Ground Clutter

July 2002

We spend billions of dollars on homeland security, great gobs of it aimed at airports and airlines. We passengers have subjected ourselves to untold indignities. Airlines are forced to render cockpit doors difficult, if not impossible, to penetrate. Airports spend like the proverbial drunken sailor. Nothing, it seems, is too much trouble or too expensive if it is done in the name of security. Yet our pilots leave the inner sanctum of the cockpit in flight to repair toilets?
More than that, our pilots leave the cockpit casually to relieve themselves. They also leave that much-vaunted cockpit door wide open while passengers board and depart the airplane.
If I were in charge (and let me be the first to say that only a fool would put me in charge) I would prohibit cockpit crews from entering or exiting the cockpit at any time - repeat any time - that passengers are on board. Period.
Wait; I retract that "period." I'd also require that the cockpit door be shut and locked when passengers are on board. The only exception would be at such times that the pilots have declared an emergency, and determined that said emergency requires one of them to leave the cockpit.
Oh, but Ralph, you ask, how would crews use the "facilities?" Listen, as much money and trouble as we are expending, you're trying to tell me we can't figure out some way to provide the pilot with the proverbial pot to you-know-what in?
Others ask, "But what if a passenger, furious with air rage, goes berserk and is whuppin' up on somebody in the rear cabin?"
Listen, the pilots are responsible for several hundred people and the airplane. They should not leave the cockpit even if - hell, especially if - a passenger in the back is shooting at people. The crew should remain in place and land the airplane ASAP.
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Change of subject…
In the news you'll learn that airlines, aware that passengers are less than enchanted, are working like the devil to provide top service for their best business customers. Well, maybe not.
My good friend, Al Walker, a very frequent flyer and a Flying Colonel with Delta (a once-fine airline), received from Delta a lifetime (remember that word, "lifetime") membership in Delta's Crown Room. Recently, in a fit of cost reduction, Delta canceled Al's "lifetime" membership. Now folks, pardon my slow mind, but how the heck do you cancel a lifetime membership? Is it I or Delta who doesn't understand the meaning of the word lifetime? Al's reaction is simple enough: "I used to be a truly loyal Delta fan," he tells me, "but now I'm trying to hurt 'em."
I'm not even gonna tell you about my latest experience with Delta. But I will say that Jennifer, a wonderful Delta employee at HSV, found a way to get around the rules and straighten out the dangdest case of customer mishandling you ever saw. Although she never asked for anything, we got Jennifer a gift certificate to a nice restaurant.
We're still mad at Delta.