Attention Fair-Weather Airline Passengers
On behalf of the millions of regular airline business travelers, this is a memo to all of you “sometimes travelers” in the airports lately:
Now hear this!   First and most important, the airport terminals are not shopping malls.  Casually strolling in the middle of the walkway areas is not welcome by those of us trying to get somewhere. Move your ass!
Second (and related) – to those of you traveling together: Airport terminals are not for line-dancing tryouts.  STOP walking shoulder-to-shoulder. You are blocking everyone else from getting past you. Get a clue.
To you parents with kids: Keep them by your sides and under control so they don’t make the airport terminals an ever-changing obstacle course.
Finally, since the airlines are charging a lot for this, that and the other thing now — why don’t y’all just stay home until fuel prices go down a bit. Do us all a favor and help reduce your personal carbon footprint.
Thank you.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
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I have noticed over many years that airports are really glorified bus stations. I do feel sorry for the business travelers who have to put up with “bus station” people.
Comment by PatriotMom — July 21, 2008 @ 7:55 am - July 21, 2008
I promise I’ll behave when I fly to Chicago on August 8th.
Comment by Julie the Jarhead — July 21, 2008 @ 8:51 am - July 21, 2008
Dear Bruce,
You have your similies wrong. “Here” means the place you are at;”hear” is what you use your ears for.
[GP Ed Note: Yikes. My bad. I fixed it.]
You may have noticed that airports have become mini shopping malls because people are unable to sit and read something quietly or use their time to do anything else constructively, so they have to shop. They have to buy something. The average American just buys crap that they don’t need because they are bored and don’t know what else to do.
Also, business travelers travel excessively when they could teleconference. A lot of corporations could use teleconference technology to reduce their carbon foot print.
Try leaving a little earlier and stop blaming your lateness on other hapless air travelers.
[GP Ed. Note: What makes you think I don't leave early? And trust me, these aren't "hapless" travelers. Leave it to you to pull the victim card.]
Comment by Pinky Bear — July 21, 2008 @ 9:06 am - July 21, 2008
Bruce, I feel your pain. My pet peeve are the mom and dad trying to travel with all four of their kids (all under 15 of course) and you can’t even hear the PA system in the concourse (much less your own voice) when:
a) the sulky 13-year-old is whining about getting up so early and missing his favorite gaming device that he happened to leave at home
b) the fat little 9-year-old is complaining that “he’s hungry” while finishing off his jumbo fries in his greasy little paw
c) the chatty 6-year-old with her Hannah Montana rolling bag is determined to see how many people she can run into
and the ringer is:
d) the screaming 2-year-old who is being hauled by a visibly pregnant Mom in one hand while she talks to her BFF on her cell phone and then complains to Dad: “I told you we should have left earlier.”
Hey lady, here’s a thought: stay home, send the kids to Grandma’s and both of you engage in some birth control by whatever means necessary.
Air travel used to be fun and exciting when it was limited to a select few. Now it’s just a pain.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — July 21, 2008 @ 10:40 am - July 21, 2008
GP is itsn’t just airports. Today’s American is totally ablivious to those around them and to common sense. Stand behind a person in a fast food line, who doesn’t know there are 5 other patrons behind them. As they ask questions, humm and haw over a menu that hasn’t changed in 10 years. Our society today is all about ME ME ME, and to hell with anyone else near your trying to live their lives too. In a fast food drive thru line now I blow my horn. To alert the mom that her taking 15 minutes to quiz all the kids in the van as to what they desire today off the menu is nutts. Ever hear of getting some of that straight before jamming up the line at the mans business? Morons.
Comment by Gene in Pennsylvaniua — July 21, 2008 @ 11:30 am - July 21, 2008
[...] Bruce has a few travel tips for the fair-weather airline passengers. [...]
Pingback by No Runny Eggs » Blog Archive » The Morning Scramble - 7/21/2008 — July 21, 2008 @ 11:32 am - July 21, 2008
#3 Pinkey bear prefers the old Soviet style shopping where you only had a few rotten heads of lettuce on store shelves. The Soviet populace had a lot of time to read huh? No consumer society for those Soviets, they just sat around eating potatoes and reading Lenin. Ah what a life.
Comment by Gene in Pennsylvaniua — July 21, 2008 @ 11:34 am - July 21, 2008
#5 - Gene, I call those people “obliviots” for obvious reasons.
My other pet peeve are people who insist on talking on their cell phones for hours on end without any discernible reason for doing so. Bugs the holy sugar out of me.
One guy I knew at my gym took 90 minutes for a 30-minute workout because he couldn’t shut his trap on the phone. I finally pulled him aside and asked him if he realized he could get better results on his exercising if he just PUT THE PHONE DOWN. He looked at me as if I’d grown 3 heads.
Morons indeed.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — July 21, 2008 @ 11:59 am - July 21, 2008
#7 - Whoops, need to correct that first line to read: “My other pet peeve IS people…”
Otherwise, Pinky the Spelling Nazi Bear will tattoo a number on my wrist and send me to a concentration camp for crimes agains the state.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — July 21, 2008 @ 1:19 pm - July 21, 2008
On my first airline flight the ticket read, “Arrange to be at the airport 15 minutes before departure time to check you ticket and baggage”. And those Mileage Plus or Bonus Miles or whatever they are called, are not free any more. I just paid 85 dollars in addition to my 35,000 airline miles to fly to Dullas airport.
Comment by John W — July 21, 2008 @ 1:21 pm - July 21, 2008
I travel about twice a month, on weekends, for conferences etc. I carry on a very small bag, change of clothes, basic toiletries, book, mp3, data cards, adapter, sticks, and UMPC and things for it. I put all of my pocket stuff in the bag and wear sandals and no belt. I go through security like it wasn’t there. My peeve revolves around those that try and carry on EVERYTHING. I check my bag, why can’t that family of 4, or worse the gaggle going to Vegas, Reno, etc. for the weekend, just check their bags, and remember to not wear belts, tons of jewelry, leave everything in their pockets, and otherwise take 5-10 minutes getting through security.
Comment by Scott — July 21, 2008 @ 2:26 pm - July 21, 2008
#11 - I hear you, Scott. It’s all about decent planning.
Luckily in Houston, we have 3 separate security lines to use: experienced travelers, casual travelers and families w/ children. I use the “experienced” queue and I can zip through security in seconds by doing the same thing you do, i.e. topsiders, no belt, keys & phone in the bag etc.
And for what it’s worth, when I went to London in March 2003, I managed to pack a week’s worth of clothes into a carry-on bag that fit in the overhead compartment. And this was in the middle of winter. All it takes is layering clothes and tidy packing. I also had room for souvenirs.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — July 21, 2008 @ 4:37 pm - July 21, 2008
I’m very thankful that I don’t have to put up with the airlines terminals at the airports (and am dreading all the experiences we’ll have next month in Kansas City and Los Angeles while flying to and from the Olympic Games) but, Bruce, many of the gripes you’ve correctly stated apply to public places in general.
I would love to see a law passed that requires parents bringing small children to shopping centers, theaters, grocery stores, banks, you name it, have to put them in harnesses with leashes. At a museum over the weekend I was so excited to see a young couple with their two toddlers in leashed harnesses that I paid their admission as a way of thanking them.
Two of my pet peeves involve women. I really get pissed off when I go in to the convenient store to pay for gas and there’s a grossly obese woman who shouldn’t be wearing shorts holding up the line while she bitches about the price of gas at the same time she’s buying bottled water at the equivalent price of $13 a gallon! (Nine out of ten times it really is an obese woman!) I am an extremely patient person (in fact my wife complains that I am too patient with slow or forgetful waiters and the like) but if I ever commit murder it will be to slay women in line at the bank, who after making deposits won’t step aside until they put the deposit slips in their purses. The process often involves thumbing through the purses’ contents to make sure the deposit slips are inserted just so-so. The other day the woman in front of me at the bank actually had to take things out of her purse, set them on the teller counter and search for her wallet. Once she put her deposit slip in her wallet she had to put everything else back in her purse at what seemed like a snail’s pace.
I agree with your comment about people taking forever to peruse the fast food menus and order. When a family with a carload of kids pulls up to the drive-thru at McDonald’s they ought to have decided before they got there what each one wants. Have you ever been stuck behind a SUV while the driver turns to each of his six passengers, waits while they make up their minds and then places the order one person at a time?
The most important observation you made is that too many people are so wrapped up in themselves that they move about without any thought or regard for how they may be affecting people around them.
(BTW, I serve on an airport board and I regret to tell you, Bruce, that in many airports you are going to see more, not less, retail shops because the rents they pay are important to both operations and debt service.)
Comment by Trace Phelps — July 21, 2008 @ 5:04 pm - July 21, 2008
Dear Gene,
Have fun going into debt buying crap. George Carlin said it best, we need more space to put all of our “stuff.”
XXOO
Comment by Pinky Bear — July 21, 2008 @ 5:37 pm - July 21, 2008
#13 - Trace, I’m right there with you. Parents are too afraid to discipline their children in public because (a) they don’t want to “psychologically stunt” them or (b) some ignorant busybody will assume that the parent is physically/verbally/mentally abusing them and call CPS. And let’s face it, today’s kids need more discipline than ever.
Back in the day, especially here in the South, a whuppin meant a whuppin. No matter if you were black, white, Hispanic, whatever - if you acted up in public, your mom or dad would straighten you out big time. No questions asked. And if you whined, begged and pleaded for them not to smack you, it usually ended up being worse.
I once asked a racially mixed group of co-workers what they thought of kids these days. One black woman said it best: “they need to be smacked across the butt the way Mama did all us kids. And she raised 8 of us.” All the other co-workers agreed.
And I hope no ignorant utopian liberal is going to say that we are “worse” about punishment than our enlightened European neighbors, because I’ve seen it in action myself:
When I was in Cologne, Germany a few years back, the city was having a “Kinderfestspiel,” or children’s street festival. One family was taking all 3 of their pre-teen kids back from a food stand when the 3-year-old started screaming to go back to the free strudel. Without even breaking his stride, the forty-something Dad just whacked the kid open-palmed across the mouth. The kid shut up. The family kept walking home.
Now THAT is the way to raise a kid.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — July 21, 2008 @ 5:48 pm - July 21, 2008
LOL. If you look at the history of the airline industry, this whole “bus station” mentality of air travel started after conservatives pushed to de-regulate the industry. De-regulation led to lower prices and therefore lots more people traveling by air. Don’t forget, this is America and as long as you’re being a consumer, you can be as stupid as you like.
I think it’s pretty funny that folks here talk a lot about freedom, but you’re sure interested in controlling people. (PS-Perhaps if all methods of birth control were available in all areas of this country, then maybe all those people you complain about wouldn’t have so many kids)
Comment by Kevin — July 21, 2008 @ 8:57 pm - July 21, 2008
Pinky has a point: the airports have become shopping malls and god forbid someone just sit quietly with a book and read. I didn’t make a list but the Delta concourse in ATL I suffered last week had a fairly wide variety of stores and fast-food outlets.
Aside from clueless members of the public, I would add the clueless security people.
I don’t travel anymore than I absolutely have to so I have moments of cluelessness since the procedures seem to change every time (and no two airports seem to have the same procedure).
Leaving Roanoke last week, I had my ID and boarding pass out for the TSA drone at the X-ray machine. He scribbled his initials on it and, having my hands full (laptop bag, shoes), I stuffed it back into my bag only to be stopped at the metal detector (SIX FEET AWAY) by another drone who wanted to see my boarding pass. It wasn’t busy and he had just watched drone #1 scribble on it. So I got to hold up a few people while I dug for the damn thing. I know better than to argue with them.
Once on the plane from ATL to SAN, I observed a foreign couple (no English) with two little girls (both looked under five) who wondered the aisles during boarding (geez) and I don’t know how many times the flight attendant had to tell the mother to make her yelling brat sit down while taxiing the plane. For the most part, the parents were oblivious. If I’d been stuck near them for the 4.5 hour flight, I really don’t know what I would’ve done.
Just think what flying could be like if they allowed cell phones during the flight… they’ll have to give Tasers to the flight attendants.
Comment by Robert — July 21, 2008 @ 8:58 pm - July 21, 2008
Um, Kevin, lower prices aren’t the problem… boorish behavior is the problem and people can be jerks regardless of income/wealth. I thought liberals were friends of the poor (”less fortunate”).
Americans don’t have a monopoly on bad manners. While not a frequent traveler, I have been to Europe enough to know that bad manners know no borders (Abruti Sans Frontières?).
PS-Perhaps if all methods of birth control were available in all areas of this country, then maybe all those people you complain about wouldn’t have so many kids
Kevin - are you suggesting eugenics? And what birth control methods are you thinking about that aren’t available everywhere? Just wondering.
Comment by Robert — July 21, 2008 @ 9:10 pm - July 21, 2008
My dad says he will never go back to Paris after being treated so horribly there when he visited it in the 1970s.
The parents just need to start being parents and tell their kids that behaving like jackals in public is not acceptable. Reward good behavior, punish bad behavior. When did we forget that?
Comment by Attmay — July 21, 2008 @ 10:24 pm - July 21, 2008
#14 Pinkey, I and my family are independently wealthy. We enjoy buying nice things and accelerating the American economy. Most workers are appreciative of consumers. Consumers drive the economy and create paychecks. That way there are fewer people lined up to get government handouts. And you know how demeaning and humiliating that is.
Comment by Gene in Pennsylvaniua — July 21, 2008 @ 11:56 pm - July 21, 2008
#3: “You may have noticed that airports have become mini shopping malls…”
How would you know, Good Riddance? Are you trying to pretend like you’re not on the no-fly list?
Comment by Sean A — July 22, 2008 @ 12:13 am - July 22, 2008
Dear Gene,
In case you didn’t notice, the American Economy is going in the toilet. Your Neo-Cons are cutting the benefits of disabled soldiers, whom you say you support.
Comment by Pinky Bear — July 22, 2008 @ 12:49 am - July 22, 2008
Well, I fit the “sometime” traveler in an airport. But, I agree, people are totally oblivious to everything and everyone around them. When I travel, since I practically have to take everything off to get through Homeland Security, I wear a t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops. It makes a difference, but I do feel sometimes underdressed. Oh well. But Gene and others have hit in on the head in comment #5! I deal in customer service and let me tell you, people are moronic! And, it is a wonder that they can get up in the morning and function all day long. So, why is there a surprise about people in airports. And Kevin, really, blaming this on airline deregulation? I suspect you are like the people we have been discussing!
Comment by Mark J. Goluskin — July 22, 2008 @ 12:58 am - July 22, 2008
I’m on the SSSS list, so i get the shoe-bomber inspection every time i fly… which means i have avoided it for about 4 years now. the entire experience sucks..
Comment by Vince P — July 22, 2008 @ 1:28 am - July 22, 2008
Perhaps if liberals let Wal Mart build where they determine a need, they would be.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — July 22, 2008 @ 2:34 am - July 22, 2008
Dear TGC,
Wal Mart, Birth Control? LOL!
I think it’s pretty funny that folks here talk a lot about freedom, but you’re sure interested in controlling people.
Ain’t that the truth? All over being inconvenienced, too. You don’t take responsibility for not leaving early enough and people are too stupid to let Lord Bruce through on his way to his charter jet. Oh, the indignity of having to wade through the great unwashed masses in a zombie daze! Maybe you should have had your standard bearers and guards pushing through, shouting “Make way for the Queen’s Cause!”
Allow me to break out the world’s smallest violin for you Bruce.
Comment by Pinky Bear — July 22, 2008 @ 9:11 am - July 22, 2008
Pinky, shouldn’t you be spitting on the graves of better men than you… or maybe taunting their widows and orphans? That’s much more your level.
Comment by V the K — July 22, 2008 @ 11:01 am - July 22, 2008
#21: “Your Neo-Cons are cutting the benefits of disabled soldiers, whom you say you support.”
Oh, Good Riddance. I am once-again awestruck by the majesty of your ignorance. That f-ing loser Obama that you adore so much is planning to raise taxes through the roof while he is only on the record stating that he will cut government spending in one area. Guess which one? Military spending of course! And the defense budget doesn’t just pay for tanks and machine guns–it also pays for soldiers’ salaries, death benefits, health benefits, retirement benefits and disability benefits. Obama has been unequivocal: he will cut “tens of billions of dollars of wasteful spending,” and the context is his commercial regarding military spending. See for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfwKKxVC7_o
Yet, as usual, facts never get in the way of your arguments. That’s the only way you can make ludicrous statements about Republicans taking away funding for soldiers. You are completely irrational and totally insane, period.
Comment by Sean A — July 22, 2008 @ 11:28 am - July 22, 2008
#21 Pinkey the American economy isn’t going into the toilet as you say. In a free market economy there are stops and starts and some months of adjustment. The press MSM and leftists would prefer a static socialist economy where there are few spikes and dips in growth. That static economy was tried from 1917-1986. It was called the Soviet Union. That nation collapsed when people finally refused to get up in the morning and go to work and be productive because things were given to them. Jobs, health care, food, housing, etc. They didn’t have to strive for a better life. The few Soviets who did try to work hard and better themselves, got nothing for it. But eventually the USSR could only give it’s people below poverty level sustanance. When the current American economy begins to resemble the “sainted” Jimmy Carters economy I will agree with you. A reminder….Carters unemployent 8%,
Inflation 14%, interest rates 20%. Only 30 years ago we had an example of a leftists liberal Democrat economy. Luckily Ronald Wilson Reagan came along to save America from the USSR experiment.
I’m please to educate you about something the public education system in this country neglected to cover in your studies as a young child.
Comment by Gene in Pennsylvaniua — July 22, 2008 @ 12:46 pm - July 22, 2008
Your Neo-Cons are cutting the benefits of disabled soldiers, whom you say you support.
LOL…I love it when leftist Obama supporters whine about “disabled soldiers” — while they publicly smear soldiers as “uninvited and unwelcome intruders” and openly encourage and give governmental support to leftist hate groups that harass and vandalize their locations.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — July 22, 2008 @ 1:01 pm - July 22, 2008
Dear V the K and Sean,
One does read newspapers and gets their news other than the Fox Politburo.
I don’t spit on graves of people who died in wars. I’ll leave that to your AWOL Bush who couldn’t be found for a few years while “serving” in the Air Guard.
Comment by Pinky Bear — July 23, 2008 @ 6:29 pm - July 23, 2008
#31 - “Fox Poliburo?” That’s rich. If anything, it’s the left-wing media that’s the true Politburo.
Marxists like PB can’t stand the fact that the MSM doesn’t manipulate public opinion the way it did for the past 50 years. Especially when it comes to criticizing the left nutroots and the Obamanator.
I mean, Soviet leaders from Lenin and Stalin all the way up to Brezhnev and Gorbachev have never got the kind of fawning press that snObama gets. Heck, they ran Pravda and they never got that kind of coverage.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — July 23, 2008 @ 6:55 pm - July 23, 2008
#30: “I don’t spit on graves of people who died in wars.”
Of course you do, Good Riddance. You spit on the graves of the soldiers who died in Iraq every time you shriek that the war is “pointless” or was undertaken to “protect the corporate oil interests of Bu$hco.”
“I’ll leave that to your AWOL Bush who couldn’t be found for a few years while “serving†in the Air Guard.”
I KNEW IT!!!!!!!!! PINKY BEAR IS THE DISGRACED, “INACCURATE BUT TRUE” DAN RATHER! It certainly explains that idiotic “Politburo” comment. Hi, Dan! So, how is FORCED retirement treating you?
Comment by Sean A — July 23, 2008 @ 9:18 pm - July 23, 2008
#32
I believe it was Fake, but accurate, but you’re still correct. If that allegation was true, one would think that you wouldn’t have to go to Kinko’s to make it up.
Considering their circulations, ad revenues etc. I’m supposed to be impressed….how?
Remind me again who Dan Rather and Bill Burkett worked for? Oh yeah, I honestly believe that if it wasn’t for the Fox Politburo, there’d be a whole lotta libs who wouldn’t be on TV such as McAuliffe, Bernie Sanders, Alan Colmes, Geraldo, etc. I could go on.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — July 24, 2008 @ 5:43 am - July 24, 2008
Ask your “boy” the next time he comes up to the Big House. He’ll tell you that they have condoms at Wal Mart and, if I recall correctly, the infanticide lobby forced them to carry the “morning after you opened your legs for Tom, Dick & Harry” pill.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — July 24, 2008 @ 5:56 am - July 24, 2008
I think the key in all of these comments is “oblivion”. People no longer have any awareness (let alone respect) for those around them. It’s not just in the airports. OTHER PEOPLE EXIST!
Comment by Mark — July 24, 2008 @ 9:23 pm - July 24, 2008