Good Lord, would you terrorists just cut it the heck out? I mean seriously, just STOP IT. Were you raised by wolves? Leave our airplanes alone!
I saw today that they may ban carry-on luggage forever. How are we defining that, by the way? I saw one guy say he wasn’t allowed to bring a magazine on board? Are you serious? Are we going to have to fly naked? If I can bring a small bag (purse, whatever) on a long boring flight that I can put water, gum, and if appropriate, tampons in, I can’t fly. I just can’t.
I’m NOT going to check my camera, by the way. So what about that? And no business person is EVER going to check a laptop. So they either better work this out, or we may as well padlock the airports because the airlines will go out of business without, well, business travelers. They make up the bulk of the full-price ticket buyers anyway. I can fly my little family of 3 easily for what I sometimes paid for one business trip ticket.
No bags at all? That isn’t possible. Maybe the guy in the CNN article misunderstood. I hope so, because we’ve been talking about doing long range planning for our next vacation, and my first assumption was that it would involve a flight.
By the way, you’re talking to (or listening to, as the case may be) someone who got in a plane less than a week after 9/11. I have put up with the outrageous, horrific security situation, including the Orlando airport’s fantastic plan to physically go through people’s CHECKED suitcases IN FRONT OF OTHER PASSENGERS. This was on the way home, and they randomly chose me, the person whose bag had all the random souvenirs and junk in it. So there we are, at a folding table right next to the huge line of people trying to check in, and they are opening my suitcase with [some] dirty clothes and plastic bags of souvenirs, which were just sort of thrown in there, in front of God and everyone. Completely humiliating, but we were terrified to so much as sniffle around the security guys. Thank GOD they stopped doing that. But anyway, I’ll just stay local until they figure out how to let me take the National Enquirer and feminine hygiene products on a plane, thank you.
Good one, Jody. Flying ain’t fun no more, to say the least. I’m grateful I don’t have to travel for my current job — I traveled quite a bit when I worked in trade publishing. I too flew not long after 9/11, on American Airlines, no less, and I will say that while I’m glad they have stepped up security and intel to the point they were able to catch these yahoos, there’s a line.
Glad our next vaca is a cruise outta Boston. No flying required!
ter-billI thought there was a limit of one carry-on before … I saw guys with huge bags and briefcases and those bags for suits … they had more stuff than I have in my closet. So what’s a ban on all carry-ons mean to them?
I don’t understand the carry on ban, then they can just put the liquid in the checked bag and remotely control it. The sniffers are for explosives, not these liquids from what I know.
I used to enjoy travel, 1970s into the 80s. Even the red eye back from west coast back then meant you could find an empty row and sleep the way home. However even back then there was tensions in the Far East. I was on the way to Asia and we had to make an emergency stop in South Korea. I found that several US 747s were told to go there. Well after waiting around a day (without luggage), we were told we were not leaving and all going to hotels (again no luggage). Some of the passengers didn’t want to leave the lounge area (me included, rather just sleep there). Well as I was ignoring the police and trying to doze off and found myself looking at a gun barrell and hearing some broken english about “jail”. Guess they don’t screw around. Of course I got to go to some sleeze hotel, share a room with a complete stranger, wash my clothes in the sink for the next day. Glad I got out of that.
Then when I landed, got a nice cab with broken air conditioning for the ride to the plant. Was 98 F, 98 % humidity…
I also remember back then many times all the batteries were removed from CD players and the like in Asia. Only other scare was over Alaska watching some volcano erupt under us. I told the stewardess to look at it. Big black column with lightning bolts coming up. She went into the front, next thing you know the engines are running a bit faster and we are climbing..hmmmm… Well when the smoke hit the top of the atmosphere, it turns into this big disk that expands, well – faster than a plane can fly! Watching that catch up to us was no fun, but the captain said it’s speed will slow down after 20 min or so and we are ok.. Whew… Smoke in the jet engines sand blasts the blades away, and you drop like a rock.
I am done with air travel, today stewardess’s are mostly mean, planes are all packed, people are mostly rude etc.. .
Last weekend I went to Las Vegas and packed everything I needed into two carry-ons (particularly easy since I only took lightweight summer clothes). This included all my cosmetic bag items, shampoo, conditioner, Boston cleaner for contact lenses, four 24-oz bottles of Diet Coke, and several books. It was heavy dragging the bags through the airport, but I was on and off the plane in minutes. Fortunately, I flew back Monday.
If the airlines would just come up with some way that we passengers could load our bags ourselves onto the exact plane that we were flying on, then people would be less reluctant to check bags. I’ve had too many instances where I went to Chicago and my bags went to Charlotte to trust the airlines. And there’s no way I’d fly without at least two books, plus lip balm and my glasses.