Airlines' New Tagline: What's the Hurry

I am writing this from Bush International Airport in Houston, Texas. I am on my way back to Florida from the west coast. I have time to write this because my flight is delayed, as was the one that left LAX this morning. In fact, on the way out west at the beginning of the week, my flight was delayed two hours in Tampa. So, they had to rebook my connection in Houston before my trip even began. I just received a text from my wife, and her flight was late getting into Charlotte.

I suppose we have come to expect these daily inconveniences in our travel. From security screening to gate changes, we have been taught to go with the flow. Had I scheduled a meeting for when my flight was supposed to arrive in Tucson, I would have missed it. This is the very reason I didn’t schedule anything that day. We are preconditioned to accept the fact that our flight has a good probability of being late.

In the last 3 months I have been delayed because of the lack of a crew, lack of a plane, no air-conditioning, and a broken toilet. You will notice that none of these are weather related.

So, I have been conditioned not to depend upon the airlines to get me to a prescribed destination at a prescribed time and they seem alright with that. As long as their customers lower their expectations and don’t commit to a hard schedule, nobody will get hurt.