irrational fear of flying

[vertical_doug]

After having a number of snafus with American in the Caribbean trying to get back to Miami to London this weekend (took 2 days with pain) in order to make a late meeting today, and one tomorrow, British Air is now hit with a major IT event. I am scheduled to leave tmrw for Las Vegas.

It feels like we are cascading to the Die Hard 4 'Fire Sale' one of these days. Ho ho ho...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...assengers.html

I haven't even started my American complaint letter, and now this. I can't complain fast enough.

[Tom]

When we came back from Italy on American Airlines we flew from Naples. There was some sort of an issue there and I think it was local. The staff ended up checking everybody's bags in manually and hand writing all the luggage tags. Took forever - we stood in lines for about five hours but I was pleasantly surprised when our luggage arrived at our destination when we did. I think I prefer them not giving me any information and letting me kind of settle into endurance mode instead of giving me a time that I obsessively watch creeping closer slower and slower. I'm not a very social person but we had a good time yakking with our fellow sufferers.

[72gmc]

When we came back from Italy on American Airlines we flew from Naples. There was some sort of an issue there and I think it was local. The staff ended up checking everybody's bags in manually and hand writing all the luggage tags. Took forever - we stood in lines for about five hours but I was pleasantly surprised when our luggage arrived at our destination when we did. I think I prefer them not giving me any information and letting me kind of settle into endurance mode instead of giving me a time that I obsessively watch creeping closer slower and slower. I'm not a very social person but we had a good time yakking with our fellow sufferers.

SeaTac's international flights were recently hobbled by a "computer issue" that led to the same solution, hand-written tags and manual check-in. We were glad we'd arrived 3 hours early.

[Dave Thompson]

So we’re coming home from Spain today with a plane change in Madrid. I think Madrid competes directly with the Charles de Gaulle airport for the longest terminals but with a new wrinkle. The overhead signs in Madrid direct you to the terminal you want: D, C, B, and A but offer an addendum underneath each terminal sign with how many minutes it will take you at a FAST walk to get there. The terminal sign for ours stated A, 36 minutes. And this was the start of our day!

[j44ke]

Just wait until the holiday season gets started!

[rwsaunders]

Highlights of my flight the other day from ORD-TYS, as the rest of the ride in our ERJ-145 was a chop fest…first world problem for sure.

[bigbill]

My son is attending advanced flight training (jets) in Kingsville, TX, and with the issues the T-45s were having, there is a backlog of training. He will spend much of December with the Marine Detachment at NAS Key West, that has to suck.....

[j44ke]

Russian GPS jamming and other "projects"? That is an ongoing issue evidently according to recent articles in several papers, particularly around Kaliningrad. And increased activity/intensity of this effort has been suggested as a possible response to USA & UK missile shipments to Ukraine.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...huania-airport

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ssiles-nuclear

Or it could just be another cargo plane with shoddy maintenance.

[rwsaunders]

He will spend much of December with the Marine Detachment at NAS Key West, that has to suck.....

He should owe Uncle Sam a check for that post!

[vertical_doug]

Russian GPS jamming and other "projects"? That is an ongoing issue evidently according to recent articles in several papers, particularly around Kaliningrad. And increased activity/intensity of this effort has been suggested as a possible response to USA & UK missile shipments to Ukraine.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...huania-airport

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ssiles-nuclear

Or it could just be another cargo plane with shoddy maintenance.

well, the current doomsday clock is at 90 seconds to Midnight, which I think is the closest its ever been to midnight. It is more a current indication of the exaggeration of danger as we live in a world with less and less danger.

Too much shitty TV and opinion pretending to be hard news

[bigbill]

He should owe Uncle Sam a check for that post!

The base has F-5 aggressor aircraft for air to air training. He's hoping he gets to fly the simulator between snorkeling, fishing, and recreational drinking downtown. A beach cruiser rental is $50 a week.

[bigbill]

Russian GPS jamming and other "projects"? That is an ongoing issue evidently according to recent articles in several papers, particularly around Kaliningrad. And increased activity/intensity of this effort has been suggested as a possible response to USA & UK missile shipments to Ukraine.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...huania-airport

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ssiles-nuclear

Or it could just be another cargo plane with shoddy maintenance.

I would be more concerned about the incendiary packages on aircraft than the GPS. There are work arounds for GPS including a programmed shift of signal frequencies. ICBMs use inertial and GPS navigation to know where they were launched and upon entering orbit, verify their position using celestial navigation, assuming satellites are no longer functioning. Starlink was able to counter the Russian jamming after a few days. Now they counter it in real time.

Russians want to instill fear and doubt in aviation safety. I don't think they could get a tactical advantage with incendiary devices, just fear.

[Tom]

So we're scheduled to fly out of Albany NY on Thursday mid afternoon on United heading to Stockholm for the Nobel celebrations. Current weather forecast is for a clipper system to come through Wednesday night into Thursday morning. The 1-3 inches of snow don't worry me too much but the wind does. West winds sustained at 25mph, gusts to 35mph while they're bringing the airplane in and then when we leave. 22-30 knots, according to my unit converter. They do have a west-east runway so I don't think crosswinds are going to be an issue but there won't be a pristine dry clear runway surface. We have an hour and 40 minutes to make our connection in Dulles.

Should I be calling the airline and trying to push up our connection flight to late Wednesday? What's the thoughts of the people with a lot more experience with these kinds of things? Or am I just getting all too worked up over it? I do that kind of thing.

[gregl]

So we're scheduled to fly out of Albany NY on Thursday mid afternoon on United heading to Stockholm for the Nobel celebrations. Current weather forecast is for a clipper system to come through Wednesday night into Thursday morning. The 1-3 inches of snow don't worry me too much but the wind does. West winds sustained at 25mph, gusts to 35mph while they're bringing the airplane in and then when we leave. 22-30 knots, according to my unit converter. They do have a west-east runway so I don't think crosswinds are going to be an issue but there won't be a pristine dry clear runway surface. We have an hour and 40 minutes to make our connection in Dulles.

Should I be calling the airline and trying to push up our connection flight to late Wednesday? What's the thoughts of the people with a lot more experience with these kinds of things? Or am I just getting all too worked up over it? I do that kind of thing.

The ALB forecast for Thursday afternoon (ceiling/visibility/precipitation) should not be limiting for your flight. As you noted, Albany has multiple runways, with RW28 aligned with Thursday's forecast winds. Albany also has good snow removal capabilities, so that shouldn't be an issue. The bigger concern would be delays for the incoming flight. Any delays will be more dependent on the specific airline and the incoming flight's departure airport. Check the incoming flight's historical on-time performance and forecast weather at its departure airport. That will give you better indications to influence whether to seek an earlier departure.

Greg

[bigbill]

My son is flying to Key West today from San Antonio. DTS (defense travel system) is one of the government agencies that needs to be eliminated. Originally they booked his flight with four legs, two with 30 minute layovers at busy airports, instead of a two leg trip with an 1:10 layover in Tampa, just because it was $50 more. Common sense is not figured into that organization, but he pestered the office enough to get the preferred two leg trip. This one time, DTS sent me to San Diego from Seattle, San Diego to San Francisco, San Fran to Narita, and Narita to Singapore. I asked about Seattle to Narita but that was too hard. When I was stationed at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, we had a "travel lady" that set up all our travel. If you didn't know her, she could be terrifying, but if you were respectful and were willing to sit for a few minutes to "talk story," she was the nicest person ever. I always got economy plus with a window or aisle.

[Tom]

gregl, thank you. The flight comes in from Dulles, it looks like a back and forth thing all day. Weather in Dulles looks completely benign so if there's any issues it'll be the back and forth getting slowed down in Albany earlier on in the day. I'm pretty sure we're going to be fine but we'll be paying attention tomorrow.

[Tom]

Boy, I hope we don't need to reschedule. I spent maybe 2 1/2 hours on the phone with United and their partners straightening out flight details. The big one was the leg from Brussels to Stockholm on Brussels Air. It showed it needing attention this morning, they said it was unavailable when I spoke to them. They rescheduled to a later hour. I didn't notice it was moved to the day before until the machine generated email arrived later in the afternoon. Then it was a very long call with United to move it to the right day - the original flight was available but business class had been filled up out from under us so that was the "flight isn't available" situation. If they had told me that in the first place it would have saved us both a whole lot of time. I'd have grabbed two chairs in economy because that's what I ended up doing. Then it was another half hour with Brussels to confirm we had chairs by identifying them.

Would have been nice if they had notified us earlier, if I wasn't ridiculous about this stuff we wouldn't have had a clue until inside of 24 hours when we were checking in.

The best part was United said to apply for a refund after we completed the flight. Like that's going to work!

It's so fragile I don't want to touch it. Five dollars says we show up at the airport and at least one leg of six is buggered up.

[gregl]

My son is flying to Key West today from San Antonio. DTS (defense travel system) is one of the government agencies that needs to be eliminated. Originally they booked his flight with four legs, two with 30 minute layovers at busy airports, instead of a two leg trip with an 1:10 layover in Tampa, just because it was $50 more. Common sense is not figured into that organization, but he pestered the office enough to get the preferred two leg trip. This one time, DTS sent me to San Diego from Seattle, San Diego to San Francisco, San Fran to Narita, and Narita to Singapore. I asked about Seattle to Narita but that was too hard. When I was stationed at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, we had a "travel lady" that set up all our travel. If you didn't know her, she could be terrifying, but if you were respectful and were willing to sit for a few minutes to "talk story," she was the nicest person ever. I always got economy plus with a window or aisle.

Because my employer works under US government contracts, we are nearly always obligated to follow the same travel regulations (JTRs) that govern DoD employees & military personnel. As you noted, the JTRs and their application are totally devoid of common sense. The routings typically save a few dollars in airline costs, but waste thousands of dollars in lost productivity. Fortunately, my company typically pays the modest upcharges to ensure our time is better utilized. I couldn't imaging having to abide 100% by the JTRs!

Greg

[bigbill]

Because my employer works under US government contracts, we are nearly always obligated to follow the same travel regulations (JTRs) that govern DoD employees & military personnel. As you noted, the JTRs and their application are totally devoid of common sense. The routings typically save a few dollars in airline costs, but waste thousands of dollars in lost productivity. Fortunately, my company typically pays the modest upcharges to ensure our time is better utilized. I couldn't imaging having to abide 100% by the JTRs!

Greg

When I was doing the project in Sardinia, I had to fly back once a month to brief the Navy and DOE. Until the very end, it was all classified so I had to hand carry briefs and present them in person. Each time I flew to the U.S. from Rome, I never arrived and departed from the same international airport. I would arrive at JFK, Philly, Chicago, or Cincinnati and then fly to Reagan. A few times, I got an email while traveling letting me know my return flight had changed time and location. The best one was Reagan to ORD to Rome with a 35 minute layover in Chicago. Domestic to international in Chicago in 35 minutes. I called DTS and asked them if they understood international travel, so they changed me to Cincinnati with an 8 hour layover. Another time, my return trip was going to Reagan to DFW to JFK to Rome, that one got changed too. I think with the interwebs, the government could let people set up their own travel with a given budget plus or minus a certain percentage. I usually paid out of pocket for the economy plus upgrade.

[vertical_doug]

When I was doing the project in Sardinia, I had to fly back once a month to brief the Navy and DOE. Until the very end, it was all classified so I had to hand carry briefs and present them in person. Each time I flew to the U.S. from Rome, I never arrived and departed from the same international airport. I would arrive at JFK, Philly, Chicago, or Cincinnati and then fly to Reagan. A few times, I got an email while traveling letting me know my return flight had changed time and location. The best one was Reagan to ORD to Rome with a 35 minute layover in Chicago. Domestic to international in Chicago in 35 minutes. I called DTS and asked them if they understood international travel, so they changed me to Cincinnati with an 8 hour layover. Another time, my return trip was going to Reagan to DFW to JFK to Rome, that one got changed too. I think with the interwebs, the government could let people set up their own travel with a given budget plus or minus a certain percentage. I usually paid out of pocket for the economy plus upgrade.

You know they are just having fun and fucking with you.
It gives them stories to tell at Christmas dinner... You know I have this guy ask me if I understood international travel..... so I sent him to Cincy for an 8 hr layover. Har har har

I prefer my gubermint petty and vindicative as opposed to incompetent.