Travelling with the Family

I travel regularly for work. I rarely have any issues and when I do they are minor or easily dealt with. This week I took my wife and baby daughter (10 months) with me to the Bay Area.

I checked on line and the flight status was fine and th airport was humming. We get to the airport early to deal with the baby stuff and life is wonderful. We are sitting in the lounge waiting when they announce that the flight has been cancelled. I look at the board - on time, I look at the counter screen - on time. How could this be?

I go to the counter and sure enough, the 9am flight is cancelled and we are rebooked on the 11:50 am flight. Wonderful. I watched, the status on the flight NEVER changed from On Time. All these wonderful innovation like flight alerts only work if the system driving it is updated. Somehow the counter lady knew but the computer didn't. Now I had to sit in the airport for 3 hours with a 10 month old who decided it was so exciting she wasn't napping.

Thanks to our seats we were able to watch everyone come through security. Talk about a farse (that how you spell that or is hooked on phonics showing?). I couldn't believe how many folks had scissors or knifes in their luggage and then acted baffled or upset when they were discovered and taken away. Of course they had the option to ship them home or check them but that was just too much for most folks to understand. Let's not forget that on the 23rd or sometime soon virtually all of these items would be allowed - why wait to implement this rule? Stupidity, if it is going into effect just do it.

Then there are those poor souls randomly selected for strip searches. Ok, I exagerate a bit, they didn't have to take off all their clothes. Most times this was fine but one lady had gone to the wrong terminal - she went to the American Terminal, not the Commuter Terminal. She had clearly not been very early to the airport or hadn't realized her mistake to quickly. She caught the inter terminal shuttle and was coming through security as the plane was boarding.

This is a tiny terminal so plane boarding gate was 20 feet from security.

She was pulled out for a complete search. She had a 5 year old child and a couple of luggage bags. The folks in security have discretion. They didn't need to open all her bags and search her shoes and hold her up as long as they did. But why be nice, our job is to search. To be fair, the lady was a spaz. Even once the search was over she couldn't seem to grasp the need to drag her luggage to the gate and get on the plane.

In conclusion I want to thank American Airlines for giving me the opportunity to view the security line for 3 hours and for the concern they showed to a frequent flyer such as myself. I will keep this in mind as I continue my travels from Southern California to the Bay Area and opt between AA and Southwest.