The New Math

When does 54.5 - (2.0 + 3.5) = 46.5, and 46.5 + 3.5 = 51.0? When you use an airline scale to weigh your luggage.

Considering that the airline wants $25 to ship your bag at 50 lbs or less and $100 at higher weights, you might think better calibration would be in order. But those are the numbers we had on one bag this past weekend. After removing items from the luggage which the scale thought were 2.0 and 3.5 lb, and then adding one back, the scale gave the above weights to the bag overall.

Over the last two weeks we experienced the Salt Lake City, Charlotte, and Boston airports, with layovers in Houston and Denver. In SLC, we had no problems with the airlines themselves, only randomly selected testing of Jennifer at security, and testing of my contact lens solution (in a 4 oz bottle, not a 3 oz bottle). The couple behind us had a pair of shoes randomly selected for additional testing. So I had the impression that random testing was randomly high that particular day.

I don't really recall Houston. The layover was short, but not hurried. In Charlotte, security had to open and inspect carry-on bags with contents that had not been questioned in SLC a week earlier.

In other words, the first three airports and two airlines that we used were merely routinely annoying. Boston made us appreciate the ordinary discourtesy and inefficiency one encounters in air travel today.

Mind you, this is not an air travel horror story. Things could have been much worse. But, quite frankly, a statement that things could be worse does not make them better. And the point of this discussion is not that things are genuinely hideous, but that they should be better than they are. For example, although we had to provide the ages of the boys when ordering tickets, we also had to get seats rearranged at the plane on every plane in order to ensure that a parent sat with each.

I did not like flying into Boston's Logan airport only because of the construction, which made it difficult to move around people in the baggage claim area, and seems to have sent us on an unnecessary and costly (toll-wise) route leaving the airport.

Flying out was unpleasant for other reasons. It seems that Continental and United are merging. They are in the middle of what appears to be a years-long process of doing so, at that. The result of this was that the Continental flight we booked out of Boston really departed from the United terminal. Fortunately, we woke early and decided to eat at the airport after we'd gone through check-in. This got us an extra half hour (beyond arrival 2 hours early at the airport as recommended), which we needed even with the golf-cart ride from one terminal to the other. The United terminal was chaotic -- not enough people to help check luggage (and the site of the wonderful scales mentioned above), half of the security lanes shut down despite long lines, and unable to sort out suitable seating until the plane itself.

At least we weren't taking that flight beyond Denver. It was a flight from Boston to Hawaii with stops in Denver and either L.A. or San Francisco. Except that the people continuing on were not staying on the same plane or even departing from the same gate, and were to have an hour wait in the airport before the flight "continued." In other words, they had a layover by another name. Something to consider if ever I think I'm buying a direct flight.

Denver was not a prize, either, this trip. I believe we ended up taking off from there about the time we were originally to have arrived back in SLC -- after a last minute change of gates, unannounced delay in the arrival of the plane at Denver, and sitting on the runway for half an hour. And at Denver, the person at the gate was very helpful about assigning us seats together; the boarding pass I ended up with gave my name as MORTENSO/KATHYSUE, but it sat us together.

Mrs. Mortenson made other seating arrangements on the plane.

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