirdre was kind enough to get me to airport on time. Now maybe it’s because I haven’t been flying in a while or maybe because of the blog I’m looking for more things to complain about, either way here are some observations from the trip.

I did notice a change to the moving sidewalks in the airport. Now I don’t know about you, but I never really needed much instruction for how to use those modified escalators. So the fact that these ones now had a yellow line down the middle and instructions to “walk” on the left side and “stand” on the right side is just kind of sad. Seriously, was this a convention that people couldn’t figure out? I mean I thought it was an unwritten rule, stay right and pass on the left…I guess it’s written now.

The other thing that I was surprised to see was not the Fox (pronounced ‘Faux’) News store; I’ve known it to be there for some time. What surprised me was that it seems that the Twin Cities airport requires at least 3 of them! Really how many more places does one need to by books by Bill O’Rielly and Ann Coulter?

I wonder if there is a correlation with the need for the signs on the sidewalks and the Faux News stores?

Maybe it’s just an increase in the overall stupidity of people. Because is it me, or should carry-on luggage be able to be actually carried on? See the couple in front of me had to use a baggage cart to get their “carry-on” bags to the plane. But maybe they were ridiculously lazy, after all, they tried to leave the bags in the first-class part of the plane. Seriously, if you can’t carry your bag to your seat, pack less or hit the gym.

But I seriously think that people are getting stupider. A flight attendant informed us that she had “good news and bad news”. The “bad news” was that there was an avionics problem, but we could still fly. Apparently the only thing that was needed to be done was for the pilot to sign something…I figure it was a liability waiver. But we were never given any good news? Or is that airline so craptacular that if the plane doesn’t burst into flames when they power it up they consider it to be “good news”?

My least favorite part of the flight however was some of my fellow passengers. These specific passengers were about 3-4 feet tall, and prone to crankiness. There were 4 kids in my row and the one in-front and behind me. And no, they were not all well behaved and quiet. A pair of them were particularly loud and annoying. Oh, and I’ve now found something I hate more than Christmas carols; Christmas carols, sung by children (in French for added effect).