One Interesting Travel Note

Maybe it was just that I had barely finished Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and was half-way into Kafka's The Trial, but navigating through the Atlanta airport (where we connected from Charlottesville to Montego Bay) and then Jamaican customs seemed even more bizarre than air travel usually does. Of particularly note was the flight that was supposed to be leaving from the gate directly opposite ours.

It was also a Delta flight, also going to Montego Bay. Ours was scheduled to leave at 10:25, and had an on-time departure. The "Other Flight" had been scheduled to leave at 8:40, but was now delayed until 10:40.

So bizarre thing number one, which I'm told happens all the time: our later flight was actually going to leave before the delayed one, even though they had all been waiting there for hours, and were going the same place as us.

That's nothing, however, compared to what happened next. For whatever airline stupidity reason, they had oversold our flight by at least 5 or 6 seats. So around 9:30, they start announcing over the PA system that they are willing to give "Delta dollars" and free hotel accomodations to anyone who will stay an extra day in Atlanta (not an easy task with a bunch of people headed to Jamaica).

But at the exact same time, the gate personnel for the Other Flight begin announcing that they have extra emergency row seats available, so anyone that wants to be able to stretch their legs should come to the desk and request a seat change.

I felt like I was going out of my mind. I turned to my wife and asked the apparently unthinkable, unanswerable question: why don't they just move a few people from our flight to the Other Flight?

My gut instinct is that we would eventually be much better off if we just let these crazy airline corporations drive themselves into collapse, and start fresh with a new system. This one is... well... broken.