7 ms·

Dear people who work at the airport

215 points by nivethan 2mo ago

andsoitis 2mo ago
> She was anxious, because you instilled a sense of panic in her. That's not why she was anxious! She was anxious because, according to author's own account, this is someone: a) flying for the first time b) hardly speaks English c) is in a foreign country d) solo responsible for 4 grand kids running around etc. Blaming the airport staff who have to optimize for the greater good is quite something.
- vintermann 2mo ago
  Now boarding - remain seated. Gate closing! The author gave plenty of other reasons why someone might be stressed out by what's communicated at the airport. The whole point is that airport staff (and especially leadership) are maybe not so great at "optimizing for the greater good" always.
  - gruez 2mo ago
    >Now boarding - remain seated. Gate closing! >The author gave plenty of other reasons why someone might be stressed out by what's communicated at the airport. Without objective accounts (ie. a picture), it's unclear whether that's due to poor design or just poor comprehension/situational awareness from the person reading it. For instance, "Now boarding - remain seated" seems like pretty standard priority boarding (eg. first class boards first, economy stays seated). If you're bad at english and all you can do is scan for random keywords, and/or it's your first time flying and you're not aware of this, you might be confused. But there's also so much you can do for this target audience.
    - kshri24 2mo ago
      > But there's also so much you can do for this target audience. The point is not asking one to do something for the target audience beyond showing a bit of compassion. If the passenger is lost/confused and is being yelled at it would do nothing to either diffuse the situation or help the passenger. Hand-holding one or two passengers would only make the experience pleasant enough for them. It has the effect of them learning something they did not know and also wanting to come back again.
    - pmontra 2mo ago
      If that's the case it means that they can show the "Now boarding - remain seated" only to people that will board in economy seats. I don't think that they can, so it's a bad message that probably came into existence because of some entertaining concatenation of events that somebody in the airport business could be able to explain. But will anybody working in airports read that post?
      - gruez 2mo ago
        >If that's the case it means that they can show the "Now boarding - remain seated" only to people that will board in economy seats. That's physically not possible if all you have is a single display in front of the gate, which is common at most airports. Of course, you can add "First class - now boarding, everyone else - stay seated" but for OP's case where there's reading comprehension issues I doubt that would help. >I don't think that they can, so it's a bad message that probably came into existence because of some entertaining concatenation of events that somebody in the airport business could be able to explain. It's not hard to think why it's necessary. Otherwise you have a hoarde of economy people clogging up the gates when it's only supposed to be first class people.
- mschuster91 2mo ago
  Airports by nature of flying being expensive will always be filled with people with zero idea about how airports work.
- tonyarkles 2mo ago
  > Blaming the airport staff who have to optimize for the greater good is quite something. I don't think it's actually as noble as "optimizing for the greater good", but rather "optimizing for getting through the day in one piece". Which, in my experience, is why (polite + friendly + reasonable + firm) is the right register to use in pretty much every interaction with airport staff. You're asking them to do something (not telling), but your presence is ideally vaguely net positive (friendly, smiling, relaxed), you're asking for something that's within their authority to do, and there's a vague threat that you're not going to back down if they say no off-hand (their day is going to have a larger hassle-increment if they say no vs. if they say yes). Written out it kind of reads as cold and calculating, but I think every element of it is the best for everyone involved. You don't end up feeling like you just acquiesced to getting screwed by United or Delta, they get to have a nice friendly interaction that ideally makes those 10 minutes of their day suck less than it could have with an asshole customer.
  - bee_rider 2mo ago
    It is the delicate art of being a persistent problem that is more pleasant and easier to deal with than ignore.
- handwarmers 2mo ago
  while your ignorance is bliss for you, it is a punishment for the rest of us. now get in line and wait for your boarding group to be called.
- kshri24 2mo ago
  > b) hardly speaks English > c) is in a foreign country So you don't want tourists to your Country? You do realize 95% of the World lives outside the US? and at least 80% lives in non-English speaking Countries? Creating a horrid experience for them would mean losing huge chuck of that wealth flowing into your Country. Especially so when their income levels are rising drastically compared to a US Citizen (in terms of % change in disposable income as many are from low cost of living countries).
  - fryanyway_swe 2mo ago
    [flagged]
  - andsoitis 2mo ago
    I didn’t say that I don’t want visitors who aren’t proficient in the language. I love to travel to places where I don’t understand the language. What exhilarates me even more is going to places where I also don’t understand the script! My point was merely that this is one element that turns up the anxiety dial, which I think is self-evident.
- martyvis 2mo ago
  I think the point is that they have zero empathy
- sifex 2mo ago
  The fact that airport staff are forced to be cattle dogs given the lack of airport prior capacity planning is exactly what the author is trying to convey. It touches on a “race to the bottom” that European low cost carriers have have shown that people don’t care about airport stress in the shadow of cost — which lends to the enshittification of the whole overall experience. It’s so bad that people are starting to /pay/ to have less stress by visiting airport lounges, which are now starting to be, themselves, overcrowded due to the increase in demand.[1] [1]. https://web.archive.org/web/20260714133432/https://www.globalgrowthinsights.com/market-reports/airport-lounges-market-118981 https://web.archive.org/web/20260714133432/https://www.globa...
- krisoft 2mo ago
  > optimize for the greater good Greater good my posterior. The grandma was in the wrong place at that time because they optimised the experience to extract the most money out of the flying public. They were boarding the people who paid extra, and since she didn't they couldn't let her board. Because if they do why would anyone pay extra for their "higher class" more expensive tickets. They could have said "passport?" and then pointed her towards the gate. But doing so as a policy would net the corporation less profit. So they don't. In other words the grandma's distress was by design. You can avoid the indignity of turned away from the gate by coughing up more money. She quite literally "didn't know her place" both in the queue and in the hierarchy.
  - gruez 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - krisoft 2mo ago
      It makes every sense. andsoitis claimed that the process is optimised for "greater good". My observation is that it is not. It is optimised for profit. That's it. If there were some change they could enact which improves the "greater good" (whatever that is) at the cost of profit, they wouldn't. Simple as that. > or need assistance first yeah. Like a grandma with a tenuous command of the language and four kids. :) > thereby creating the issue described in the OP. I'm sure a fictional airport organised by other principles would have other problems. Doesn't change a bit that the current airport you can experience is optimised for profit, and not for "greater good".
      - gruez 2mo ago
        >If there were some change they could enact which improves the "greater good" (whatever that is) at the cost of profit, they wouldn't. Simple as that. Right, nobody thinks airports/airlines are altruistic organizations, but this specific complaint doesn't make any sense because the specific decision to board by sections is for the greater good. A moshpit where everybody boards at once benefits no one. In this case, "greater good" and "maximize profit" overlaps. >yeah. Like a grandma with a tenuous command of the language and four kids. :) Usually this would be handled by the airport, not the airlines. Moreover airports usually have criteria for which people can get assistance, and they can only help people that they think need assistance. It's easily to identify someone in a wheelchair, less easy to identify "grandma with a tenuous command of the language" without engaging in sterotyping/racial profiling.
MotoriX 2mo ago
Navigation in a lot of public places is pretty bad. I think interactive maps on small terminals could help a lot. Personally, I find it much easier to understand things from a map, especially when it shows exactly where you are.
shdwslrkr 2mo ago
[dead]
josefritzishere 2mo ago
Everyone over 40 knows how terrible air travel has become.
- Xirdus 2mo ago
  Everyone* knows how terrible air travel has become. People over 40 know it doesn't have to be that way.
- lifestyleguru 2mo ago
  It's still like in the past days in Business class and upwards, not to mention private flying - all friendly, fully serviced, no nitpicking. Air travel has become more like transatlantic liners from the period just before their demise.
  - ceejayoz 2mo ago
    Business class is starting the enshittification ramp. https://travelupdate.com/business-class-seat-selection-fee/ https://travelupdate.com/business-class-seat-selection-fee/ Wanna sit with your partner? Both of you, pay up! Lounge access? Oh, that's extra now.
    - lotsofpulp 2mo ago
      Why does that logic not go the other way, too? Don’t care about who you sit next to? Have a discount! Suppose you operate an airline, and your costs increase (e.g. fuel, labor, etc). Your options are to divide the increase equally by number of seats, or you increase price differently based on customer’s ability and willingness to pay. I do not see what is “wrong” about the latter. In fact, the latter would allow maintaining more access to air travel for those who can afford it the least. I don’t care for airport lounges, why should I pay for them? Same for bigger seats, or checked bags, or alcoholic drinks, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
      - gruez 2mo ago
mschuster91 2mo ago
> Upon seeing this, the experienced visitor to this sceptred isle knows to smartly turn on their heel because B45 is right behind them, but we occasional travellers don't. Railways aren't much better. German railways are bad enough, but Eastern Europe... good luck even finding a realtime track schedule, and screw you if you don't speak the language. Last time in Rijeka there was construction going on but no indications anywhere, my fellow travellers were lucky I spoke Croatian and recognized that the attendant was shouting in Croatian for the people on what should have been a train...
- lifestyleguru 2mo ago
  You come to Croatia for cheap holidays and are surprised not all works as you're used to. German service providers absolutely don't care if you don't speak German and will take that extra step to make sure you get the message.
  - mschuster91 2mo ago
    > You come to Croatia for cheap holidays and are surprised not all works as you're used to. I speak the language. The thing I'm annoyed is is that tourist destinations should be better prepared for, well, tourists showing up!
    - lifestyleguru 2mo ago
      Croatian tourism strategy is bumping prices of what they already have to Swiss level, and seeing who is still willing to show up.
      - mschuster91 2mo ago
        It's not like that strategy isn't working out lol. The issue at the root of it is that Croatia wants to diversify from tourism and agriculture, its main sources of income... but for that, it needs money. With Russia invading Ukraine, a ton of Russian tourists went missing (if you ask me: thank God), and so the remaining ones are getting fleeced for all they're worth. The side effect is that the locals are getting shafted. Supermarket prices are at German levels (on the islands it's even worse)... the only thing saving most locals is that Croats tend to outright own their homes and a lot of Croats have houses large enough for two families if not more. That makes high cost of living a lot more bearable. And the fact that the geography makes supplying the coastal areas very inefficient doesn't help either. Along the coast from Rijeka all the way down to Zadar there is only the one single-lane long magistrala with only a few passthroughs through the mountain and the recently constructed highways... but no train, it's only in Rijeka and Zadar again. And with the exception of Krk which is connected by bridge, all of the islands have to be supplied by ferry, but the trucks that haul all the goods have to wait sometimes for hours to get on the ferry, the only fast lane is for the public transit buses and authorities.
neko_ranger 2mo ago
Am I crazy or are the general workers at most US airports of dubious quality at best?
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- rdtsc 2mo ago
  The TSA and some immigration ones are even malicious
  - WaitWaitWha 2mo ago
    I have gone through Schiphol and strip searched because the buttons on my winter coat were suspicious.
- Xirdus 2mo ago
  You get what you pay for. And they're being paid barely above minimum wage.
  - pineapplepizza6 2mo ago
    about a half of a developed country's minimum wage.
    - Insanity 2mo ago
      That doesn’t change the fact that it’s minimum wage for the location. Doesn’t matter if they earn more than a highly skilled professional in a different country, it doesn’t change the skill set. FWIW though, I rarely had bad experiences with airport staff. They are just trying to do their jobs in a hectic place and don’t intentionally make our lives difficult.
      - zamadatix 2mo ago
        That it's a near minimum wage job is not actually the fact though. Even the minimum starting salary for an entry level TSA position is higher than the highest minimum wage of any city/county/state in the US. The median TSA salary is also a hair above the median of full time salary in the US. For the most part I agree most are at least neutral though. I.e. they are there because it's a job, not because they hate people or love people and this job was the way to do that. It's just the ones that do tend to really stand out for people.
patchorang 2mo ago
I can't agree more. I was once catching a flight, went to my gate and found no one there and the flight status monitors saying "Cancelled". I couldn't find an agent at any desk, so went back out of security to check-in to figure out what was going on. The agent proceeded to act like I was the biggest idiot in the world for leaving the gate because "we don't control those boards, your flight isn't cancelled, the gate was changed". So I had to run back through security to barely catch my flight. Another place I experience this phenomenon is bike shops. They'll start talking to you with specialized vocabulary and won't give you the time of day if you don't know exactly what they're talking about. Yet, I brought my bike to the bike shop because I'm not an expert bike mechanic. Funny enough, I couldn't find a bike shop that wasn't like this so with the help of youtube I do all my own bike work now.
- RankingMember 2mo ago
  > Another place I experience this phenomenon is bike shops. They'll start talking to you with specialized vocabulary and won't give you the time of day if you don't know exactly what they're talking about. Yet, I brought my bike to the bike shop because I'm not an expert bike mechanic. Funny enough, I couldn't find a bike shop that wasn't like this so with the help of youtube I do all my own bike work now. Ugh, the industry still needs to do so much work to this end. There are good shops out there, fwiw, but the elitism is real. Totally counterproductive for a means of conveyance that is so elegantly classless (in the positive, egalitarian sense).
  - lukan 2mo ago
    Speaking about elitism/classless - in some german towns, there are more and more non profit self help bike repair places. Good concept I think, but sadly not for E-Bikes it seems. At least I was told that much, so I had to start getting my own repair gear.
  - hydrogen7800 2mo ago
    I design and build things 100x[0] more complex than any bicycle, yet I don't know the jargon and feel like an idiot when I got into my local bike shop to ask simple questions. They are mostly nice and understanding, but the jargon and elitism is still very real that my wife doesn't like going there. [0]though adjusting the tension spring on the brake levers still puzzles me sometimes... Looser should mean it travels more when you squeeze and release the brake lever, right? Stiffer spring has less displacement for a given force. Not quite. https://www.sheldonbrown.com/canti-direct.html#parallel https://www.sheldonbrown.com/canti-direct.html#parallel
piinbinary 2mo ago
This has some lessons that apply much more broadly than to just airports (e.g. apps that make you jump through hoops and expect you to know what 2fa or SSO mean)
- LollipopYakuza 2mo ago
  Exactly. That led me to wonder what in my job do I wrongly assume for my users.
- kevincox 2mo ago
  Or just anyone involved in communication at all. For example my condo management team has names for every part of the building that they just assume that everyone understands. They don't seem to understand that most of the people living here don't spend most of their time reading the building floor plan.
mikeocool 2mo ago
My favorite but of airport-ese that emerged post-9/11 is that on most US airlines you can now have 1 carry-on and 1 personal item. As far as I can tell the difference between them is that a personal item can't have wheels.
- ceejayoz 2mo ago
  My last four flights have each made me gate-check my carry-on at the jetway. They could've saved a lot of time and labor by just letting me check it like I would have before they started charging $30-50 each way for it.
  - mbreese 2mo ago
    That is the most counter-intuitive thing for me while flying. Why make me pay to check my bag? Make people pay to carry on a bag. Most of the time boarding and leaving a plane is taken up with people dealing with overhead bags. Checking a bag should be the cheapest option to incentivize people to be more efficient.
    - Ekaros 2mo ago
      My best guess is that at least some airports will charge the airlines per checked in bag. Thus to save money if possible people carrying them inside is most profitable.
    - orev 2mo ago
      If checking the bag is free, everyone would do it, leaving the overhead space empty. That overhead space is flying to the destination anyway, so it’s better to make sure it’s full. The. If there’s free space in the hold underneath, they can transport other things like cargo (which makes them money).
      - ceejayoz 2mo ago
        > If checking the bag is free, everyone would do it, leaving the overhead space empty. Checking the bag used to be free, and this was not the case.
chasd00 2mo ago
This is currently the #4 story on the home page, an article about someone complaining about not being able to figure out an airport. This must be why the standard recommendation is to get to the airport 2 hours(!) before your flight.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
foo-bar-baz529 2mo ago
I dislike the sense of judgment from TSA officials when I don’t correctly predict which items they do/don’t want me to put in the tray. It’s not my fault that different airports seem to have completely different rules for the same items.
- SanjayMehta 2mo ago
  [flagged]
- zhivota 2mo ago
  Even different lines in the same security area can have different rules. If you travel a lot you start to recognize which machines require laptops out of bags and which don't, for instance. It is really anxiety inducing overall though. Not to mention the ritual of getting partly undressed before the stupid thing then trying to put everything back on and in pockets on the other side.
  - zamadatix 2mo ago
    Does anyone happen to know which ones are fine with 2 laptops per bag and which ones aren't?
- nucleardog 2mo ago
  I've often thought that having a standardized checklist on a big board in the security line would be a big help. Laptops: In/Out Liquids: In/Out Shoes: On/Off Etc Because yeah, it's really annoying getting treated like I'm the dummy by some agent that's only ever known this airport's rules... because this airport has rules entirely different than every other one I've flown through in this decade. Recently had to fly with some splints and crutches and stuff and that was a whole extra set of fun difference in airport rules. First one really wanted to rub their explosives swab on my finger that was held together by exposed metal pins and had exposed subcutaneous tissue. They were a bit put off when I asked for alternate options.
  - genghisjahn 2mo ago
raverbashing 2mo ago
While I found this rant mostly annoying: > When we try to find gate B45, we encounter the following sign: (see board with 2 B45 gates) Well, yes. This is wrong. And confusing. But mostly wrong
- chasd00 2mo ago
  When article says "..it's actually behind you" that leads me to believe that if you're staring at those signs then you're actually at B45. I'm not sure off the top of my head how you'd put B45 on those signs in a clear way. If B45 is at the intersection of two hallways then it really shouldn't be on either sign but then where should it be?
  - raverbashing 2mo ago
    You'd need a segregated entry for B45, or just omit it entirely
Retr0id 2mo ago
I suspect airports could be a whole lot simpler if the notions of "security" and "border control" didn't exist or were otherwise relaxed.
igornotarobot 2mo ago
How about two different planes departing to exactly the same destination at exactly the same time from two different terminals? That's how I missed my plane from Belgrade to Vienna. I have no other explanation but that they do it on purpose.
- ceejayoz 2mo ago
  > I have no other explanation but that they do it on purpose. It's much simpler; the incoming plane takes pretty much any available gate, because they are all almost always full. Getting the two flights to Vienna in the same spot might mean an hour of extra waiting on the tarmac for a gate to open up.
  - aqme28 2mo ago
    Also, two neighboring gates saying "Now boarding for Vienna" will confuse people too. You're a bit screwed either way.
    - progbits 2mo ago
      Are you? The gate won't let you in, you go to gate right next to it while it's still boarding.
- gruez 2mo ago
  The airport departure board doesn't have flight numbers? All the ones I've seen do. And if you can't notice the difference between two different flight numbers, how are you going to notice the difference between one flight departing at 1:35 and another that departs at 1:45?
  - igornotarobot 2mo ago
    Of course, they have flight numbers, though the destination and the departure time was a good heuristic until it was not. I am much better at remembering the departure time than an arbitrary sequence of letters and numbers.
superxpro12 2mo ago
i think that 90% of these problems would be solved by an easily accessible, standardized map of each airport. When i attempted to find airport maps, I was met with a mess of mobile apps, mobile website pdf's, and an enormous amount of text. Just... give me an easy to use map. Call out the obvious use cases like "how to transfer terminals" and "your bags will/will-not be checked through".
- chasd00 2mo ago
  maybe this doesn't work in every airport but you can hold up your phone with the camera on, point it down the hallway, and get step by step directions to get to your gate.
  - BenjiWiebe 2mo ago
    What, your stock camera app gives you step by step directions?! Feels like your explanation is missing a few steps.
    - hebelehubele 2mo ago
      Google Maps has a feature that lets you increase accurracy by scanning your surroundings with the camera.
NoDodgeQuestion 2mo ago
Post title should be, Dear people who design the airport, not Dear people who work at the airport.
- Hnrobert42 2mo ago
  Both
- john_strinlai 2mo ago
  other than the remarks about the signage, most of the post is about the employees.
piker 2mo ago
Absolutely! I travel a LOT, am able-bodied and frequent the same airports, and I am routinely confused and anxious. Bad call-out to Heathrow though where they’re amongst the best in the world at this.
charlesabarnes 2mo ago
Experienced travelers also often face troubled, contradictory instructions from airport staff seemingly at random. The experience doesn't have to be so stressful and confusing, but I'm not sure how to fix it.
- aqme28 2mo ago
  Yes, this is a thing too. It's confusing for people who don't fly often for the obvious reasons, but experienced travelers have it just as bad because the rules vary wildly by airport and country. I can't remember which airports/countries/systems require which procedures, so I just have to go in blind every time.
xvxvx 2mo ago
Last time I flew, it was with United and I highly recommend their app. Clearly designed by people who know airports suck. It automated everything, from checkin and tickets, kept me updated on flights and gates, mapped them out and told me how long it would take to get to the gate and where security lines were the longest. Even tracked my checked luggage.
- anticorporate 2mo ago
  [dead]
- martinpw 2mo ago
  > Even tracked by checked luggage. Which would be great if it was actually accurate. Took a United flight two days ago. Checked two bags. App only reported one bag loaded onto plane. Spent the flight anxiously wondering if the other bag had been lost. Both bags arrived fine. I'd rather have no information than unreliable information.
  - metanoia_ 2mo ago
    Do not let peace be given away as you cannot control what you cannot control.
  - hazard 2mo ago
    Put an airtag into literally every bag you check. Helps you figure out not just whether they made it on the flight, but also if they ended up at some baggage claim on the other end of the airport instead of the one they were supposed to be at
- ryandrake 2mo ago
  Not a big fan of having to load up an app to do something that should be (an in some cases, used to be) effortless. At some airlines, the gate agents are now starting to expect you to use the app for things, and they'll give an annoyed snort if you ask them for information. Sorry, Tiffany, but your airline app doesn't work on my phone because United's lazy software engineers cut off support for Operating Systems older than the previous version.
Kinrany 2mo ago
Funny. I love flying partly for the very reason that airports need to be idiot-proof.
hmokiguess 2mo ago
Expectation is the source of frustration. Embrace the chaos, accept the journey.
aqme28 2mo ago
I flew out of JFK a few days ago. Delta has about 50 check-in kiosk, and a few gate agents. With so many terminals, I was wondering why the area was so packed, with ten-minute lines to use an check-in kiosk. I went to see a gate agent because I had a question. Right after yelling at someone else for the same reason, they told me "No, you have to use the kiosks." By the time I got to the check-in kiosks I figured it out. Maybe they worked for some people but it had to be like 20% at best. Everyone else had to have help, myself included. It wouldn't scan my passport for the first 5 attempts, and then it wouldnt print my bag tag so I had to see the agent anyways. What is the purpose of an automated system that drives everyone to the manual system? It just added an extra step. Sorry for venting.
- ryandrake 2mo ago
  The manufacturers and vendors who sold the non-working check-in kiosks profited. That reason alone is enough justification.
casion 2mo ago
I've just hit 2 million miles last week. All of this is true, and no matter how much you do it, it's still all true. I can't even keep track of what I'm supposed to do at my own home airport that I've been to thousands of times. Some people know me on a first name basis there, and still act judgmental when something was (seemingly randomly) changed and I don't know about it. TSA is by far the worst in the USA though. Their expectation that you do exactly what you should, without telling you what to do, while constantly changing the rules, is infuriating. Often there'll be 2-3 lines and DESPITE HAVING THE SAME SCANNERS, they'll have different unspoken rules that you are literally yelled at over.
- chasd00 2mo ago
  i made this point earlier but in a TSA line do you not just watch the people in front of you and do what they're required to do? That works pretty well for me.
  - seb1204 2mo ago
    Yes, that. You have 3-10 chance to watch and learn before it's your turn. But down the phone or book and spend a moment observing.
- Cthulhu_ 2mo ago
  My theory is that it's intentional; change the rules for security personnel so they don't end up in a routine, change them for travelers so... they also don't end up in a routine. If travelers with malicious intent are stressed because of the lack of predictability, they'll be extra stressed when they're up to no good. Of course, this is baby/bathwater territory as only a fraction of a percentage of people are up to no good, and of those only a percentage is a danger to others.
  - seb1204 2mo ago
    As with many things, criminals are a step ahead and know this and know how to keep calm, be patient.
Cider9986 2mo ago
We do not need everyones bags to be scanned. We do not need everyones bodies to be scanned. We do not need facial recognition at TSA, to board international flights, and to enter the country. We do not need to ban cash at airports. We do not need to take off our shoes (ig that changed). We do not need to restrict liquids. It's a bunch of baloney.
- Bishonen88 2mo ago
  what? especially the bags part seems crazy. Easy to imagine what happens when we stop screening bags...
  - Vitamin_Sushi 2mo ago
    Wait until you find out that even when scanning everyone's bags, the TSA's failure rate is around 85%: https://abcnews.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-operation-us-airports/story?id=51022188 https://abcnews.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-ope... Granted, this article is almost 10 years old. Even so, I highly doubt that this administration is willing to test (or report) the TSAs effectiveness.
  - jstanley 2mo ago
    Easy to fear what you merely imagine. Did you know that for train and bus travel in the UK bags are not scanned? And we don't have people bombing trains and buses all the time. Some museums look in bags and some don't and I'm not sure there's a statistically significant difference in how frequently they get bombed.
    - Gud 2mo ago
      The difference between an airplane and buses and trains, is that in the airplane you are in a confined space far from the ground. Its not just about bombs.
    - sandmn 2mo ago
      They do confiscate plenty of guns though: https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/3816926-these-us-airports-had-the-most-guns-confiscated-from-passengers/ https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/3816926-these-us-a...
sergiotapia 2mo ago
I feel differently, after travelling a bit all the airports are so cookie cutter I was in awe of the human effort required to reach this point of harmony. It's all so organized and simple and zero need to rush. They even have signs in all major languages, it's nuts! Source: SF, Miami, New York, Bolivia, Argentina, Texas - all kind of the same all over. Like visiting different Wawa's.
joshstrange 2mo ago
In Lexington, KY I was chided for taking out my laptop "You don't need to do that" and then at Dallas Fort Worth I got chided for not taking out my laptop. Kafkaesque is the best word I have to describe it. Turns out Lexington has nicer/newer scanners and somehow I'm supposed to know which scanners you need to take your laptop out for. Additionally I want to make a scene every time I hand over documents and get told "I don't need this" since if I hadn't provided that ID/Passport/Boarding pass there was an equal chance I'd get berated for not providing it. There is zero empathy for the traveller. If I walk forward I get yelled at, if I wait to be called I get yelled at, it's infuriating. Everything about the airport feels like a lose-lose scenario to me. I don't fly that often and every time I do I hate the airport experience so much because I feel like I'm constantly doing _something_ wrong. The security theater of the TSA is just the moldy cherry on top of the shit sundae that is flying.
- chasd00 2mo ago
  what i do in tsa lines is just watch the people in front of me and the directions given to them. It's kind of hard to ignore actually.
  - joshstrange 2mo ago
    Lexington KY is a small airport, I walked right up to an empty line with no one in front of me and there were only 2-3 people in front of my at DFW and no one had a laptop I guess? The entire airport experience is me trying to watch the people in front of me and try to decipher what I need to do to comply best. I still feel like a fish out of water every time.
- starky 2mo ago
  I'm pretty sure this is a purposeful "feature" of security at least for North America. They don't want anyone getting comfortable with the process and constantly make changes to ensure this. I'm not sure what this is supposed to accomplish other than to make air travel less comfortable. I recently flew and the airport had gotten the new scanners since the last time I had gone somewhere. The signage was confusing as only some of the lines had signs that specifically said you didn't have to take out your electronics on "this lane only". Even with the new scanners they were pulling out half the bags for additional screening and only had one person doing the additional screening. Coming back from overseas I saw how it was supposed to work, walked up and they directed me to a line and a specific bin loading station, had someone remind me to ensure my pockets were empty, walked through the scanner and my bag was already waiting for me, took all of 2 minutes.
AndrewKemendo 2mo ago
My observation is that on average, the world is too complex and confusing for the vast majority of people to operate in it without significant struggle.
fryanyway_swe 2mo ago
[flagged]
- Der_Einzige 2mo ago
  Thus but unironically.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
maeln 2mo ago
I hate airport. From having to arrive many hours early to a place out of the city and often poorly connected by public transport, expensive to park if you dare take your car, extremely expensive if you take a taxi or be left wherever if you take an uber. Then you have to find your way through huge, terminal to find your gate, understand the arbitrary rules of the airlines you were forced to choose, having your stuff messed with by security, having the constant pressure of time, only for the airline to be hours late with no compensation. And so many more. Nowadays, if I can take a train, I take the train. At least where I live, the train stations are almost always in the city, very well-connected, are more comfortable, you can arrive very late at the train station since there is no gate, no security, no bullshit. And even if the trip is 3-4h longer with a train, you can make up for it by not having to show up minimum 1 hour early at the airport, then having to wait 1 hour for a slow bus that takes you from the airport to the actual city center, or take a taxi and give them all your life savings.
- Caius-Cosades 2mo ago
  Yeah, airports are way too stressful. I'd honestly rather use a train to travel across a continent than use an airplane. The time saved just isn't worth the stress.
Insanity 2mo ago
The signage and rules can be confusing, but I don’t recall bad experiences with airport staff. They are just trying to do their job in a hectic place. I don’t believe they are intentionally being difficult, and honestly everyone can have a bad day.
Aeolun 2mo ago
Like, I hate the sheer size of Schiphol, but I’m never wondering where anything is, and if I need to get there I can always get there by sprinting. I like that part of it.
arun-mani-j 2mo ago
I traveled in the flight for the first time 2 months back and I find this article so similar to my experience. I had so much confusion on the entire protocols on what is allowed and what is not and all those terminologies, such that a week before travel, I had my friend do a full end-to-end guide on everything we must do since entering an airport to coming out of it. Even then when I visited it, it was a little different than what my friend told me. But thankfully it is not a rushy airport, so I frankly told my situation to the person issuing boarding pass and he told me in detailed manner everything (my biggest confusion was with luggages). Unlike a bus or train which you can at the worst case run through and board, for airplanes, you need to go through a lot of checkings and phew... When in flight, there were a few instructions, messages from pilot etc. However they spoke so fast that it was so unclear. The passangers around me were also talking a little loudly, so I couldn't understand anything. May be from what I understand, these instructions are so regular, so people who frequent flights find it boring. For me it was both curiosity and feae of missing important details. And since it was India, they said the instructions in both English and Hindi only (I know only a little Hindi), even though the flights were for different language speaking region. At the end, it somehow ended up fine. But I think if it were my parents in my place, the journey could have been a nightmare :)
tengbretson 2mo ago
> we passengers are trying our best 100% disagree.
jonhohle 2mo ago
What’s crazy is that this is the list of things that are wrong when everything is going right. I was at O’hare for the first time in a few decades a few weeks ago and my flight was delayed due to some mechanical issue with the assigned plane. At least that’s what the app said. Because of the delay, the gate kept changing. We were supposed to know this because every once in a while the gate we were at no longer said it was our flight, so there must be some other location. I think at least one of the times it was mentioned over the PA, but besides the flight number everything else was unintelligible. We see other flights to our destination that were scheduled after ours from the same airline on the same type of plane boarding and leaving. It doesn’t matter that our tickets were from earlier in the day. They’ve already screwed over 150 passengers. Screwing them over more is far less bad than delaying them slightly but having to also delay later flights by a little bit, too. I think we watched three flights leave. As a group of six, with four children, the likelihood of standby coming through on any of these is less than zero. On the departure board the flight was referred to by a carrier other than the one we bought the tickets from, because of course everyone should know every carrier’s partner airlines and how their flight numbers map. Three hours of delay had arrived but the plane was finally at the gate. FAA says I’m entitled to a meal for the delay, so I go ask how to redeem it. I’m told to go back to customer service near security and stand in a line to get a voucher. But if I miss the flight, there’s nothing they can do about it. I’m sure that’s not how that’s supposed to work, but I’m several hours delayed already, my plans for the day are shot, missing the flight it really an option just so I can get some airport food. The time has arrived to start boarding. I’m on chat complaining about the service when it disconnects. The app stops working, so I check the airline’s website, and get a hard down, unstyled error message. I tell my wife that something seems wrong with their site and have my suspicion confirmed a few minutes later that their entire system is down and all flights are halted until further notice. No ETA. At this point Reddit has more information about what’s happening than the gate agent. It’s another 45 minutes before a mumbly PA announcement tells us flights are delayed due to a global system wide outage. Fortunately, their IT staff seemed to be on it, and the whole thing only lasted an hour. Then they put us on the plane like nothing happened and even got people to cheer for the crap service. Ice water in hell, I suppose.
- mjhay 2mo ago
anticorporate 2mo ago
I mean, almost by definition half of the time people are going through an airport, it's not their home airport. Probably more than half because people chain trips (and even more than that if you count people with a layover). It would make sense for the default assumption when interacting with a visitor is that they've never been there before and are unaware of your procedures.
59percentmore 2mo ago
This shouldn't really be directed at people who work at the airport. Almost everything mentioned is the fault of the people who designed the airport and the people who run the airport. The latter group are so, so happy that you addressed the former, and not them. They have successfully avoided the inconvenience and scrutiny that would prompt them to change. (Of course, between Abe and the UHC guy, taking your complaints directly to an executive also seems to be effective, if not even more so.)
- 99954bb63ccc 2mo ago
  Agree 100. Most of my frustration with things in the world goes right to this IE it's the folks who design/administer it that I blame. Sure, the users and/or operators of any given system can find a way to use/operate things incorrectly. But, so many things are just clearly lazy in design. And, n=1 here, in many cases having worked in service/retail/operations roles, it's usually a matter of decision makers not listening to folks that have to work around the sillyness day to day that is to blame. So long as the front line folks work around it, the decision makers consider it solved...
- stephenbez 2mo ago
  If someone works at the airport and is screaming at people with limited English proficiency who rarely fly, that is the fault of the rude employee. They should get a different job. It’s a customer facing role where the main responsibility is directing confused and anxious people.
  - 59percentmore 2mo ago
    See, that's where you're wrong. Their main responsibility is preventing a violent attack. At least, according to the people who set the agenda and policies for frontline employees. Faulting "rude" employees is futile; even when you have legitimate reason and desire to correct their behavior, do you sit there and negotiate with the scanner operator? No, you go to their boss. So, who is responsible?
- senordevnyc 2mo ago
  Gross parenthetical.
tamimio 2mo ago
In Montreal airport few months ago, going through the TSA check: shoes off, laptop out in a separate bin etc etc then the giant rotating MRI, I mean xray, then at the end they took my carry on for further inspection, after waiting for around 30min for my turn, it turned out because I have half full bottle of water.. I told him to toss it and just hand me the bag, he refused, and asked me to wait another 15min, then he escorted me before the TSA check point, and told me to pour the water in specific garbage/container, I did, and he left me with bag open at the beginning, so I put everything inside and wanted to pass the TSA, the guys who just saw me being escorted from the inside, refused to let me pass without doing the whole check again, so, shoes off, rotating xray, etc etc, and this time plus extra manual search or whatever it’s called, maybe because I dared to challenge their authority. The whole process took around an hour, for a half full bottle of water I bought from the airport. This not the only story, there are many stories, like the one time they politely asked me to keep my bag at the front door of the airplane because there’s no enough space (I found inside people with three pieces tho), silly me I thought I will take it when I leave only to find they checked it, and the rest of the trip I was left with nothing but my passport (luckily I had it with me or I will be stranded), only to find some of my stuff got stolen from my bag and a broken laptop. The first story however is the symbolization of the infamous Canadian bureaucracy in anything government wise, what something could be solved in one step quickly, gets convoluted with so many steps because who ever designed them is either out of touch of reality and needs to touch some grass, or just straight up moron, the same applies for hospitals ER btw, it’s not “short staff” as they claim, it’s just a poor process design.
jasonhong 2mo ago
Replace "passengers" with "users" and replace "airport workers" with "product team members", and you have a good argument for why good usability and good service design really matter in the world.
etothepii 2mo ago
Can I recommend something concrete every time something like this happens to you? 1. Use ChatGPT (or similar) to make a fun and attractive greetings card image that is a farcical representation of the situation. 2. Use MoonPig.com (or similar) to send it through the real/royal mail to someone important (but not the CEO) at the company that has annoyed you. This need not cost more than $6. That's almost certainly less than 1% the cost of the long haul flight that this happened on. Everything you describe is likely a function of the CFO being allowed to treat the savings they can find as if they are a profit centre. It is incumbent upon those of us that can see a better way to demonstrate that the 5p per flight that the CFO optimised annoyed some customers enough to spend real time bringing it to someone's attention. The first time I did this I effectively received over $2,000 from my airline of choice (though the path to that was convoluted). Most people don't react well to being told they are wrong. Use your intellect and industry to show them a better way in a positive and friendly way. You will usually get better results and by spreading more positivity in the world will likely feel happier too.
pkrecker 2mo ago
One time in 2013 I was flying from San Francisco to Phoenix with a layover in LA. I purchased my ticket directly from United, the flights had a UAXXXX flight number, and the printed tickets I got when I checked in had United branding on them. I got to LAX and I proceeded to try to find my UA flight, but the flight number was nowhere to be found. I waited a bit and when it still didn’t show up on the monitor, I asked a gate agent. The agent looked at my ticket and told me to keep waiting. Eventually I started to get worried as my departure time was approaching. I asked another gate agent, and this time I was informed my flight was not a United flight at all! It was a US Airways flight. Also, it was in a completely different terminal. Also, at LAX to move between terminals you have to exit security and hike across parking structures and parking lots. There was no way I would make my flight. I looked at my ticket and sure enough, in small print it said “operated by US airways.” I hadn’t even noticed this, but even if I had, how was I supposed to know that this meant it was literally not a United flight at all? Thankfully a friendly customer service agent took mercy on me and got me booked on an American flight later that day. I later learned from a flight attendant friend that this was called a “code share” and it was subsequently changed to make it more user friendly. There are a million things like this I don’t even think about anymore because I travel so much. But when I think back to those days of early adulthood I remember how stressful and confusing airports could be.
VeninVidiaVicii 2mo ago
Everything you’re saying is how I feel as a native English speaker and it drives me absolutely nuts. People in airports are obsessed with telling you what you can’t do. The one thing that kind of works for me is, “Well, what should I do?” when they bark orders about what I can’t do. “You can’t have your boarding pass in your hand!”, when you’re in the x-ray. “Where should I put it now?” Oh well, it turns out I actually can have it in my hand. Thanks.
willcodeforfoo 2mo ago
Reminds me of a really beautiful song by Nickel Creek, To The Airport: https://genius.com/Nickel-creek-to-the-airport-lyrics https://genius.com/Nickel-creek-to-the-airport-lyrics There's a of implicit knowledge in that environment.
bartread 2mo ago
I will do almost anything to avoid flying, at least short haul. I don’t mind flying: I have no fear of it at all in fact. But I absolutely despise the airport experience, and consider it to be so unpleasant as to be worth avoiding whenever it’s at all feasible to travel by other means.
PsylentKnight 2mo ago
I think a lot of the reason this generation is starting to become very pro-train is because of how fucking awful airports are
ASUfool 2mo ago
Here's more fun with flight numbers that just occurred. How about AA using the same flight number for an arriving flight and a departing flight within 30 minutes of each other? https://ktar.com/arizona-news/two-american-airlines-flights-same-call-sign-sky-harbor https://ktar.com/arizona-news/two-american-airlines-flights-...
- Kinrany 2mo ago
  As far as I understand flight numbers are reused regardless, they're more like bus lines
Mawr 2mo ago
> and when you loudly yet mumblingly announced that "We would now like to invite our Elite SkyFlyer Gold Members to commence boarding", English being her fourth language, all she really heard was "hurble flurble durble BOARDING", and she naturally thought it might be time to board. And how ironic that is to be the case in aviation where at this point all potentially confusing radio calls pilots use have been eliminated. For example, the word "takeoff" in "clear for takeoff" is only allowed to be used in that one phrase.
m463 2mo ago
the Temple Grandin bit refers to her experience with animals: https://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html https://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html random example of the kinds of things she's good at: https://www.grandin.com/design/curved.handling.facilities.html https://www.grandin.com/design/curved.handling.facilities.ht... reading her website is sort of amazing: https://www.grandin.com/ https://www.grandin.com/
slake 2mo ago
Heathrow has especially gotten horrible. It used to be my favourite transit airport, now it's packed to the brim with barely any place to sit. The restrooms are ill-maintained. The security opens into a narrow space with a 100 people trying to put on their belts and shoes while acres of real estate is wasted on empty Hermes, Gucci stores. While I find British people generally pleasant to talk to, the ones at Heathrow feel like they're jail wardens.
vismit2000 2mo ago
There is so much scope for simplicity at every place if we have that vision to constantly think from the perspective of the end user.
bakibab 2mo ago
This is so relatable. I was at Heathrow Airport couple of week back. My gate was changed from 24 to 21, I thought it would few mins walking. I was totally wrong and it was in the corner of another dungeon. Took me almost 15+ mins. I started using Flighty app. This is way more reliable than any airport announcement and monitors.
slaye 2mo ago
Great article! I think about this a lot when I fly through an "international" airport back home where most of the signs are in English/Spanish, and how intimidating it must be for non-speakers to navigate through the airport.

215 points by nivethan 2mo ago

> She was anxious, because you instilled a sense of panic in her. That's not why she was anxious! She was anxious because, according to author's own account, this is someone: a) flying for the first time b) hardly speaks English c) is in a foreign country d) solo responsible for 4 grand kids running around etc. Blaming the airport staff who have to optimize for the greater good is quite something.

vintermann 2mo ago
Now boarding - remain seated. Gate closing! The author gave plenty of other reasons why someone might be stressed out by what's communicated at the airport. The whole point is that airport staff (and especially leadership) are maybe not so great at "optimizing for the greater good" always.
- gruez 2mo ago
  >Now boarding - remain seated. Gate closing! >The author gave plenty of other reasons why someone might be stressed out by what's communicated at the airport. Without objective accounts (ie. a picture), it's unclear whether that's due to poor design or just poor comprehension/situational awareness from the person reading it. For instance, "Now boarding - remain seated" seems like pretty standard priority boarding (eg. first class boards first, economy stays seated). If you're bad at english and all you can do is scan for random keywords, and/or it's your first time flying and you're not aware of this, you might be confused. But there's also so much you can do for this target audience.
  - kshri24 2mo ago
    > But there's also so much you can do for this target audience. The point is not asking one to do something for the target audience beyond showing a bit of compassion. If the passenger is lost/confused and is being yelled at it would do nothing to either diffuse the situation or help the passenger. Hand-holding one or two passengers would only make the experience pleasant enough for them. It has the effect of them learning something they did not know and also wanting to come back again.
  - pmontra 2mo ago
    If that's the case it means that they can show the "Now boarding - remain seated" only to people that will board in economy seats. I don't think that they can, so it's a bad message that probably came into existence because of some entertaining concatenation of events that somebody in the airport business could be able to explain. But will anybody working in airports read that post?
    - gruez 2mo ago
      >If that's the case it means that they can show the "Now boarding - remain seated" only to people that will board in economy seats. That's physically not possible if all you have is a single display in front of the gate, which is common at most airports. Of course, you can add "First class - now boarding, everyone else - stay seated" but for OP's case where there's reading comprehension issues I doubt that would help. >I don't think that they can, so it's a bad message that probably came into existence because of some entertaining concatenation of events that somebody in the airport business could be able to explain. It's not hard to think why it's necessary. Otherwise you have a hoarde of economy people clogging up the gates when it's only supposed to be first class people.
mschuster91 2mo ago
Airports by nature of flying being expensive will always be filled with people with zero idea about how airports work.
tonyarkles 2mo ago
> Blaming the airport staff who have to optimize for the greater good is quite something. I don't think it's actually as noble as "optimizing for the greater good", but rather "optimizing for getting through the day in one piece". Which, in my experience, is why (polite + friendly + reasonable + firm) is the right register to use in pretty much every interaction with airport staff. You're asking them to do something (not telling), but your presence is ideally vaguely net positive (friendly, smiling, relaxed), you're asking for something that's within their authority to do, and there's a vague threat that you're not going to back down if they say no off-hand (their day is going to have a larger hassle-increment if they say no vs. if they say yes). Written out it kind of reads as cold and calculating, but I think every element of it is the best for everyone involved. You don't end up feeling like you just acquiesced to getting screwed by United or Delta, they get to have a nice friendly interaction that ideally makes those 10 minutes of their day suck less than it could have with an asshole customer.
- bee_rider 2mo ago
  It is the delicate art of being a persistent problem that is more pleasant and easier to deal with than ignore.
handwarmers 2mo ago
while your ignorance is bliss for you, it is a punishment for the rest of us. now get in line and wait for your boarding group to be called.
kshri24 2mo ago
> b) hardly speaks English > c) is in a foreign country So you don't want tourists to your Country? You do realize 95% of the World lives outside the US? and at least 80% lives in non-English speaking Countries? Creating a horrid experience for them would mean losing huge chuck of that wealth flowing into your Country. Especially so when their income levels are rising drastically compared to a US Citizen (in terms of % change in disposable income as many are from low cost of living countries).
- fryanyway_swe 2mo ago
  [flagged]
- andsoitis 2mo ago
  I didn’t say that I don’t want visitors who aren’t proficient in the language. I love to travel to places where I don’t understand the language. What exhilarates me even more is going to places where I also don’t understand the script! My point was merely that this is one element that turns up the anxiety dial, which I think is self-evident.
martyvis 2mo ago
I think the point is that they have zero empathy
sifex 2mo ago
The fact that airport staff are forced to be cattle dogs given the lack of airport prior capacity planning is exactly what the author is trying to convey. It touches on a “race to the bottom” that European low cost carriers have have shown that people don’t care about airport stress in the shadow of cost — which lends to the enshittification of the whole overall experience. It’s so bad that people are starting to /pay/ to have less stress by visiting airport lounges, which are now starting to be, themselves, overcrowded due to the increase in demand.[1] [1]. https://web.archive.org/web/20260714133432/https://www.globalgrowthinsights.com/market-reports/airport-lounges-market-118981 https://web.archive.org/web/20260714133432/https://www.globa...
krisoft 2mo ago
> optimize for the greater good Greater good my posterior. The grandma was in the wrong place at that time because they optimised the experience to extract the most money out of the flying public. They were boarding the people who paid extra, and since she didn't they couldn't let her board. Because if they do why would anyone pay extra for their "higher class" more expensive tickets. They could have said "passport?" and then pointed her towards the gate. But doing so as a policy would net the corporation less profit. So they don't. In other words the grandma's distress was by design. You can avoid the indignity of turned away from the gate by coughing up more money. She quite literally "didn't know her place" both in the queue and in the hierarchy.
- gruez 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - krisoft 2mo ago
    It makes every sense. andsoitis claimed that the process is optimised for "greater good". My observation is that it is not. It is optimised for profit. That's it. If there were some change they could enact which improves the "greater good" (whatever that is) at the cost of profit, they wouldn't. Simple as that. > or need assistance first yeah. Like a grandma with a tenuous command of the language and four kids. :) > thereby creating the issue described in the OP. I'm sure a fictional airport organised by other principles would have other problems. Doesn't change a bit that the current airport you can experience is optimised for profit, and not for "greater good".
    - gruez 2mo ago
      >If there were some change they could enact which improves the "greater good" (whatever that is) at the cost of profit, they wouldn't. Simple as that. Right, nobody thinks airports/airlines are altruistic organizations, but this specific complaint doesn't make any sense because the specific decision to board by sections is for the greater good. A moshpit where everybody boards at once benefits no one. In this case, "greater good" and "maximize profit" overlaps. >yeah. Like a grandma with a tenuous command of the language and four kids. :) Usually this would be handled by the airport, not the airlines. Moreover airports usually have criteria for which people can get assistance, and they can only help people that they think need assistance. It's easily to identify someone in a wheelchair, less easy to identify "grandma with a tenuous command of the language" without engaging in sterotyping/racial profiling.

MotoriX 2mo ago

Navigation in a lot of public places is pretty bad. I think interactive maps on small terminals could help a lot. Personally, I find it much easier to understand things from a map, especially when it shows exactly where you are.

shdwslrkr 2mo ago

[dead]

josefritzishere 2mo ago

Everyone over 40 knows how terrible air travel has become.

Xirdus 2mo ago
Everyone* knows how terrible air travel has become. People over 40 know it doesn't have to be that way.
lifestyleguru 2mo ago
It's still like in the past days in Business class and upwards, not to mention private flying - all friendly, fully serviced, no nitpicking. Air travel has become more like transatlantic liners from the period just before their demise.
- ceejayoz 2mo ago
  Business class is starting the enshittification ramp. https://travelupdate.com/business-class-seat-selection-fee/ https://travelupdate.com/business-class-seat-selection-fee/ Wanna sit with your partner? Both of you, pay up! Lounge access? Oh, that's extra now.
  - lotsofpulp 2mo ago
    Why does that logic not go the other way, too? Don’t care about who you sit next to? Have a discount! Suppose you operate an airline, and your costs increase (e.g. fuel, labor, etc). Your options are to divide the increase equally by number of seats, or you increase price differently based on customer’s ability and willingness to pay. I do not see what is “wrong” about the latter. In fact, the latter would allow maintaining more access to air travel for those who can afford it the least. I don’t care for airport lounges, why should I pay for them? Same for bigger seats, or checked bags, or alcoholic drinks, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
    - gruez 2mo ago

mschuster91 2mo ago

> Upon seeing this, the experienced visitor to this sceptred isle knows to smartly turn on their heel because B45 is right behind them, but we occasional travellers don't. Railways aren't much better. German railways are bad enough, but Eastern Europe... good luck even finding a realtime track schedule, and screw you if you don't speak the language. Last time in Rijeka there was construction going on but no indications anywhere, my fellow travellers were lucky I spoke Croatian and recognized that the attendant was shouting in Croatian for the people on what should have been a train...

lifestyleguru 2mo ago
You come to Croatia for cheap holidays and are surprised not all works as you're used to. German service providers absolutely don't care if you don't speak German and will take that extra step to make sure you get the message.
- mschuster91 2mo ago
  > You come to Croatia for cheap holidays and are surprised not all works as you're used to. I speak the language. The thing I'm annoyed is is that tourist destinations should be better prepared for, well, tourists showing up!
  - lifestyleguru 2mo ago
    Croatian tourism strategy is bumping prices of what they already have to Swiss level, and seeing who is still willing to show up.
    - mschuster91 2mo ago
      It's not like that strategy isn't working out lol. The issue at the root of it is that Croatia wants to diversify from tourism and agriculture, its main sources of income... but for that, it needs money. With Russia invading Ukraine, a ton of Russian tourists went missing (if you ask me: thank God), and so the remaining ones are getting fleeced for all they're worth. The side effect is that the locals are getting shafted. Supermarket prices are at German levels (on the islands it's even worse)... the only thing saving most locals is that Croats tend to outright own their homes and a lot of Croats have houses large enough for two families if not more. That makes high cost of living a lot more bearable. And the fact that the geography makes supplying the coastal areas very inefficient doesn't help either. Along the coast from Rijeka all the way down to Zadar there is only the one single-lane long magistrala with only a few passthroughs through the mountain and the recently constructed highways... but no train, it's only in Rijeka and Zadar again. And with the exception of Krk which is connected by bridge, all of the islands have to be supplied by ferry, but the trucks that haul all the goods have to wait sometimes for hours to get on the ferry, the only fast lane is for the public transit buses and authorities.

neko_ranger 2mo ago

Am I crazy or are the general workers at most US airports of dubious quality at best?

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
rdtsc 2mo ago
The TSA and some immigration ones are even malicious
- WaitWaitWha 2mo ago
  I have gone through Schiphol and strip searched because the buttons on my winter coat were suspicious.
Xirdus 2mo ago
You get what you pay for. And they're being paid barely above minimum wage.
- pineapplepizza6 2mo ago
  about a half of a developed country's minimum wage.
  - Insanity 2mo ago
    That doesn’t change the fact that it’s minimum wage for the location. Doesn’t matter if they earn more than a highly skilled professional in a different country, it doesn’t change the skill set. FWIW though, I rarely had bad experiences with airport staff. They are just trying to do their jobs in a hectic place and don’t intentionally make our lives difficult.
    - zamadatix 2mo ago
      That it's a near minimum wage job is not actually the fact though. Even the minimum starting salary for an entry level TSA position is higher than the highest minimum wage of any city/county/state in the US. The median TSA salary is also a hair above the median of full time salary in the US. For the most part I agree most are at least neutral though. I.e. they are there because it's a job, not because they hate people or love people and this job was the way to do that. It's just the ones that do tend to really stand out for people.

patchorang 2mo ago

I can't agree more. I was once catching a flight, went to my gate and found no one there and the flight status monitors saying "Cancelled". I couldn't find an agent at any desk, so went back out of security to check-in to figure out what was going on. The agent proceeded to act like I was the biggest idiot in the world for leaving the gate because "we don't control those boards, your flight isn't cancelled, the gate was changed". So I had to run back through security to barely catch my flight. Another place I experience this phenomenon is bike shops. They'll start talking to you with specialized vocabulary and won't give you the time of day if you don't know exactly what they're talking about. Yet, I brought my bike to the bike shop because I'm not an expert bike mechanic. Funny enough, I couldn't find a bike shop that wasn't like this so with the help of youtube I do all my own bike work now.

RankingMember 2mo ago
> Another place I experience this phenomenon is bike shops. They'll start talking to you with specialized vocabulary and won't give you the time of day if you don't know exactly what they're talking about. Yet, I brought my bike to the bike shop because I'm not an expert bike mechanic. Funny enough, I couldn't find a bike shop that wasn't like this so with the help of youtube I do all my own bike work now. Ugh, the industry still needs to do so much work to this end. There are good shops out there, fwiw, but the elitism is real. Totally counterproductive for a means of conveyance that is so elegantly classless (in the positive, egalitarian sense).
- lukan 2mo ago
  Speaking about elitism/classless - in some german towns, there are more and more non profit self help bike repair places. Good concept I think, but sadly not for E-Bikes it seems. At least I was told that much, so I had to start getting my own repair gear.
- hydrogen7800 2mo ago
  I design and build things 100x[0] more complex than any bicycle, yet I don't know the jargon and feel like an idiot when I got into my local bike shop to ask simple questions. They are mostly nice and understanding, but the jargon and elitism is still very real that my wife doesn't like going there. [0]though adjusting the tension spring on the brake levers still puzzles me sometimes... Looser should mean it travels more when you squeeze and release the brake lever, right? Stiffer spring has less displacement for a given force. Not quite. https://www.sheldonbrown.com/canti-direct.html#parallel https://www.sheldonbrown.com/canti-direct.html#parallel

piinbinary 2mo ago

This has some lessons that apply much more broadly than to just airports (e.g. apps that make you jump through hoops and expect you to know what 2fa or SSO mean)

LollipopYakuza 2mo ago
Exactly. That led me to wonder what in my job do I wrongly assume for my users.
kevincox 2mo ago
Or just anyone involved in communication at all. For example my condo management team has names for every part of the building that they just assume that everyone understands. They don't seem to understand that most of the people living here don't spend most of their time reading the building floor plan.

mikeocool 2mo ago

My favorite but of airport-ese that emerged post-9/11 is that on most US airlines you can now have 1 carry-on and 1 personal item. As far as I can tell the difference between them is that a personal item can't have wheels.

ceejayoz 2mo ago
My last four flights have each made me gate-check my carry-on at the jetway. They could've saved a lot of time and labor by just letting me check it like I would have before they started charging $30-50 each way for it.
- mbreese 2mo ago
  That is the most counter-intuitive thing for me while flying. Why make me pay to check my bag? Make people pay to carry on a bag. Most of the time boarding and leaving a plane is taken up with people dealing with overhead bags. Checking a bag should be the cheapest option to incentivize people to be more efficient.
  - Ekaros 2mo ago
    My best guess is that at least some airports will charge the airlines per checked in bag. Thus to save money if possible people carrying them inside is most profitable.
  - orev 2mo ago
    If checking the bag is free, everyone would do it, leaving the overhead space empty. That overhead space is flying to the destination anyway, so it’s better to make sure it’s full. The. If there’s free space in the hold underneath, they can transport other things like cargo (which makes them money).
    - ceejayoz 2mo ago
      > If checking the bag is free, everyone would do it, leaving the overhead space empty. Checking the bag used to be free, and this was not the case.

chasd00 2mo ago

This is currently the #4 story on the home page, an article about someone complaining about not being able to figure out an airport. This must be why the standard recommendation is to get to the airport 2 hours(!) before your flight.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

foo-bar-baz529 2mo ago

I dislike the sense of judgment from TSA officials when I don’t correctly predict which items they do/don’t want me to put in the tray. It’s not my fault that different airports seem to have completely different rules for the same items.

SanjayMehta 2mo ago
[flagged]
zhivota 2mo ago
Even different lines in the same security area can have different rules. If you travel a lot you start to recognize which machines require laptops out of bags and which don't, for instance. It is really anxiety inducing overall though. Not to mention the ritual of getting partly undressed before the stupid thing then trying to put everything back on and in pockets on the other side.
- zamadatix 2mo ago
  Does anyone happen to know which ones are fine with 2 laptops per bag and which ones aren't?
nucleardog 2mo ago
I've often thought that having a standardized checklist on a big board in the security line would be a big help. Laptops: In/Out Liquids: In/Out Shoes: On/Off Etc Because yeah, it's really annoying getting treated like I'm the dummy by some agent that's only ever known this airport's rules... because this airport has rules entirely different than every other one I've flown through in this decade. Recently had to fly with some splints and crutches and stuff and that was a whole extra set of fun difference in airport rules. First one really wanted to rub their explosives swab on my finger that was held together by exposed metal pins and had exposed subcutaneous tissue. They were a bit put off when I asked for alternate options.
- genghisjahn 2mo ago

raverbashing 2mo ago

While I found this rant mostly annoying: > When we try to find gate B45, we encounter the following sign: (see board with 2 B45 gates) Well, yes. This is wrong. And confusing. But mostly wrong

chasd00 2mo ago
When article says "..it's actually behind you" that leads me to believe that if you're staring at those signs then you're actually at B45. I'm not sure off the top of my head how you'd put B45 on those signs in a clear way. If B45 is at the intersection of two hallways then it really shouldn't be on either sign but then where should it be?
- raverbashing 2mo ago
  You'd need a segregated entry for B45, or just omit it entirely

Retr0id 2mo ago

I suspect airports could be a whole lot simpler if the notions of "security" and "border control" didn't exist or were otherwise relaxed.

igornotarobot 2mo ago

How about two different planes departing to exactly the same destination at exactly the same time from two different terminals? That's how I missed my plane from Belgrade to Vienna. I have no other explanation but that they do it on purpose.

ceejayoz 2mo ago
> I have no other explanation but that they do it on purpose. It's much simpler; the incoming plane takes pretty much any available gate, because they are all almost always full. Getting the two flights to Vienna in the same spot might mean an hour of extra waiting on the tarmac for a gate to open up.
- aqme28 2mo ago
  Also, two neighboring gates saying "Now boarding for Vienna" will confuse people too. You're a bit screwed either way.
  - progbits 2mo ago
    Are you? The gate won't let you in, you go to gate right next to it while it's still boarding.
gruez 2mo ago
The airport departure board doesn't have flight numbers? All the ones I've seen do. And if you can't notice the difference between two different flight numbers, how are you going to notice the difference between one flight departing at 1:35 and another that departs at 1:45?
- igornotarobot 2mo ago
  Of course, they have flight numbers, though the destination and the departure time was a good heuristic until it was not. I am much better at remembering the departure time than an arbitrary sequence of letters and numbers.

superxpro12 2mo ago

i think that 90% of these problems would be solved by an easily accessible, standardized map of each airport. When i attempted to find airport maps, I was met with a mess of mobile apps, mobile website pdf's, and an enormous amount of text. Just... give me an easy to use map. Call out the obvious use cases like "how to transfer terminals" and "your bags will/will-not be checked through".

chasd00 2mo ago
maybe this doesn't work in every airport but you can hold up your phone with the camera on, point it down the hallway, and get step by step directions to get to your gate.
- BenjiWiebe 2mo ago
  What, your stock camera app gives you step by step directions?! Feels like your explanation is missing a few steps.
  - hebelehubele 2mo ago
    Google Maps has a feature that lets you increase accurracy by scanning your surroundings with the camera.

NoDodgeQuestion 2mo ago

Post title should be, Dear people who design the airport, not Dear people who work at the airport.

Hnrobert42 2mo ago
Both
john_strinlai 2mo ago
other than the remarks about the signage, most of the post is about the employees.

piker 2mo ago

Absolutely! I travel a LOT, am able-bodied and frequent the same airports, and I am routinely confused and anxious. Bad call-out to Heathrow though where they’re amongst the best in the world at this.

charlesabarnes 2mo ago

Experienced travelers also often face troubled, contradictory instructions from airport staff seemingly at random. The experience doesn't have to be so stressful and confusing, but I'm not sure how to fix it.

aqme28 2mo ago
Yes, this is a thing too. It's confusing for people who don't fly often for the obvious reasons, but experienced travelers have it just as bad because the rules vary wildly by airport and country. I can't remember which airports/countries/systems require which procedures, so I just have to go in blind every time.

xvxvx 2mo ago

Last time I flew, it was with United and I highly recommend their app. Clearly designed by people who know airports suck. It automated everything, from checkin and tickets, kept me updated on flights and gates, mapped them out and told me how long it would take to get to the gate and where security lines were the longest. Even tracked my checked luggage.

anticorporate 2mo ago
[dead]
martinpw 2mo ago
> Even tracked by checked luggage. Which would be great if it was actually accurate. Took a United flight two days ago. Checked two bags. App only reported one bag loaded onto plane. Spent the flight anxiously wondering if the other bag had been lost. Both bags arrived fine. I'd rather have no information than unreliable information.
- metanoia_ 2mo ago
  Do not let peace be given away as you cannot control what you cannot control.
- hazard 2mo ago
  Put an airtag into literally every bag you check. Helps you figure out not just whether they made it on the flight, but also if they ended up at some baggage claim on the other end of the airport instead of the one they were supposed to be at
ryandrake 2mo ago
Not a big fan of having to load up an app to do something that should be (an in some cases, used to be) effortless. At some airlines, the gate agents are now starting to expect you to use the app for things, and they'll give an annoyed snort if you ask them for information. Sorry, Tiffany, but your airline app doesn't work on my phone because United's lazy software engineers cut off support for Operating Systems older than the previous version.

Kinrany 2mo ago

Funny. I love flying partly for the very reason that airports need to be idiot-proof.

hmokiguess 2mo ago

Expectation is the source of frustration. Embrace the chaos, accept the journey.

aqme28 2mo ago

I flew out of JFK a few days ago. Delta has about 50 check-in kiosk, and a few gate agents. With so many terminals, I was wondering why the area was so packed, with ten-minute lines to use an check-in kiosk. I went to see a gate agent because I had a question. Right after yelling at someone else for the same reason, they told me "No, you have to use the kiosks." By the time I got to the check-in kiosks I figured it out. Maybe they worked for some people but it had to be like 20% at best. Everyone else had to have help, myself included. It wouldn't scan my passport for the first 5 attempts, and then it wouldnt print my bag tag so I had to see the agent anyways. What is the purpose of an automated system that drives everyone to the manual system? It just added an extra step. Sorry for venting.

ryandrake 2mo ago
The manufacturers and vendors who sold the non-working check-in kiosks profited. That reason alone is enough justification.

casion 2mo ago

I've just hit 2 million miles last week. All of this is true, and no matter how much you do it, it's still all true. I can't even keep track of what I'm supposed to do at my own home airport that I've been to thousands of times. Some people know me on a first name basis there, and still act judgmental when something was (seemingly randomly) changed and I don't know about it. TSA is by far the worst in the USA though. Their expectation that you do exactly what you should, without telling you what to do, while constantly changing the rules, is infuriating. Often there'll be 2-3 lines and DESPITE HAVING THE SAME SCANNERS, they'll have different unspoken rules that you are literally yelled at over.

chasd00 2mo ago
i made this point earlier but in a TSA line do you not just watch the people in front of you and do what they're required to do? That works pretty well for me.
- seb1204 2mo ago
  Yes, that. You have 3-10 chance to watch and learn before it's your turn. But down the phone or book and spend a moment observing.
Cthulhu_ 2mo ago
My theory is that it's intentional; change the rules for security personnel so they don't end up in a routine, change them for travelers so... they also don't end up in a routine. If travelers with malicious intent are stressed because of the lack of predictability, they'll be extra stressed when they're up to no good. Of course, this is baby/bathwater territory as only a fraction of a percentage of people are up to no good, and of those only a percentage is a danger to others.
- seb1204 2mo ago
  As with many things, criminals are a step ahead and know this and know how to keep calm, be patient.

Cider9986 2mo ago

We do not need everyones bags to be scanned. We do not need everyones bodies to be scanned. We do not need facial recognition at TSA, to board international flights, and to enter the country. We do not need to ban cash at airports. We do not need to take off our shoes (ig that changed). We do not need to restrict liquids. It's a bunch of baloney.

Bishonen88 2mo ago
what? especially the bags part seems crazy. Easy to imagine what happens when we stop screening bags...
- Vitamin_Sushi 2mo ago
  Wait until you find out that even when scanning everyone's bags, the TSA's failure rate is around 85%: https://abcnews.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-operation-us-airports/story?id=51022188 https://abcnews.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-ope... Granted, this article is almost 10 years old. Even so, I highly doubt that this administration is willing to test (or report) the TSAs effectiveness.
- jstanley 2mo ago
  Easy to fear what you merely imagine. Did you know that for train and bus travel in the UK bags are not scanned? And we don't have people bombing trains and buses all the time. Some museums look in bags and some don't and I'm not sure there's a statistically significant difference in how frequently they get bombed.
  - Gud 2mo ago
    The difference between an airplane and buses and trains, is that in the airplane you are in a confined space far from the ground. Its not just about bombs.
  - sandmn 2mo ago
    They do confiscate plenty of guns though: https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/3816926-these-us-airports-had-the-most-guns-confiscated-from-passengers/ https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/3816926-these-us-a...

sergiotapia 2mo ago

I feel differently, after travelling a bit all the airports are so cookie cutter I was in awe of the human effort required to reach this point of harmony. It's all so organized and simple and zero need to rush. They even have signs in all major languages, it's nuts! Source: SF, Miami, New York, Bolivia, Argentina, Texas - all kind of the same all over. Like visiting different Wawa's.

joshstrange 2mo ago

In Lexington, KY I was chided for taking out my laptop "You don't need to do that" and then at Dallas Fort Worth I got chided for not taking out my laptop. Kafkaesque is the best word I have to describe it. Turns out Lexington has nicer/newer scanners and somehow I'm supposed to know which scanners you need to take your laptop out for. Additionally I want to make a scene every time I hand over documents and get told "I don't need this" since if I hadn't provided that ID/Passport/Boarding pass there was an equal chance I'd get berated for not providing it. There is zero empathy for the traveller. If I walk forward I get yelled at, if I wait to be called I get yelled at, it's infuriating. Everything about the airport feels like a lose-lose scenario to me. I don't fly that often and every time I do I hate the airport experience so much because I feel like I'm constantly doing _something_ wrong. The security theater of the TSA is just the moldy cherry on top of the shit sundae that is flying.

chasd00 2mo ago
what i do in tsa lines is just watch the people in front of me and the directions given to them. It's kind of hard to ignore actually.
- joshstrange 2mo ago
  Lexington KY is a small airport, I walked right up to an empty line with no one in front of me and there were only 2-3 people in front of my at DFW and no one had a laptop I guess? The entire airport experience is me trying to watch the people in front of me and try to decipher what I need to do to comply best. I still feel like a fish out of water every time.
starky 2mo ago
I'm pretty sure this is a purposeful "feature" of security at least for North America. They don't want anyone getting comfortable with the process and constantly make changes to ensure this. I'm not sure what this is supposed to accomplish other than to make air travel less comfortable. I recently flew and the airport had gotten the new scanners since the last time I had gone somewhere. The signage was confusing as only some of the lines had signs that specifically said you didn't have to take out your electronics on "this lane only". Even with the new scanners they were pulling out half the bags for additional screening and only had one person doing the additional screening. Coming back from overseas I saw how it was supposed to work, walked up and they directed me to a line and a specific bin loading station, had someone remind me to ensure my pockets were empty, walked through the scanner and my bag was already waiting for me, took all of 2 minutes.

AndrewKemendo 2mo ago

My observation is that on average, the world is too complex and confusing for the vast majority of people to operate in it without significant struggle.

fryanyway_swe 2mo ago

[flagged]

Der_Einzige 2mo ago
Thus but unironically.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

maeln 2mo ago

I hate airport. From having to arrive many hours early to a place out of the city and often poorly connected by public transport, expensive to park if you dare take your car, extremely expensive if you take a taxi or be left wherever if you take an uber. Then you have to find your way through huge, terminal to find your gate, understand the arbitrary rules of the airlines you were forced to choose, having your stuff messed with by security, having the constant pressure of time, only for the airline to be hours late with no compensation. And so many more. Nowadays, if I can take a train, I take the train. At least where I live, the train stations are almost always in the city, very well-connected, are more comfortable, you can arrive very late at the train station since there is no gate, no security, no bullshit. And even if the trip is 3-4h longer with a train, you can make up for it by not having to show up minimum 1 hour early at the airport, then having to wait 1 hour for a slow bus that takes you from the airport to the actual city center, or take a taxi and give them all your life savings.

Caius-Cosades 2mo ago
Yeah, airports are way too stressful. I'd honestly rather use a train to travel across a continent than use an airplane. The time saved just isn't worth the stress.

Insanity 2mo ago

The signage and rules can be confusing, but I don’t recall bad experiences with airport staff. They are just trying to do their job in a hectic place. I don’t believe they are intentionally being difficult, and honestly everyone can have a bad day.

Aeolun 2mo ago

Like, I hate the sheer size of Schiphol, but I’m never wondering where anything is, and if I need to get there I can always get there by sprinting. I like that part of it.

arun-mani-j 2mo ago

I traveled in the flight for the first time 2 months back and I find this article so similar to my experience. I had so much confusion on the entire protocols on what is allowed and what is not and all those terminologies, such that a week before travel, I had my friend do a full end-to-end guide on everything we must do since entering an airport to coming out of it. Even then when I visited it, it was a little different than what my friend told me. But thankfully it is not a rushy airport, so I frankly told my situation to the person issuing boarding pass and he told me in detailed manner everything (my biggest confusion was with luggages). Unlike a bus or train which you can at the worst case run through and board, for airplanes, you need to go through a lot of checkings and phew... When in flight, there were a few instructions, messages from pilot etc. However they spoke so fast that it was so unclear. The passangers around me were also talking a little loudly, so I couldn't understand anything. May be from what I understand, these instructions are so regular, so people who frequent flights find it boring. For me it was both curiosity and feae of missing important details. And since it was India, they said the instructions in both English and Hindi only (I know only a little Hindi), even though the flights were for different language speaking region. At the end, it somehow ended up fine. But I think if it were my parents in my place, the journey could have been a nightmare :)

tengbretson 2mo ago

> we passengers are trying our best 100% disagree.

jonhohle 2mo ago

What’s crazy is that this is the list of things that are wrong when everything is going right. I was at O’hare for the first time in a few decades a few weeks ago and my flight was delayed due to some mechanical issue with the assigned plane. At least that’s what the app said. Because of the delay, the gate kept changing. We were supposed to know this because every once in a while the gate we were at no longer said it was our flight, so there must be some other location. I think at least one of the times it was mentioned over the PA, but besides the flight number everything else was unintelligible. We see other flights to our destination that were scheduled after ours from the same airline on the same type of plane boarding and leaving. It doesn’t matter that our tickets were from earlier in the day. They’ve already screwed over 150 passengers. Screwing them over more is far less bad than delaying them slightly but having to also delay later flights by a little bit, too. I think we watched three flights leave. As a group of six, with four children, the likelihood of standby coming through on any of these is less than zero. On the departure board the flight was referred to by a carrier other than the one we bought the tickets from, because of course everyone should know every carrier’s partner airlines and how their flight numbers map. Three hours of delay had arrived but the plane was finally at the gate. FAA says I’m entitled to a meal for the delay, so I go ask how to redeem it. I’m told to go back to customer service near security and stand in a line to get a voucher. But if I miss the flight, there’s nothing they can do about it. I’m sure that’s not how that’s supposed to work, but I’m several hours delayed already, my plans for the day are shot, missing the flight it really an option just so I can get some airport food. The time has arrived to start boarding. I’m on chat complaining about the service when it disconnects. The app stops working, so I check the airline’s website, and get a hard down, unstyled error message. I tell my wife that something seems wrong with their site and have my suspicion confirmed a few minutes later that their entire system is down and all flights are halted until further notice. No ETA. At this point Reddit has more information about what’s happening than the gate agent. It’s another 45 minutes before a mumbly PA announcement tells us flights are delayed due to a global system wide outage. Fortunately, their IT staff seemed to be on it, and the whole thing only lasted an hour. Then they put us on the plane like nothing happened and even got people to cheer for the crap service. Ice water in hell, I suppose.

mjhay 2mo ago

anticorporate 2mo ago

I mean, almost by definition half of the time people are going through an airport, it's not their home airport. Probably more than half because people chain trips (and even more than that if you count people with a layover). It would make sense for the default assumption when interacting with a visitor is that they've never been there before and are unaware of your procedures.

59percentmore 2mo ago

This shouldn't really be directed at people who work at the airport. Almost everything mentioned is the fault of the people who designed the airport and the people who run the airport. The latter group are so, so happy that you addressed the former, and not them. They have successfully avoided the inconvenience and scrutiny that would prompt them to change. (Of course, between Abe and the UHC guy, taking your complaints directly to an executive also seems to be effective, if not even more so.)

99954bb63ccc 2mo ago
Agree 100. Most of my frustration with things in the world goes right to this IE it's the folks who design/administer it that I blame. Sure, the users and/or operators of any given system can find a way to use/operate things incorrectly. But, so many things are just clearly lazy in design. And, n=1 here, in many cases having worked in service/retail/operations roles, it's usually a matter of decision makers not listening to folks that have to work around the sillyness day to day that is to blame. So long as the front line folks work around it, the decision makers consider it solved...
stephenbez 2mo ago
If someone works at the airport and is screaming at people with limited English proficiency who rarely fly, that is the fault of the rude employee. They should get a different job. It’s a customer facing role where the main responsibility is directing confused and anxious people.
- 59percentmore 2mo ago
  See, that's where you're wrong. Their main responsibility is preventing a violent attack. At least, according to the people who set the agenda and policies for frontline employees. Faulting "rude" employees is futile; even when you have legitimate reason and desire to correct their behavior, do you sit there and negotiate with the scanner operator? No, you go to their boss. So, who is responsible?
senordevnyc 2mo ago
Gross parenthetical.

tamimio 2mo ago

In Montreal airport few months ago, going through the TSA check: shoes off, laptop out in a separate bin etc etc then the giant rotating MRI, I mean xray, then at the end they took my carry on for further inspection, after waiting for around 30min for my turn, it turned out because I have half full bottle of water.. I told him to toss it and just hand me the bag, he refused, and asked me to wait another 15min, then he escorted me before the TSA check point, and told me to pour the water in specific garbage/container, I did, and he left me with bag open at the beginning, so I put everything inside and wanted to pass the TSA, the guys who just saw me being escorted from the inside, refused to let me pass without doing the whole check again, so, shoes off, rotating xray, etc etc, and this time plus extra manual search or whatever it’s called, maybe because I dared to challenge their authority. The whole process took around an hour, for a half full bottle of water I bought from the airport. This not the only story, there are many stories, like the one time they politely asked me to keep my bag at the front door of the airplane because there’s no enough space (I found inside people with three pieces tho), silly me I thought I will take it when I leave only to find they checked it, and the rest of the trip I was left with nothing but my passport (luckily I had it with me or I will be stranded), only to find some of my stuff got stolen from my bag and a broken laptop. The first story however is the symbolization of the infamous Canadian bureaucracy in anything government wise, what something could be solved in one step quickly, gets convoluted with so many steps because who ever designed them is either out of touch of reality and needs to touch some grass, or just straight up moron, the same applies for hospitals ER btw, it’s not “short staff” as they claim, it’s just a poor process design.

jasonhong 2mo ago

Replace "passengers" with "users" and replace "airport workers" with "product team members", and you have a good argument for why good usability and good service design really matter in the world.

etothepii 2mo ago

Can I recommend something concrete every time something like this happens to you? 1. Use ChatGPT (or similar) to make a fun and attractive greetings card image that is a farcical representation of the situation. 2. Use MoonPig.com (or similar) to send it through the real/royal mail to someone important (but not the CEO) at the company that has annoyed you. This need not cost more than $6. That's almost certainly less than 1% the cost of the long haul flight that this happened on. Everything you describe is likely a function of the CFO being allowed to treat the savings they can find as if they are a profit centre. It is incumbent upon those of us that can see a better way to demonstrate that the 5p per flight that the CFO optimised annoyed some customers enough to spend real time bringing it to someone's attention. The first time I did this I effectively received over $2,000 from my airline of choice (though the path to that was convoluted). Most people don't react well to being told they are wrong. Use your intellect and industry to show them a better way in a positive and friendly way. You will usually get better results and by spreading more positivity in the world will likely feel happier too.

pkrecker 2mo ago

One time in 2013 I was flying from San Francisco to Phoenix with a layover in LA. I purchased my ticket directly from United, the flights had a UAXXXX flight number, and the printed tickets I got when I checked in had United branding on them. I got to LAX and I proceeded to try to find my UA flight, but the flight number was nowhere to be found. I waited a bit and when it still didn’t show up on the monitor, I asked a gate agent. The agent looked at my ticket and told me to keep waiting. Eventually I started to get worried as my departure time was approaching. I asked another gate agent, and this time I was informed my flight was not a United flight at all! It was a US Airways flight. Also, it was in a completely different terminal. Also, at LAX to move between terminals you have to exit security and hike across parking structures and parking lots. There was no way I would make my flight. I looked at my ticket and sure enough, in small print it said “operated by US airways.” I hadn’t even noticed this, but even if I had, how was I supposed to know that this meant it was literally not a United flight at all? Thankfully a friendly customer service agent took mercy on me and got me booked on an American flight later that day. I later learned from a flight attendant friend that this was called a “code share” and it was subsequently changed to make it more user friendly. There are a million things like this I don’t even think about anymore because I travel so much. But when I think back to those days of early adulthood I remember how stressful and confusing airports could be.

VeninVidiaVicii 2mo ago

Everything you’re saying is how I feel as a native English speaker and it drives me absolutely nuts. People in airports are obsessed with telling you what you can’t do. The one thing that kind of works for me is, “Well, what should I do?” when they bark orders about what I can’t do. “You can’t have your boarding pass in your hand!”, when you’re in the x-ray. “Where should I put it now?” Oh well, it turns out I actually can have it in my hand. Thanks.

willcodeforfoo 2mo ago

Reminds me of a really beautiful song by Nickel Creek, To The Airport: https://genius.com/Nickel-creek-to-the-airport-lyrics https://genius.com/Nickel-creek-to-the-airport-lyrics There's a of implicit knowledge in that environment.

bartread 2mo ago

I will do almost anything to avoid flying, at least short haul. I don’t mind flying: I have no fear of it at all in fact. But I absolutely despise the airport experience, and consider it to be so unpleasant as to be worth avoiding whenever it’s at all feasible to travel by other means.

PsylentKnight 2mo ago

I think a lot of the reason this generation is starting to become very pro-train is because of how fucking awful airports are

ASUfool 2mo ago

Here's more fun with flight numbers that just occurred. How about AA using the same flight number for an arriving flight and a departing flight within 30 minutes of each other? https://ktar.com/arizona-news/two-american-airlines-flights-same-call-sign-sky-harbor https://ktar.com/arizona-news/two-american-airlines-flights-...

Kinrany 2mo ago
As far as I understand flight numbers are reused regardless, they're more like bus lines

Mawr 2mo ago

> and when you loudly yet mumblingly announced that "We would now like to invite our Elite SkyFlyer Gold Members to commence boarding", English being her fourth language, all she really heard was "hurble flurble durble BOARDING", and she naturally thought it might be time to board. And how ironic that is to be the case in aviation where at this point all potentially confusing radio calls pilots use have been eliminated. For example, the word "takeoff" in "clear for takeoff" is only allowed to be used in that one phrase.

m463 2mo ago

the Temple Grandin bit refers to her experience with animals: https://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html https://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html random example of the kinds of things she's good at: https://www.grandin.com/design/curved.handling.facilities.html https://www.grandin.com/design/curved.handling.facilities.ht... reading her website is sort of amazing: https://www.grandin.com/ https://www.grandin.com/

slake 2mo ago

Heathrow has especially gotten horrible. It used to be my favourite transit airport, now it's packed to the brim with barely any place to sit. The restrooms are ill-maintained. The security opens into a narrow space with a 100 people trying to put on their belts and shoes while acres of real estate is wasted on empty Hermes, Gucci stores. While I find British people generally pleasant to talk to, the ones at Heathrow feel like they're jail wardens.

vismit2000 2mo ago

There is so much scope for simplicity at every place if we have that vision to constantly think from the perspective of the end user.

bakibab 2mo ago

This is so relatable. I was at Heathrow Airport couple of week back. My gate was changed from 24 to 21, I thought it would few mins walking. I was totally wrong and it was in the corner of another dungeon. Took me almost 15+ mins. I started using Flighty app. This is way more reliable than any airport announcement and monitors.

slaye 2mo ago

Great article! I think about this a lot when I fly through an "international" airport back home where most of the signs are in English/Spanish, and how intimidating it must be for non-speakers to navigate through the airport.